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.

This paper presents three case studies in the state of South Carolina, and the cities of Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA, with in-depth analyses of wireline and wireless access in high minority, low-income communities. The findings of the study concluded that broadband service is becoming much more ubiquitous in high minority, low-income communities, yet levels of adoption still remain relatively low. The study also concluded that race is not a significant explanatory variable for disparate broadband deployment, and despite the availability of mobile broadband in low-income, high minority areas, wireless coverage is still inconsistent within regions.

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A supplemental appendix for this publication is also available here.

During the last decade, technology has changed significantly and the diffusion of various forms of technology throughout the United States has been widespread, but uneven. Measuring the Divide examines the "digital divide" and several of the major factors that affect Internet use across and within racial groups, especially among African Americans. It also looks at how those who do have Internet connections use the Internet, as a way of informing how efforts might be made to make the Internet more engaging (as well as more accessible) to African Americans. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of broadband and the implications of its potential diffusion, particularly for health care, minority businesses, and African American communities. An appendix presents information on the characteristics of the African American population that affect Internet use in ten states and the District of Columbia.

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Date Published: March 2006