Broadband

Nearly half of all Americans have high-speed Internet service at home, but the growth rate for "broadband" service is slowing sharply, and it's still uncommon among poor and rural residents, according to a new study. About 47 percent of adult Americans surveyed by the nonprofit Pew Internet & American Life Project said they have high-speed Internet service at home, up from next to nothing at the start of the decade. The rate of growth for broadband service adoption, however, was only 12 percent for the one-year period ending in March.

Baltimore's six historic public markets should be equipped with Wi-Fi before the year's end, the city's new Chief Information Officer said Thursday. Chris Tonjes, who runs the Mayor's Office of Information Technology, said it should cost less than $25,000 to equip five markets - Avenue, Broadway Market, Cross Street, Hollins and Northeast - with the service. The upgrade of Lexington Market - the city's best known and first to receive the upgrade - will be funded by a donation from Believe Wireless Broadband, which is giving the city the equipment and bandwidth for the project, officials said.

Baltimore County unveiled an $18.5 million plan Wednesday that officials said will vastly improve the local Internet system, provide quicker links among public safety agencies, schools, hospitals and libraries, and enhance connections to statewide networks. The funding comes from the $115 million in federal stimulus money awarded to Maryland last month for broadband upgrades. The county will add $4 million in local spending to its $14.5 million share of the stimulus grant. County Executive James T. Smith Jr. called the broadband technology program "a real game-changer, both for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of critical government operations and also for helping to create jobs," during a news conference at the Baltimore County Public Safety Building.

Phoenix-based Altius Broadband said Tuesday that it had signed a contract to begin construction on a wireless broadband service network in four eastern Kentucky counties. The company will work with the Breathitt, Estill, Lee, and Powell Regional Technology Authority on the project. Altius won a request for proposal to build out the broadband network in the rural areas of Breathitt, Estill, Lee and Powell counties, according to a statement. The contract allows the construction phase of the project to begin.

Maryland will get $115 million in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed broadband Internet system that will link Oakland to Ocean City, congressional and state leaders said Friday. The grant, the second largest of its kind in the country to date behind one received by West Virginia, will help Maryland connect the patchwork of fiber-optic networks that currently run through each of its 24 jurisdictions. The broadband funding will result in vastly improved Internet speeds for local government offices, schools, hospitals, and emergency communication networks across Maryland, officials said.

WASHINGTON - The decisive issues of the 2004 presidential election battle: Iraq, the war on terror, job creation and ... broadband? Well, maybe it won't serve as a candidate litmus test for many voters, but President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry have pledged to make expanded access to high-speed Internet an important component of their economic plans. Bush offered no details on the broadband strategy. Kerry, who unveiled a corporate tax plan in the first of three speeches on economic policy, said he would soon lay out his approach to boosting broadband access.

The Federal Communications Commission now has a full complement of five commissioners, bringing decades of professional experience to the task of overseeing the dynamic information, communications and technology sectors that make up one-sixth of our national economy. Their first major assignment is to develop a congressionally mandated nationwide broadband plan. That process has begun, although unfortunately much of the $7 billion in federal stimulus funds appropriated to further increase broadband deployment and adoption will already have been distributed by the time the FCC's plan is released early in 2010.

THE DOWNFALL of WorldCom is just the latest in a series of calamities that has befallen U.S. telecommunications companies in the past two years. Most telecommunications companies did not need to resort to clever accounting tricks. They failed or faltered the old-fashioned way: They were simply unprofitable, sometimes as the result of vague and constantly changing government rules. The telecommunications sector is in chaos. Companies left and right are either moribund, bankrupt or desperately trying to avoid those conditions.

Leasing office space in this economy can be a challenge, especially in older buildings, but Taylor Fields is working on getting an edge: a super-fast fiber-optic broadband connection. "One of the first things [prospective tenants] ask is what kind of Internet service we have," said Fields, a Timonium-based commercial leasing agent for the James F. Knott Realty Corp. "They all want fast Internet. " As work begins on a fiber-optic broadband network that will connect every Maryland school, hospital, police station — and even more public buildings — businesses also want to get involved.

LAS VEGAS -- It will take huge, expensive changes to upgrade telecommunications networks to handle a new era of services. BellSouth's chairman and chief executive, F. Duane Ackerman, said yesterday that the key is to keep building -- and to keep the government from layering on regulations that he fears will stifle the process. Ackerman, in a speech at an important industry conference in Las Vegas, echoed themes laid out a day earlier by AT&T Chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. AT&T is buying BellSouth in a landmark deal that will help redraw the telecom landscape.

When we think of the technological advances of the past 20 years, one in particular will probably come to mind for most Americans: wireless technology, which now enables us to access the Internet from anywhere. But when most Americans think of the top uses for the wireless Internet, health care is probably not the first thing on that list. Perhaps, in the near future, it will be. The current revolution in medicine will use the full potential of technology to transform medical practice to save lives and improve health.

A group of local governments in Central Maryland awarded contracts this week to four companies that will help build a high-speed broadband Internet system in the state to improve communications among public agencies, as well as upgrade telecommunications in rural areas. S&N Communications Inc., KCI Convergent Technologies Inc., Henkels & McCoy Inc. and Southern Maryland Cable Inc. won construction contracts to link and improve Internet speeds for local government offices, schools, hospitals, and emergency communication, according to Howard County Executive Ken Ulman's office.

Leasing office space in this economy can be a challenge, especially in older buildings, but Taylor Fields is working on getting an edge: a super-fast fiber-optic broadband connection. "One of the first things [prospective tenants] ask is what kind of Internet service we have," said Fields, a Timonium-based commercial leasing agent for the James F. Knott Realty Corp. "They all want fast Internet. " As work begins on a fiber-optic broadband network that will connect every Maryland school, hospital, police station — and even more public buildings — businesses also want to get involved.

Federal, state and local officials gathered in an Elkridge industrial park Monday morning to mark the opening of a key hub for the Central Maryland portion of a $158 million statewide broadband network designed to link localities via fiber-optic cable. The Inter-County Broadband Network is a $93 million segment of the larger project and will connect 715 schools, colleges, hospitals, public safety facilities and libraries in 10 Central Maryland localities with 1,300 miles of new cable.

FiberLight LLC, a Georgia-based fiber-optic network provider, said Wednesday it will soon unveil a network that can connect commercial customers in downtown Baltimore and several southern suburbs to points in Washington and Northern Virginia. FiberLight operates 3,000 miles of fiber-optic networks across the country, but company officials said that the Baltimore-Washington region is its fastest-growing market. "It's a huge, growing market for us," said Judd Carothers, the company's executive vice president of network operations, engineering and construction.

Baltimore County unveiled an $18.5 million plan Wednesday that officials said will vastly improve the local Internet system, provide quicker links among public safety agencies, schools, hospitals and libraries, and enhance connections to statewide networks. The funding comes from the $115 million in federal stimulus money awarded to Maryland last month for broadband upgrades. The county will add $4 million in local spending to its $14.5 million share of the stimulus grant. County Executive James T. Smith Jr. called the broadband technology program "a real game-changer, both for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of critical government operations and also for helping to create jobs," during a news conference at the Baltimore County Public Safety Building.

Significant parts of Carroll County - particularly the more rural, less populated areas - lack broadband Internet access, which threatens to hamper economic development, said Lawrence Twele, county director of economic development. Broadband generally refers to any mode of high-speed Internet access, whether through DSL, cable modems or fiber-optic cable. Residents or businesses without broadband service generally have to use dial-up Internet connections. Even on the outskirts of Westminster, the developing Air Business Center and West Branch Trade Center on both sides of Route 97 have inadequate broadband coverage, Twele said.

H ere's an economic development contest Baltimore can win. The headquarters of defense contractor Northrop Grumman is unlikely to relocate to Pratt Street or anywhere else in Maryland. But there is every reason to believe Baltimore can persuade Google to spend tens of millions of dollars to give homes, schools, companies and hospitals what would be among the fastest Internet connections in the world. Google announced the project on its blog two weeks ago - a plan to build "ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States."

Maryland will get $115 million in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed broadband Internet system that will link Oakland to Ocean City, congressional and state leaders said Friday. The grant, the second largest of its kind in the country to date behind one received by West Virginia, will help Maryland connect the patchwork of fiber-optic networks that currently run through each of its 24 jurisdictions. The broadband funding will result in vastly improved Internet speeds for local government offices, schools, hospitals, and emergency communication networks across Maryland, officials said.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is now over a year old. While our economy has yet to fully emerge from recession, the media's focus has naturally shifted over the past year to other important matters, such as the health care debate and the horrendous Gulf oil spill. For Marylanders, though, the time to revisit attention on ARRA — better known as the federal stimulus bill — is now. ARRA provided the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)