Broadband is transforming the way businesses – large and small – function, communicate and grow. Always-on broadband connections enable e-commerce, facilitate fast business- to-business transactions, allow transfers of large amounts of data around the world, and make it possible to connect offices across the globe.

To understand more about the business broadband market, we conducted a survey of 3,506 American managers, owners or IT directors at businesses with 5 or more employees.  The survey focused on the different kinds of broadband connections businesses subscribe to, the ways businesses use broadband, attitudes toward broadband-enabled applications, and potential barriers to adopting the technology. 

The survey finds that nearly all businesses report having a broadband Internet connection in at least one location (95%).  Businesses most commonly use their broadband connections to buy products and supplies online, for research and online advertising. The results also indicate that most businesses (85%) are not planning to upgrade to faster speeds in the next year, with cost listed as a leading reason not to upgrade. For those businesses that are planning to upgrade, running new applications and improving communication with customers were the most cited reasons for doing so.

The FCC continues to focus on the role of broadband in stimulating private investment, creating jobs, and supporting our global competitiveness. The results of the survey released today will help the Commission ensure that it has the right policies in place to help achieve those goals.

Read the survey results.

This morning Chairman Genachowski, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett and a collection of FCC staff visited a state-of-the-art response facility at the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center in Arlington, Virginia. Following the vision laid out in the National Broadband Plan, the event marks the announcement of steps to revolutionize America’s 9-1-1 system by harnessing the potential of text, photo, and video in emergencies.



Our communications needs are increasingly reliant on mobile devices. In fact, 70% of 9-1-1 calls originate from mobile phones and users rely regularly on texts and multimedia messages. While a subsequent evolution of our 9-1-1 system seems a natural -- and obvious -- step for digitally aware citizen, our current 9-1-1 system doesn’t utilize the superb, possibly life-saving potential within our existing mobile devices. With videos, pictures, texts -- and other untold mobile innovations surely on the horrizon -- next-generation 9-1-1 will position public safety officials a step ahead with critical real-time, on-the-ground information.

After a tour of the high-tech operations room, Chairman Genachowski and Admiral Barnett spoke to the promise of next-generation 9-1-1. Here's an excerpt from Chairman Genachowski's speech.

"Even though mobile phones are the device of choice for most 9-1-1 callers, and we primarily use our phones to text, right now, you can’t text 9-1-1. Let me reiterate that point. If you find yourself in an emergency situation and want to send a text for help, you can pretty much text anyone EXCEPT a 9-1-1 call center.

"...It’s time to bring 9-1-1 into the digital age."

Read the rest of the Chairmans’s speech, view more photos and see the benefits of Next Generation 9-1-1 after the jump.

(This is cross-posted on The FCC Official Blog.)

They’re going for the gold in Kansas, with plans to make broadband available to everyone in the Sunflower State.

I recently was fortunate enough to witness this gold rush first-hand by attending the Kansas Broadband Summit, where current state of broadband deployment was discussed, as well as the plans for future deployment of broadband services. Stanley Adams, the broadband planning manager for the state’s Department of Commerce reported that Kansas received over $250 million in broadband deployment grants and loans from the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration (NTIA), which is part of the Department of Commerce and the Rural Utility Service (RUS), which is part of the Department of Agriculture. That’s a lot of amount of money for a smaller state, but Kansas has a significant rural population, and its leaders are aiming to make broadband available to all.

I learned a lot from the Kansan stakeholders who attended the conference. Their plan is comprehensive, covering everything from detailed mapping, to provider validation, and even adoption plans. And like any time you get a room of stakeholders engaged, new ideas were sparked on how to improve the plan. As an FCC staff person, it was a thrill for me to see and feel the excitement of a state actually implementing its broadband plan. And as with the beginnings of California’s gold rush in 1879, the new broadband gold rush in Kansas promises great benefits to the state citizenry . ,“From a business standpoint, it [broadband] means increased opportunities for entrepreneurship and new small-business development,” Kansas Lt. Governor Findley said. “How many entrepreneurs out there have the next big-idea, but have no way to share it?” Kansans know that broadband is just as valuable as gold, and know the wealth it can bring.

Stanley Adams and Duncan Friend, both Kansas employees leading their state’s broadband initiative, invited me to speak on a panel about disability access. They said that they wanted Kansas’ broadband to be accessible and usable to all of its citizens, especially Kansans with disabilities. The audience’s questions on accessible deployment were universally thoughtful and insightful—they all saw the importance of an accessible broadband plan and knew such a plan would collaterally help other populations, such as seniors, non-native English speakers, educational and medical institutions, and the business community. The panel was so popular that we gave a repeat presentation later that same day.

To implement its plan, Kansas has partnered with Connected Nation, a 501(c)(3) organization. Tom Feree, the chief operations officer of Connected Nation said, “We exist because we believe that states, communities, families and individuals can realize great economic and social advantages when we accelerate broadband availability in unserved areas and increase broadband use in all areas, rural and urban, alike.” His statement again reminded me of the promise of 1849 gold rush, which lead to the building of our nation’s railway system, which in some ways is being replaced by fiber optics today.

Kansas has prioritized Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) such as K-12 schools, libraries, healthcare centers, public safety entities, colleges and universities and other government and non-governmental organizations. I can’t help but wonder how many of those “other” organizations are entities that serve people with disabilities. The chief technology officer of the Kansas School for the Deaf, Joe Oborny, attended knowing how much is at stake in Kansas’ broadband plan. The ability for students to use video for calls, video conferences with excellent teachers of the deaf, and to connect with the state and nation are critical to a successful educational institution.

As I look back on the conference, I am confident that the leadership will follow through with its commitment for an accessible broadband plan. The stakes are too high not to. Soon after my return to Washington, Kansas contacted me asking how to develop more partnerships with the disability community, which demonstrates to me that they mean what they say in Kansas: All Kansans will be able to access broadband. For that, I give them a gold medal.

A report to Congress released by the Small Business Administration this week tells us something that makes sense: broadband makes small businesses more productive, which leads to more jobs and greater economic growth. One study cited by the report calculates growth in broadband penetration over a two-year period created about 300,000 jobs.

The report also raises some problems we are familiar with: broadband is less available to rural businesses, and when it is available, it can cost more.  Small businesses everywhere want lower prices and increased value.

Happily, the report proposes a solution that we are not only familiar with but that we wrote: the National Broadband Plan.  To quote, the report recommends that policymakers “Stay the course on national broadband planning and implementation of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.”

We’re not just staying the course. We’re moving full speed ahead. Here are a few examples of how we have advanced the small business broadband agenda detailed in our National Broadband Plan:

• Launching with SBA a public-private partnership to help accelerate small business growth through the use of broadband technologies.
• Examining the market for business broadband services to determine the status of competition and whether our policies in this area can be improved.
• Beginning reform of the Universal Service Fund to help provide broadband in areas where it’s lacking.
• Revising our rules governing access to infrastructure like utility poles to remove barriers to deploying broadband networks.
• Clearing more spectrum to unleash wireless broadband.
• Launching our data innovation initiative that will enable consumers and businesses alike to get more information about the broadband options available in their communities.

Broadband leads to small business growth and jobs, and as the SBA report notes, the National Broadband Plan is the roadmap for reaching our broadband goals.

Earlier today, Chairman Genachowski spoke at the annaul meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Atlanta. In concert with the conference's "Keeping the Focus" theme, the Chairman spoke to the primary focus of the FCC: the economy and jobs. We're serving this mission through harnessing the opportunities of communications technology and putting an emphasis on innovation.

Read Chairman Genachowski's full speech.

(This is cross-posted on The Official FCC Blog.)

 On Monday, November 11, the FCC successfully held (we think) a first-of-its-kind event in the U.S. federal government! 

FCC Open Developer Day attracted about 100 web developers and other technology professionals to our headquarters building in Washington. We spent a day learning about open data sets and APIs, brainstorming together about how they could be combined to benefit citizens with new apps, and starting coding projects toward those goals.

One focus of FCC Open Developer Day was accessible technology. By facilitating the use of fully-accessible technologies - in line with the FCC’s support for our Accessibility and Innovation Initiative - the FCC is promoting innovation and collaborative problem-solving in the field. One exciting fact: FCC Open Developer Day marked the first time many developers in attendance sat and chatted as a group with others using assistive technologies.

The most valuable take-away from this first foray was the opportunity to build the FCC developer community. The momentum from this event will hopefully help bring the popular activity of Developer Day and "hack-a-thons" to the a federal agency. We were grateful, and a bit surprised, at the number of people who came in from out of town to this event.  It was incredibly exciting to the see the Commission Meeting Room, usually set up for formal hearings and presentations, organized in tables for eight people and laptops plugged into power strips.

Here are some cool things we got from having the event:

• A Developer Day Wiki which we will use for further community building (which, by the way, is atop GSA's new collaboration-cloud for govies)
• Some of FCC/Developer APIs are now available as data tables in the YQL console for everyone to use. Here’s an example.
• A teaching example mashup using YQL, HTML 5 location awareness, and our FCC broadband API  (code here https://github.com/7mary4/FCC-Locations-Explorer)
  
• Videos!  http://lanyrd.com/2010/fcc-open-developer-day/video/
• A couple of great tutorials from our special guests at Yahoo! Developer Network and Yahoo! Accessibility team, including these slides from Yahoo!’s Ted Drake
• Some brain-sharing around maps and custom base layers for things like the coming Broadband Map in February 2011  (listen to an interview between Alex Howard and Eric Gunderson from Development Seed in the FCC TEC lab)
• A fluttering of tweeting
• The FCC's first Lanyrd site

One day is too short to get much hacking done, so we are planning to do more developer days to make them a regular activity at the FCC.

P.S. Eager to participate in a gov-related developer day? December 4 is International Open Data Hackathon. FCC will be there. Will you?

(This is cross-posted on The Official FCC Blog)

Yesterday, Senior Advisor to the Chairman on Broadband Phoebe Yang and members of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative presented to the Federal Communications Bar Association on recent progress on some of the “national purposes” recommendations in the Plan. These “national purposes” include issues like health, education and energy.

You can check out their presentation here.

 At the July 19th event celebrating the anniversary of the ADA, Chairman Genachowski launched the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative and announced the establishment of the Chairman’s Awards for Advancement of Accessibility (or Chairman’s AAA).  The Chairman’s speech, "Empowering Americans with Disabilities Through Technology" was presented at the FCC’s Americans with Disabilities Act 20th Anniversary Celebration. The A&I Initiative and the Chairman’s AAA are based on recommendations in the National Broadband Plan.

The AAA Awards will be given to pioneers in accessibility and innovations.  Contenders could be individuals or organizations, public and/or private entities, academics, students, application developers, and represent mainstream or assistive technology industries.  In addition to recognizing the development of individual mainstream or assistive technologies introduced into the marketplace, the awards could also recognize other accessibility advancements, such as the development of standards or best practices that foster accessibility, or the development of a new consumer clearinghouse of disability-related products and services.  We also believe that teaching modules and tools that could help students learn universal design and other accessibility practices could be worthy of recognition.

The Chairman’s AAA is open to any individual or entity in the public or private sector.  This year, the product, service, technology, or practice must be available and promoted publicly until May 1, 2011.  In the future, we will consider available and publicly promoted advancements that occur during a 12 month period prior to the award’s announcement. 

We encourage individuals and entities to contact us with ideas and nominations, which can be self-nominations or for others.  We will be accepting guest blog posts and guest v-logs on this topic, and parties can also file nominations in CG Docket 10-100.  We will be forming an internal cross-bureau advisory group to review the nominations and advise the Chairman on the awards. Employees of the Commission and their families are not eligible for this competition.  For more information please contact me at AccessInfo [at] fcc [dot] gov.  The Chairman looks forward to hearing from you!

(This is cross-posted on The Official FCC Blog)

The National Broadband Plan called on government to “leverage broadband to experiment with new ideas and technologies to extend opportunities for engagement.” In that spirit, we’re excited to highlight the FCC’s Open Developer Day, coming up this Monday, November 8.

All of us at the FCC, and especially our Chief Data Officer, Greg Elin, have been focused on the power and possibilities of making more data available to citizens, tinkerers and developers; Open Developer Day will be yet another demonstration of that focus. As Greg highlighted in a blog post last week, the event will bring together citizen developers and engineers from Yahoo! to develop a clearinghouse Web application intended to make it as easy as possible for people with disabilities, families, and support professionals to find information about accessible technologies. It will also support the Plan’s recommendation that the FCC “create an ongoing web presence to allow participants to share information about public and private accessibility efforts and discuss accessibility barriers and inaccessible products.”

(To RSVP for Open Developer Day, click here.)

We hope that Open Developer Day will inspire other federal agencies to hold their own Open Developer Days and apply similarly innovative approaches to tackling public challenges. Joshua Tauberer, who founded the congressional transparency website Govtrack.us in his spare time (!), has said that “open data is civic capital.” Platforms for effectively using open data are civic capital too, and we look forward to seeing what our participants on Monday generate.