 |
 | |
Type of site | Government website |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, Spanish |
| Owner | Federal Communications Commission |
| URL | broadband.gov |
| Commercial | No |
| Current status | Inactive |
Broadband.gov was a website run by the Federal Communications Commission of the United States that reports Internet access around the country. The FCC used the website to document the National Broadband Plan and its implementation, and inform the public about room for improvement by both Internet service providers and users. [1]
The main purpose of Broadband.gov is to give the public insight into the National Broadband Plan, and the FCC's plans on how to spread the advancements in broadband technology to the nation. The website details how expanding broadband across the nation will improve health care, [2] education, [3] the environment, [4] government performance speeds, [5] civic engagement, [6] and public safety [7] in great detail on separate pages. In addition, the website gives continual progress reports on the government's progress on the National Broadband Plan, in both yearly and quarterly installments. [8] Users can also download the National Broadband Plan from Broadband.gov for consumption by the general public. [9] Any changes to the National Broadband Plan, or reports on the effectiveness of the plan thus far are also posted on the website for users to download and examine. [10]
Broadband.gov offers resources for consumers to see the local effects of the National Broadband Plan, and broadband as a whole. Featured is a Consumer Broadband Test that reports a user's internet download and upload speeds, latency and jitter. The government then uses these resources to analyze the nation's broadband quality, and to plan future locations that need improvements. Additional resources include a Deadzone Reporter, which allows the user to inform the government of locations without broadband, the Spectrum Dashboard (runs off another site), which tells the user how broadband connections are spread among various radio frequencies, and a link to the broadband map.gov, which allows the user to find any currently available broadband providers in their current location. Another important point of broadband.gov is to advocate the importance of the advancement of the medical field into the field of technology. Among the most advanced initiatives for using broadband is to improve health care in enhanced medical record-keeping that knits together electronic databases, giving patients and authorized providers instant and centralized access to information such as health histories, treatment regimens and medical images. [11]
Broadband.gov also gives a brief overview to the user of what broadband is, how it relates to the Internet, its uses, and how having broadband Internet in the users' neighborhood will improve their daily living. Legal documents giving a framework of the National Broadband Plan, and other documents that show how the plan is progressing so far, are also included in this section for dissemination by the user.
Also contained on Broadband.gov is a list of workshops held by the FCC. "The goal of the workshops will be to promote an open dialogue between the FCC and key constituents on matters important to the National Broadband Plan." [12] These meetings are held at the FCC and are put onto the Internet for everyone to have access to them. Past workshops have included how the broadband will be deployed, how schools, small businesses, and on-the-job training will benefit, and the issues that can come up with distributing broadband to the nation. [13] Field events are also planned across the nation to help the FCC get word out on the National Broadband Plan, broadband.gov, and the FCC's plans for the future work on the Broadband initiative. Field events also give the public a chance to respond directly to FCC representatives about their concerns on the National Broadband Plan.
Broadband.gov also encompasses one of the FCC's official blogs, nicknamed the BlogBand. The blog gives an inside view on the National Broadband plan and related issues. Here, various FCC commissioners and chair people make their comments on the future of the National Broadband plan, and the FCC's official stance on various forms of technology, such as the advancement of smartphone applications and their effects on our daily routines, [14] or a summary on the latest Consumer Electronics Show, and what the latest technologies could bring. The blog also gives progress on broadband.gov as well, giving statistical information about the usage of various parts of the website, such as the National Broadband Map. [15]
Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband.
Iran's telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI). Fixed-line penetration in 2004 was relatively well-developed by regional standards, standing at 22 lines per 100 people, higher than Egypt with 14 and Saudi Arabia with 15, although behind the UAE with 27. Iran had more than 1 mobile phone per inhabitant by 2012.
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.
The Emergency Alert System (EAS) is a national warning system in the United States designed to allow authorized officials to broadcast emergency alerts and warning messages to the public via cable, satellite, or broadcast television, and both AM/FM and satellite radio.
Network neutrality, most commonly called net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not charge users different rates based on content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.
Bandwidth throttling consists in the intentional limitation of the communication speed of the ingoing (received) data and/or in the limitation of the speed of outgoing (sent) data in a network node or in a network device.
The Utah Education Network (UEN) is a broadband and digital broadcast network serving public education, higher education, applied technology campuses, libraries, and public charter schools throughout the state of Utah. The Network facilitates interactive video conferencing, provides instructional support services, and operates a public television station (KUEN) on behalf of the Utah State Board of Regents. UEN services benefit more than 60,000 faculty and staff, and more than 780,000 students from pre-schoolers in Head Start programs through grandparents in graduate school. UEN headquarters are in Salt Lake City at the Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah campus.
The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a system of telecommunications subsidies and fees managed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intended to promote universal access to telecommunications services in the United States. The FCC established the fund in 1997 in compliance with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC is a government agency that implements and enforces telecommunications regulations across the U.S. and its territories. The Universal Service Fund's budget ranges from $5–8 billion per year depending on the needs of the telecommunications providers. These needs include the cost to maintain the hardware needed for their services and the services themselves. The total 2019 proposed budget for the USF was $8.4 billion. The budget is revised quarterly allowing the service providers to accurately estimate their costs. As of 2019, roughly 60% of the USF budget was put towards “high-cost” areas, 19% went to libraries and schools, 13% was for low income areas, and 8% was for rural health care. In 2019 the rate for the USF budget was 24.4% of a telecom company's interstate and international end-user revenues.
In the United States, net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate, has been an issue of contention between network users and access providers since the 1990s. With net neutrality, ISPs may not intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific online content. Without net neutrality, ISPs may prioritize certain types of traffic, meter others, or potentially block traffic from specific services, while charging consumers for various tiers of service.
Robert Malcolm McDowell is a lawyer and lobbyist who served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission from June 1, 2006 to May 17, 2013. He is currently a partner in the law firm Cooley LLP.
The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.
Internet in India began in 1986 and was available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet began on 15 August 1995, and as of 2020 there are 718.74 million active internet users that comprise 54.29% of the population.
Julius Genachowski is an American lawyer and businessman. He became the Federal Communications Commission Chairman on June 29, 2009. On March 22, 2013, he announced he would be leaving the FCC in the coming weeks. On January 6, 2014, it was announced that Genachowski had joined The Carlyle Group.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been involved in oversight of the behavioral targeting techniques used by online advertisers since the mid-1990s. These techniques, initially called "online profiling", are now referred to as "behavioral targeting"; they are used to target online behavioral advertising (OBA) to consumers based on preferences inferred from their online behavior. During the period from the mid-1990s to the present, the FTC held a series of workshops, published a number of reports, and gave numerous recommendations regarding both industry self-regulation and Federal regulation of OBA. In late 2010, the FTC proposed a legislative framework for U.S. consumer data privacy including a proposal for a "Do Not Track" mechanism. In 2011, a number of bills were introduced into the United States Congress that would regulate OBA.
Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plan to improve Internet access in the United States. The FCC was directed to create the plan by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and unveiled its plan on March 16, 2010.
Policies promoting wireless broadband are policies, rules, and regulations supporting the "National Wireless Initiative", a plan to bring wireless broadband Internet access to 98% of Americans.
Broadband universal service, also known as "universal service obligation" (USO) or "universal broadband service", refers to government efforts to ensure all citizens have access to the internet. Universal voice service obligations have been expanded to include broadband service obligations in Switzerland, Finland, Spain and the UK.
The digital divide in the United States refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.
Internet bottlenecks are places in telecommunication networks in which internet service providers (ISPs), or naturally occurring high use of the network, slow or alter the network speed of the users and/or content producers using that network. A bottleneck is a more general term for a system that has been reduced or slowed due to limited resources or components. The bottleneck occurs in a network when there are too many users attempting to access a specific resource. Internet bottlenecks provide artificial and natural network choke points to inhibit certain sets of users from overloading the entire network by consuming too much bandwidth. Theoretically, this will lead users and content producers through alternative paths to accomplish their goals while limiting the network load at any one time. Alternatively, internet bottlenecks have been seen as a way for ISPs to take advantage of their dominant market-power increasing rates for content providers to push past bottlenecks. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has created regulations stipulating that artificial bottlenecks are in direct opposition to a free and open Internet.
Net bias is the counter-principle to net neutrality, which indicates differentiation or discrimination of price and the quality of content or applications on the Internet by ISPs. Similar terms include data discrimination, digital redlining, and network management.