Although it has been in its new office location for nearly three weeks, The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies continued with old business Monday afternoon with its “Broadband, the Economy, and Driving Adoption” panel discussion.

In collaboration with Comcast, the Joint Center’s event gathered a panel of broadband data experts and pragmatists to identify the factors impeding high broadband adoption rates in low adopting communities, share real-world examples of the effects of broadband in low-income and minority communities, as well as lessons learned in convincing the aforementioned communities to adopt broadband.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski delivered remarks prior to the main discussion and emphasized the increase in prevalence of broadband across the country.

Read more at Politic365.

The Joint Center and Comcast Corporation held a Technology Policy Forum entitled Broadband, the Economy, and Driving Adoption on September 24, 2012.

In recent years, there have been two developments in technology adoption that are in tension with one another. On the one hand, home broadband adoption has increased only modestly since 2009. On the other, there has been a very rapid increase the adoption of Smartphones. This development presents questions for policymakers and stakeholders interested in the digital divide, namely: Does the leveling off of home broadband adoption and accompanying growth in Smartphone adoption represent a substitution effect? That is, are those without broadband at home simply turning to Smartphones instead and, if so, how does their Internet use relate to that of broadband users? Understanding the answers to these questions will be important to policymakers and those in the private sector interested in closing technology access gaps. To address the questions, this paper will rely on data drawn from a statewide telephone survey of Illinois residents fielded in February-March of 2012. The survey explored in detail how people get online (e.g., home broadband, tablets, Smartphones), what online activities they do (e.g., information searches, shopping, educational uses), and how they view the usefulness of different access means for carrying out tasks online.

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski praised Comcast Sept. 24 for a program that provided low-income Americans with discounted broadband service.

The program, Internet Essentials, originally targeted 2 million families that qualify for the free school lunch program to receive broadband service for $9.95 per month, $150 personal computers and digital literacy training. Early this year, Comcast expanded the program to 300,000 additional families that receive reduced price school lunches and doubled the speed of broadband service offered. Since launching the program in 2011, 400,000 families have taken advantage of Internet Essentials.

“I commend Comcast for stepping up its original commitment,” said Genachowski.

In remarks given at the Comcast Internet Essentials Event, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in Washington, D.C., the chairman said it is important for eligible families to sign up for programs like Internet Essentials because being online “is essential to full participation in our 21st century economy.”

Read more at Broadcast Engineering.

Does anyone remember when the Obama administration promised to bring “true broadband [to] every community in America”? The Republican Party definitely does, and its 2012 platform criticizes the president for not making any progress on this pledge:

“The current Administration has been frozen in the past…. It inherited from the previous Republican Administration 95 percent coverage of the nation with broadband. It will leave office with no progress toward the goal of universal coverage—after spending $7.2 billion more. That hurts rural America, where farmers, ranchers, and small business manufacturers need connectivity to expand their customer base and operate in real time with the world’s producers.

So whatever happened to the Obama administration’s plan to expand broadband access, anyway? In one sense, the Republican critics are right. Universal broadband is still far from a reality. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s annual broadband report, released in August, there are still 19 million Americans who lack access to wired broadband. Only about 94 percent of households have broadband access. Obama hasn’t achieved his goal.

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“Getting to 100 percent is going to be a very difficult long-term goal, given the size of the U.S. landmass and the huge expense to reach those final couple of percentage points,” says John Horrigan of the Joint Center Media and Technology Institute. The same goes for increasing the adoption rate. “We’re not going to close that gap in five years.” Anyone hoping for universal broadband access in the near future might end up disappointed. But shorter-term upgrades are possible—and, indeed, appear to be happening.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Philadelphia city officials estimate 41 percent of residents cannot afford computers or to pay for Internet access. But Mayor Michael Nutter plans to change that.

Philadelphia plans to set up 48 computer centers - like the one at the People’s Emergency Center - in other shelters, recreation centers and libraries.

It will also distribute more than 5,000 laptops to low-income families and create public wifi spots for free wireless Internet access. The project will bring the city closer to digital equality. That's an important goal, according to Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Media and Technology Institute for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

“What started out as a digital divide, where at that time we were dealing with public access to computers and the Internet, has turned into a movement to advance digital inclusion and digital equality," says Lee, "that allows citizens to really realize the full benefit of how this tool and platform can improve the quality of their life.”

Read more and listen to a report at Voice of America and Daily News Corner.

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies held a panel on Wednesday on how the federal government should promote broadband adoption and access to underserved communities.  The panel served as an update the National Broadband Plan, which came out one year ago.

“The biggest mistake we made when working on the plan was using the current framework to solve tomorrow’s problems” said keynote speaker, Blair Levin, one of the authors of the National Broadband Plan. “We need to phase out the Lifeline and Link-Up programs and come up with something new.”

Read more at BroadbandBreakfast.com.

As the one-year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan looms near, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (Joint Center) hosted a forum on March 2 entitled, The National Broadband Plan and the Underserved – One Year Later.

A program of the Joint Center’s Media and Technology Institute (MTI), this event was geared toward discerning progress in implementing the Plan.  Specifically, participants were asked to reflect on the impact that the Plan has had on connecting members of underserved communities to broadband opportunities. Underserved, in this instance, was a catch-all category looking to address the needs of low-income, disabled, rural, elderly, native American and non-English speaking populations.  Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President of the Joint Center and Director of MIT, also challenged participants to ‘think outside the box’ so that “we’re not having the same discussions about the Plan a year from now.”

Read more at Politic365.

Nearly a year after the issuance of the National Broadband Plan (NBP), the plan's lead architect told a policy gathering on Wednesday that the Federal Communications Commission did not take the right approach to increasing broadband adoption among low-income households, and that it should be changed.

Blair Levin, who was Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC during the NBP's formulation and now serves as Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute, said that the plan should not have counted on transitioning the Universal Service Fund (USF) as its core strategy for expanding broadband access in for poor and rural households in underserved areas.  The USF currently provides subsidies to support basic monthly telephone service and initial installation or activation fees through the Lifeline/Link-up programs.

Read more at PR Newswire.