User:Schill76/sandbox

For the main page broadband.gov

Broadband.gov Sandbox
Broadband.gov is a website, run by the Federal Communications Commission, that reports on Broadband access around the country, and is the official website of the National Broadband plan. The FCC implemented the National Broadband Plan to document the progress and the future of broadband access and use in the United States. The National Broadband Plan outlines the different areas broadband affects, and informs the public about room for improvement by both internet providers and users.

National Broadband Plan

 * Main Article: National Broadband Plan (United States).

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, education, the environment, government performance speeds, civic engagement, and public safety 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. Users can also download the National Broadband Plan from Broadband.gov for consumption by the general public. 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.

Resources
Broadband.gov offers resources for consumers to see the local affects 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.

Broadband.gov also gives a brief overview to the user of what broadband is, how it relates to the internet, it's uses, and how having broadband internet in the user's neighborhood will improve their daily living. Legal documents giving a framework of the National Broadplan, and other documents that show how the plan is progressing so far are also included in this section for dissemination by the user.

Workshops
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." 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. 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.

Blog
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 affects on our daily routines, 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. Further posts on other FCC blogs that the FCC deems relevant to the Blogband will also be cross posted here for the user to digest.

Digital Divide
With the invention of innovative technologies certain steps must be made to accommodate those who would be rendered physically incapable of receiving emerging utilities. Rural communities tend to lag behind non-rural communities in the availability and quality of high-speed Internet access. Yet, in the current modern age certain technologies, case in point being broadband, are considered to be standard utilities in which every American citizen should have access to if they so wish. But, certain geographical scenarios restrict the availability to the individuals who live in rural areas. "It costs Internet service providers more to provide service in rural areas, due to a small consumer base spread over a large geographic distance." So with the notion that rural areas are not considered high priority to the majority of Internet service providers, seeing as that it is a business, small markets have small revenues. Broadband Internet has quickly become a part of the infrastructure of modern society, similar to that of roads, sewers and public utilities. So, every citizen should have the ability to purchase this new utility, lest they be left behind in this digital age. The United States continues to fall significantly behind other industrialized nations in the proliferation of broadband service that is universal, fast and inexpensive. The Obama administration has recognized this demand of broad band and has allocated 7.2 billion dollars into broadband development. The costs associated with connecting to these networks can be daunting for institutions that typically rely on the largesse of their taxpaying residents. In the age of information of today's society the catalyst of being a functional economy is based upon the availability of information nearly instantaneous rates to fuel economic growth and development. A few case studies of local government broadband initiatives exist, but there is little systematic data or research categorizing the range of activity or assessing the effectiveness of these efforts. Clearly, improvements in health, education, and even entertainment are important elements of the “transformative” impact to which proponents of universal broadband access point. Even with the initiatives and grants in place in the current society, government presence on the Internet is far inferior to that of the commercial and privatized sections.

Government Presence on the Web
We distinguish four categories of local government action, based on the nature of the government’s role :
 * 1) Government as broadband user. Government indirectly attracts commercial broadband deployment through demand-side policies. In particular, government uses its local leadership role and/or its role as a major telecommunications customer to assess, stimulate or aggregate demand.
 * 2) Government as neutral rule-maker. Government adopts or reforms local ordinances that affect the ease of commercial deployment, such as rights-of-way, utility pole attachments, road and building construction codes, zoning policies affecting wireless antenna placement, and cable franchise agreements.
 * 3) Government as financier. Government provides subsidies for broadband users or providers, which may be direct or indirect in the form of planning or equipment grants, tax credits, or other incentives.
 * 4) Government as infrastructure developer. Government adopts supply-side policies in which a division of local government is ultimately responsible for the provision of one or more components of network infrastructure.