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According to a Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project study, "The Mobile Difference," nearly 40 percent Americans have positive and improving attitudes about their mobile communication devices, thereby further immersing themselves into a more robust digital lifestyle.
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How will broadband affect burgeoning controversies over health care? The answers to this question and more came courtesy of a Broadband Cenus-hosted, hour-long panel discussion. View a video of the discussion.
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President Obama on Innovation and Sustainable Growth. President Barack Obama has new plans to strengthen the economy that will all favor people with hi-tech educations.
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Elevate Miami, a comprehensive Digital Inclusion program launched by the city of Miami, aims to serve youth, low-income families, minorities, seniors and residents facing barriers to digital inclusion.
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The Knight Center of Digital Excellence held its first Stimulus Webcast Session for Knight communities and program directors July 23. Watch it online now.
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By pushing hard on broadband, lawmakers hope to close the "digital divide" that has long separated rural America. In doing so, they hope to give rural consumers access to the same sorts of high-speed services and opportunities - think telemedicine, distance-learning and Web-based commerce - that city dwellers have enjoyed for years.
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Posts Tagged ‘India’
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
If there were any lingering doubts that broadband is truly the future world platform for innovation, the information technology research and advisory company Gartner Inc. put some of those to rest with their recent projections on worldwide broadband penetration.
| Knight Community broadband penetration figures |
| Gartner reports 60 percent of U.S. households have a fixed broadband connection. Curious to know how your Knight Community ranks? The following figures are from a demographics study that determined what percentage of respondents said they connect to the Internet from home using a broadband or high-speed connection:
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| Aberdeen, S.D. |
46.9 percent |
| Akron, Ohio |
45.7 percent |
| Biloxi, Miss. |
53.0 percent |
| Boulder, Colo. |
69.7 percent |
| Bradenton, Fla. |
45.7 percent |
| Charlotte, N.C. |
58.2 percent |
| Cleveland |
38.5 percent |
| Columbia, S.C. |
55.1 percent |
| Columbus, Ga. |
50.8 percent |
| Detroit |
35.8 percent |
| Duluth, Minn. |
54.3 percent |
| Fort Wayne, Ind. |
48.1 percent |
| Gary, Ind. |
35.1 percent |
| Grand Forks, N.D. |
57.4 percent |
| Long Beach, Calif. |
49.5 percent |
| Macon, Ga. |
39.9 percent |
| Miami-Dade County |
44.6 percent |
| Milledgeville, Ga. |
41.2 percent |
| Myrtle Beach, S.C. |
48.8 percent |
| Palm Beach County, Fla. |
63.1 percent |
| Philadelphia |
45.0 percent |
| San Jose |
62.3 percent |
| St. Paul, Minn. |
53.8 percent |
| State College, Pa. |
68.6 percent |
| Tallahassee, Fla. |
57.1 percent |
| Wichita, Kan. |
51.6 percent |
| Source: Demographics Now |
Overall, Gartner projects 422 million (about 20 percent) households worldwide will have a fixed broadband connection by the end of this year, a roughly 11 percent increase from the number of households that had a fixed broadband connection at the end of 2008.
According to Gartner, South Korea is currently the leader in household broadband penetration with 86 percent of South Korean households connected to broadband, followed by the Netherlands (80 percent), Denmark (75 percent), Hong Kong (72 percent), Canada (69 percent) and Switzerland (69 percent). Gartner reports the U.S. lags behind with a 60 percent broadband penetration rate, but expects it to pass several nations in the next four years as projections have the U.S. adding 27 million new connections and raising its penetration rate to 78 percent by 2013.
Gartner also predicts several developing nations will see a massive rise in their number of broadband connections with an additional 135 million in the next four years. The firm expects Brazil, Russia, China and India to account for more than two-thirds of new connections in the developing world and nearly half of all new connections worldwide.
At the Knight Center of Digital Excellence, these numbers tell us what we already know: The cry for better broadband can be heard all over the world and it’s not being ignored any longer. Nations that have been at the forefront will continue to grow and innovate further (Gartner predicts South Korea’s household broadband penetration rate will be 93 percent in 2013.), while nations that have gotten a late start will begin to utilize the same life-changing applications many already take advantage of.
Tags: Aberdeen, Akron, bandwidth, Biloxi, Boulder, Bradenton, Brazil, broadband, Broadband Expansion, broadband penetration, California, Canada, Charlotte, China, Cleveland, Colorado, Columbia, Columbus, Demographics Now, Denmark, Detroit, digital, Duluth, Florida, Fort Wayne, Gartner Inc., Gary, Georgia, Grand Forks, high-speed, Hong Kong, India, Indiana, infrastructure, innovation, Internet, Kansas, Knight Center of Digital Excellence, Knight communities, Long Beach, Macon, Miami, Milledgeville, Minnesota, Mississippi, Myrtle Beach, Netherlands, network, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Palm Beach, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Russia, San Jose, South Carolina, South Dakota, South Korea, St. Paul, State College, Switzerland, Tallahassee, Wichita
Posted in Digital news, Knight Center of Digital Excellence, broadband | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
In recent weeks, the world press has reported on the potential revolutionary impact of a $650 million broadband project connecting East and Southern Africa to India and Europe. The aim is to spur the African economy, especially through technology innovation.
The fiber-optic cable that just went live is the first of several new undersea connections expected to boost Internet access in Africa between now and mid-2010. The cable is being built by a consortium, controlled primarily by African investors, with expansion costs estimated at $2.4 billion. The expanded Internet service will include Asia and parts of the Middle East.
Imagine the impact on the African continent, where some of the world’s most abject poverty exists.
Jon Gosier, a tech blogger, predicts that East Africa could become an outsourcing hub. “I think you’ll see a wave of creativity and new business opportunities as more and more Africans come online by the millions,” wrote Gosier, founder of a Uganda-based software development firm. “I think in five years or so we’ll be where places like India and Singapore are now.”
However, currently Africa is lagging behind.
In March, the International Telecommunication Union released its latest index comparing developments in “information and communication technologies” (ICT levels) in 154 countries over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007.
Many of the poorer, African countries hardly improved their already low broadband penetration rates over that five-year span. Prior to this new broadband project, only about five percent of the population in some areas used the Internet.
If the excitement is as unabashed as media reports say, it’s because of what Gosier anticipates: Major change, resulting in money in people’s pockets.
It’s not just blog talk. In its report, the Telecommunication Union, too, noted the “close relationship” between ICT levels and GDP. And in June, a World Bank report also noted the correlation between high-speed Internet access and economic growth – pointing to findings that for every 10 percentage points of increase in high-speed access, there is a 1.3 percentage point increase in economic growth.
In Africa, there will many ways to measure growth – such as in the number of children fed, or the number of textbooks in schools, or in medicines dispensed.
To be sure, the work ahead is enormous. While main Internet highways are being built, there will still be challenges reaching isolated areas.
But now there’s a great start. In a part of the world that has suffered so much, it is time for a revolution in the most positive sense.
Tags: Africa, American Recovery & Reinvestment Act 2009, Asia, bandwidth, Broadband Expansion, Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, digital, digital divide, East Africa, economy, education, Europe, GDP, ICT, India, infrastructure, International Telecommunication Union, Internet, Jon Gosier, Middle East, network, rural communities, Signapore, Uganda, underserved, World Bank
Posted in Digital news, broadband | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
 By Doug Adams, Knight Center of Digital Excellence
With the U.S. investing more than $7 billion in federal stimulus for broadband, imagine what life may be like in just five or 10 short years from now?
What might my life be like, say in 2019? Here is a scenario:
6 a.m.
The alarm goes off, saying I have 27 unread e-mails and 14 articles cued up in my browser ready to read on my Kindle 10.0.
7 a.m.
While driving to work, I listen to Dan Patrick via my in-dash computer’s WiFi connection. WiFi is everywhere now.
8:30 a.m.
My wife calls. She’s worried about her mother, Betty, who lives three states away. Betty’s health monitoring provider tracks her movement patterns. Today, the Web-enabled video monitor showed Betty hadn’t made it to the kitchen by the time she usually does. Given she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, a nurse from the monitoring provider looks in and finds her on camera in the study.
9:30 a.m.
I check back with my wife – she has just renewed her driver’s license and made her home business into an LLC. With government services online, she does this via our TV and ultra high-speed fiber optic Internet connection. I’m so glad we have a fiber connection to our home – it’s similar to the change we experienced when we went from dial-up to my old cable modem. Only with this upgrade have I been able to utilize the Internet for rich, two-way video communications with my doctor, work colleagues and friends.
10:45 a.m.
I check in on my daughter at school via webcam. She’s in biology class, and students are watching a live heart surgery in progress at the world-class Cleveland Clinic Foundation. They can see, hear and interact with doctors.
Another class is also watching the surgery – from India. It’s a class my daughter’s interacts with frequently. The same broadband application that allows students to watch live surgeries also allows them to engage with other students from across the world, bridging national and cultural differences.
Noon
Lunch with my college roommate, Bob. He’s an engineer for a California company, but works from home in Indianapolis. His fiber optic Internet connection allows him to send 3-D virtual mockups to his boss. At lunch, we check the stock market and box scores from the touch screen computer imbedded in our table.
We’re briefly distracted as a pair of officers having lunch in a booth behind us rush outside to confront an individual with a warrant out for his arrest. How do I know? Police are equipped with mobile computer systems and handheld devices that provide up-to-date information on suspects and threats. Using one of these handheld devices, one of the officers was able to make a positive ID and alert his partner before his lunch arrived.
3 p.m.
A problem crops up at work. Defective materials were delivered to a construction site in Texas. Our team utilizes visual feeds to inspect the materials and send images of the problem pieces to the manufacturer.
4:30 p.m.
I haven’t been feeling well, so I check in with my doctor from my desk. I open my mouth, say “ah,” and the diagnosis is strep. An e-prescription goes out to my pharmacy.
I know my wife likes to keep the temperature in our house a little cooler, but I’m not sure that’d be a good environment for me to come home to given my illness. Fortunately, I’m able to monitor and adjust my home’s utility services remotely. I decide to raise the thermostat a few degrees. Hope she doesn’t notice.
6 p.m.
Working too late to make my son’s soccer game, so I watch from my desk. Not only is high-speed, high-capacity WiFi everywhere, but so are webcams. They are completely secure and password-protected.
9 p.m.
The last thing I remember is driving, tired, on the back roads close to home. I’m thankful public safety monitors alerted safety forces when my car veered off the road. The paramedics told me they video-conferenced with emergency room doctors less than 10 minutes after the accident. The operating room and specialist I needed were onsite when I arrived.
The world I’m describing is not science fiction. All these “future” applications are available today, mostly overseas. They save lives, improve quality of life, create job opportunities and prepare citizens to be productive members of the knowledge economy.
The vision we really need as Americans? To see the future is here, we’re a good 10 years behind and we have no time to waste investing in the broadband infrastructure necessary to catch up.
Doug Adams oversees public information efforts for the Cleveland-based technology nonprofit OneCommunity, which operates the Knight Center of Digital Excellence in partnership with The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. To learn more about the Knight Center, go to www.knightcenter.org or e-mail info@knightcenter.org.
Tags: Akron, American Recovery & Reinvestment Act 2009, bandwidth, broadband, Broadband Expansion, California, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, community, Dan Patrick, digital, digital divide, Doug Adams, economy, education, healthcare, high-speed, India, infrastructure, innovation, Internet, KCoDE, Kindle, Knight Center of Digital Excellence, network, Ohio, OneCommunity, public safety, stimulus, stimulus watch, telemedicine, utilities, WiFi
Posted in Knight Center of Digital Excellence, OneCommunity, Opinion, Stimulus Package | No Comments »
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