We had an inspiring couple of days in Colorado last week.  On October 21 in Westminister, we participated in the 10th Annual Coleman Institute Conference, entitled “All Together Now:  The Power of Partnerships in Cognitive Disability & Technology.” 

While at the conference, Pam announced that the FCC was partnering with the Coleman Institute and Raising the Floor, an international coalition of individuals and organizations who promote internet accessibility for people with disabilities, to launch a challenge to the public to submit short multimedia presentations on their visions of how cloud computing can create new opportunities.  The challenge, titled "Lifted by the Cloud: Visions of Cloud-Enhanced Accessibility" is the Commission’s first challenge using GSA’s new challenge.gov platform.  More information can be found here.  Preceding Pam’s announcement of the challenge, Elizabeth Lyle, Special Counsel for Innovation in the Wireless Bureau, gave remarks on “The National Broadband Plan and Access for People with Cognitive Disabilities.”

We also participated in a pre-conference workshop in Boulder on October 20, entitled “Implications of Cloud Computing for People with Cognitive Disabilities,” which was sponsored by the Coleman Institute and Silicon Flatirons.  Jamal participated on a panel on “Technical Opportunities and Commercial Infrastructure, including the Farther Future” and Elizabeth participated on a panel entitled “Legal and Regulatory Barriers to Accessibility Technology in the Cloud.”

The Power of Partnerships was truly an apt title – for both days.  The Coleman Institute and Silicon Flatirons created a powerful learning environment by bringing together people with disabilities, advocates, families, researchers, academics, developers, technologists, and policymakers – and we are happy that the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative could be a part of it!

As Chairman Genachowski noted in an earlier post, "the future is being built on our invisible infrastructure" - the electromagnetic spectrum that has enabled innovations like the smartphone and Wi-Fi. Recently, senior leadership at the FCC provided their thoughts on the National Broadband Plan's efforts to unleash this invisible infrastructure to audiences at a Law Seminars International event in Washington, DC and 4G World in Chicago, Illinois. Their remarks, after the jump.

Read their remarks here.

Elizabeth Lyle delivered these remarks to the Tenth Annual Coleman Institute Conference in Westminister, Colorado.

I recently had the chance to work on the accessibility recommendations in the National Broadband Plan that the Federal Communications Commission released in March of this year.

Last year in the Recovery Act, Congress and the President charged the Commission with writing a plan to bring high-speed Internet and its benefits to all Americans.

As FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski would say, broadband is our generation’s major infrastructure challenge. It’s like roads, canals, railroads and telephones for previous generations.

Historically, it has taken years – even decades – for people with disabilities to have anything close to equal access to communications. Designers of equipment, services, and networks have often failed to consider accessibility issues in the design and development stage – and retrofit solutions are expensive.

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By Karen Peltz Strauss and Elizabeth Lyle

Today the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau released a Public Notice that seeks comment on some of the key provisions of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which the President signed into law on October 8, 2010.

The law’s provisions are designed to ensure that individuals with disabilities have access to emerging Internet Protocol-based communication and video programming technologies in the 21st Century.

The PN seeks comment on the requirement in Section 716 of the Act that service providers of advanced communications services and manufacturers of equipment and software used with those services ensure that their equipment and services will be accessible to people with disabilities, unless not achievable.

The Commission is required to promulgate rules implementing this provision within one year of enactment.  Given the tight statutory deadline, the PN seeks to build a record as quickly as possible to aid the Commission in its rulemaking.

The PN also seeks initial comment on ways to implement new recordkeeping obligations imposed by new Section 717 on entities subject to Sections 255, 716, and 718.  In addition, this Notice seeks comment on the obligation imposed by new Section 718 on manufacturers and service providers to provide access to Internet browsers in telephones used with public mobile services by blind or visually-impaired individuals.

Comments are due November 22 and reply comments are due December 7.  One way to submit comments is via the FCC’s electronic comment filing system (ECFS).  If ECFS is not accessible to you, you may send your comments directly to dro@fcc.gov.  We urge you to help us build this record.

Just last week, President Obama said that to create jobs today and lay the foundation for economic growth and U.S. competitiveness in the future, “We need … a smart system of infrastructure equal to the needs of the 21st century.”

When most people think of infrastructure, they think of visible projects like highways, bridges or high-speed rail.

But just as vital is our invisible infrastructure – the electromagnetic spectrum that travels unseen through the air and enables all of our wireless communications networks, cellular voice and data services, as well as radio, broadcast TV, and satellite.

Wireless innovation fuels economic growth and job creation. Sales of smartphone “apps” – an industry that didn’t exist a few years ago -- topped $4 billion in 2009; our new apps economy has created many jobs and can create more. Our invisible infrastructure also supports breakthrough tools to improve education through mobile online learning and e-books, enhance health care through potentially life-saving remote diagnostics, and promote energy efficiency by supporting the smart grid.

But we are at an inflection point.

The explosive growth in mobile communications is outpacing our ability to keep up. Spectrum is finite. If we don’t act to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century, we’re going to run into a wall – a spectrum crunch – that will stifle American innovation and economic growth and cost us the opportunity to lead the world in mobile communications.

Today, many of the nation’s leading experts on wireless technologies gathered at the FCC for a spectrum summit to identify ways we can solve the spectrum crunch and unleash our invisible infrastructure to spark our economy and create a powerful engine for job creation.

I kicked off the discussion with some remarks that highlighted some of the strategies we are pursuing at the FCC to make more spectrum available and put it to its best use.

I hope you will check out my speech, and I encourage you to watch other videos from the summit, which feature national leaders like Aneesh Chopra, our nation’s Chief Technology Officer, and Jason Furman, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, as well as my fellow Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker.

The future is being built on our invisible infrastructure. Today’s summit identifies important ways we can work together to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century and make sure that infrastructure truly serves our country’s needs.

(Cross-posted at Reboot Blog)

By Robert Alderfer and Tom Peters

The explosive growth of mobile communication is fueling our economy, creating jobs and spurring innovation at lighting fast speeds. But, it is also taxing our nation’s spectrum.

Spectrum is the finite national resource that makes all forms of wireless communication possible. Data usage over wireless networks is rapidly increasing as more consumers surf the web, check email, and watch video on the go, and more mobile device such as smart phones and tablets enter the market. This new demand for mobile spectrum is rapidly pushing us towards the point of running out of open spectrum.

The National Broadband Plan put numbers on the looming spectrum crunch, and made it clear that the time to act is now. The plan recommended that 500 megahertz of new spectrum be made available for broadband, including 300 megahertz in the next five years. The President has issued a call to action for wireless broadband. Clearly, new spectrum for wireless broadband is important to ensuring that we lead the world in mobile.

Today, the FCC is releasing a white paper entitled, “Mobile Broadband: The Benefits of Additional Spectrum.” This technical and economic forecast of mobile broadband market trends sets forth future spectrum needs in a concrete, data-driven fashion.

Today’s forecast demonstrates that the amount of mobile data demanded by American consumers is likely to exceed capacity of our wireless networks in the near-term, and that meeting this demand by making additional spectrum available is likely to create significant value for the economy. In addition, new mobile broadband spectrum will support innovation in other important areas – such as breakthrough tools to improve education through mobile online learning, enhancing health care through potentially life-saving remote diagnostics, and promoting energy efficiency by supporting the smart grid.

Some of the key findings in the white paper are:

• Within the next five years, the spectrum deficit is likely to approach 300 megahertz.
• This spectrum crunch will be driven by significant growth of mobile broadband traffic, on the order of 35 times recent levels.
• Mobile broadband growth is likely to outpace the ability of technology and network improvements to keep up by an estimated factor of three.
• Meeting this need may create $120 billion in spectrum value, with hundreds of billions more in total value to the economy as one considers broader macroeconomic effects.

The National Broadband Plan noted that making new spectrum available has historically taken between 6 and 13 years. Today’s forecast of the looming spectrum crunch makes clear the need for timely action to realize the wireless economy of the future.

So, take a look at the paper, and give us your feedback. What’s the best way for the nation to meet the growing need for mobile broadband spectrum?

(Cross-posted at Reboot Blog)

The demand for the beta version of the FCC fixed and mobile broadband tests have exceeded expectations with over 1.5 million tests taken since March.  While we ready the next versions, we wanted to inform users of other network testing tools available on the Internet.

These tools, which aren’t managed or approved by the FCC, allow users to do such things as test Internet Protocol Version 6 connectivity, determine whether traffic from certain applications is being throttled, and run an advanced overall network health diagnostic test.  And users can do all of this while contributing valuable and anonymous data to the academic research community.  Here are some advanced tools you might find useful and interesting:

IPv6 tests (accessible here and here)
These Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) tests allow you to determine whether your network connection is IPv6 capable.  Internet Protocol (IP) is the packet-switching and routing system for the Internet.  The current IP version (IPv4) was created in 1981 and is limited to around 4 billion unique addresses, most of which have already been assigned.  IPv6 allows for 340 trillion, trillion, trillion unique IP addresses, which should last for a good while.  IPv6 also allows for better security and support for advanced applications.  The White House has released a memo to government agencies about the deployment and use of IPv6, which you can read here; for more information about IPv6 and what you need to know, see IPv6 Act Now.

Glasnost application throttling tool
The Glasnost test is managed by the Max Planck Institute and enables users to check whether traffic from an application is being rate-limited (i.e., throttled) or blocked.  Glasnost works by testing and comparing users’ connection speed for different application flows to determine if a network provider is limiting the traffic for a particular type of traffic.  The tests can also detect whether application flows are shaped based on their port numbers or their packets’ payload.  For those short on patience, be aware that this advanced tool takes approximately 8 minutes to test a connection.

Netalyzr
Netalyzr is a National Science Foundation funded project that tests a wide range of network characteristics, such as TCP and UDP connectivity, buffer measurements, and DNS policy.  Netalyzr is designed for users with sophisticated knowledge of network technology and runs an advanced test on your Internet connection with an attendant detailed report.  The New Scientist magazine has published a guide to help users understand their Netalyzr results.

We encourage users of the FCC Consumer Broadband Tests to also consider these advanced tools.  As a reminder, the FCC does not manage or control any of these tools.

What do you think of the advanced tools blogged about above?  What other tools do you find useful around the Internet?  We’re always interested in hearing from readers so let us know what you think.

By Joel Gurin and Karen Peltz Strauss

We are very pleased to announce that Pam Gregory will be the Director, and Jamal Mazrui will be the Deputy Director, of the Commission’s new Accessibility and Innovation Initiative. Chairman Genachowski launched the initiative at a joint White House/ FCC/Department of Commerce event in July, consistent with a recommendation in the National Broadband Plan.

The mission of the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative is to promote collaborative problem-solving among stakeholders to ensure that people with disabilities reap the full benefits of communications technology. We will use many tools to achieve this objective, including the Chairman’s Award, Accessibility and Innovation challenges, workshops, field events, facilitated dialogues, and online tools such as a problem solving commons and a clearinghouse.

We have or will be launching soon accessibility challenges to developers, industry, and students related to accessible wireless apps, cloud computing and cognitive disabilities, web 2.0 accessibility, and geo-location accessibility, as Chairman Genachowski mentioned in his July 19, 2010 speech. In the near future, we will be providing more details on the Chairman’s Award for Advancements in Accessibility as well as other upcoming events.

We are thrilled that Pam has agreed to lead the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative. Pam has been working on disability issues at the FCC since 1996 and was the first chief of the Disability Rights Office. You can contact Pam at Pam.Gregory@fcc.gov.

We are equally thrilled that Jamal Mazrui will be providing leadership to the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative. Jamal has been working as a technology specialist and on disability issues at the Commission since 1999.

We would also like to thank Elizabeth Lyle for her leadership in helping to establish the A&I Initiative. We are happy that she will continue to work with us on these issues, as she takes on new responsibilities as the Special Counsel for Innovation in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

(Cross-posted at Reboot Blog)

 On Friday the FCC released a Request for Information (RFI) aimed at potential providers of mobile broadband performance measurement and mapping services.  The submission period is open through November 5, 2010.

 By Nick Sinai and Tom Brown

It’s exciting to see the National Broadband Plan being put in action. 

Last week the Department of Energy (DOE) released reports on Smart Grid communications and Smart Grid data access and privacy issues.  

These reports are the culmination of a lot of hard work over at DOE.  These are thoughtful and actionable reports that reflect a public stakeholder process – including public forums and detailed RFIs.

It’s clear that there is consensus – perhaps more than you might think – about what the federal government can do to help modernize the electric grid and enable smart home innovations.  There is also remarkable stakeholder consensus about some of the principles we outlined in the National Broadband Plan.  For example, just about every respondent noted that consumers deserve access to and control of their own energy consumption data.  Respondents also had strong consensus on the importance of privacy and security, as necessary conditions for energy management innovation in homes and buildings. 

The Smart Grid communications report also offers some practical recommendations about how to get DOE and the utility industry better involved in spectrum and reliability advisory committees.  It also suggests reviewing priority access and emergency restorations programs to see how utilities could use them better, as well as reviewing “opportunities for increased spectrum access for Smart Grid communications needs, including spectrum sharing and/or leasing.” 

We’re looking forward to working with DOE, NTIA, DHS, the utility industry, and other stakeholders on implementing these recommendations.

General Counsel Scott Harris and Assistant Secretary Patricia Hoffman and their teams should be commended for their important work.