{"id":1912,"date":"2013-01-30T18:18:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T18:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2013-01-30T18:18:43","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T18:18:43","slug":"fcc-chairman-calls-for-gigabit-speeds-across-us-by-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/fcc-chairman-calls-for-gigabit-speeds-across-us-by-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"FCC Chairman Calls for Gigabit Speeds Across US by 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, stated on the 18th<\/sup> of January, that he wanted to see gigabit speed broadband services in all 50 states by 2015.\u00a0 During a meeting of US mayors in Washington DC, Genachowski called on municipal leaders and service providers to deploy Gigabit broadband networks in every state within the next two years.\u00a0 Doing this would create valuable jobs for citizens and would help turn cities into innovation hubs.<\/p>\n

The Chairman said during his speech, \u201cAmerican economic history teaches a clear lesson about infrastructure.\u00a0 If you build it, innovation will come.\u00a0 The U.S. needs a critical mass of gigabit communities nationwide so that innovators can develop next-generation applications and services that will drive economic growth and global competitiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gigabit installations can have dramatic improvements on communities with failing job markets.\u00a0 Areas without high speed connections offer little to no incentive to larger companies looking to relocate, and force growing companies to move to a new location.\u00a0 For communication to work in this day and age, a very fast connection is needed, and if isn\u2019t offered, they will go somewhere else.\u00a0 Communities can benefit from Fiber investment, such as Chattanooga, TN, that gained 3,700 jobs from Amazon and Volkswagen after deploying fiber.<\/p>\n

America has fallen behind when it comes to our network infrastructure (we are in 16th<\/sup> place to be exact).\u00a0 If you look at our average speeds compared to countries like Germany, Japan and even Slovenia, it is quite depressing.\u00a0 Only a few areas in the U.S. offer speeds comparable to the rest of the world.\u00a0 So why are we so far behind?\u00a0 Many say it\u2019s because we lack the drive and ambition we had during the 40\u2019s.\u00a0 Others say it\u2019s because unlike many of these other countries, we didn\u2019t suffer major damage during World War 2, offering us a chance to lay the groundwork for future technologies when rebuilding.<\/p>\n

Major ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner simply feel it\u2019s not worth the money to invest in \u201cFiberhoods.\u201d\u00a0 If they build them, and no one subscribes to the services, it would be a lost investment.\u00a0 It becomes an endless argument as ISPs say \u201cWe won\u2019t build it till there are businesses here that will subscribe to it\u201d and businesses say \u201cWe won\u2019t move there unless they have a fiber connection setup for us to use.\u201d\u00a0 ISPs are unwilling to take the risk that is involved with a major rollout of Fiber, and those who are, like Verizon, are only doing it in new housing tracts so it reduces install costs.\u00a0 Google has started running Fiber for much cheaper prices in certain test cities, and we can only hope they are successful.<\/p>\n

Some say that the ISPs shouldn\u2019t have a say in it, as they were already given tax breaks and even more valuable tax credits with the promise to upgrade our infrastructure, and it never happened.\u00a0 In the 90\u2019s America led the world in high speed connections, now we are a shadow of our former self.\u00a0 Japan\u2019s connections run at approximately 100Mbps up and down for about $40 a month.\u00a0 In the U.S. (except in a few areas with fiber) the best connections offer 1\/3 of that speed at least 200% of the cost if not more.\u00a0 ISPs claim that almost all Americans have access to broadband, but the FCC defines broadband as any connection over 200 Kbps.\u00a0 Anyone who has used a 200Kbps connection knows it is anything but fast.\u00a0 You could barely load a webpage with graphics at that speed, much less run a corporation on it.\u00a0 Its estimated that ISP\u2019s received a total of 200 billion dollars in tax breaks and increased service fees, all in the name of \u201cupgrading the infrastructure\u201d since the 1990\u2019s.\u00a0 Yet we are still getting connections that are 1\/3rd<\/sup> that of the rest of the world, and those who can get fiber connections are paying 400%-600% more than other countries.\u00a0 Keep in mind; this was all supposed to be done by the year 2000.<\/p>\n

Will the push by Chairman Genachowski make the ISPs work harder to upgrade our infrastructure?\u00a0 Only time will tell.\u00a0 We can only watch projects like Google Fiber and see if they succeed.\u00a0 If they do, other ISPs will have to participate or risk losing customers.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to start acting like America, and be in the top, not in 16th<\/sup> place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, stated on the 18th of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[922,923,924,925,926],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}