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Posted: 02/19/10 by Jonathan Spalter
100 megabit per second connections to 100 million homes.
No question that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out an ambitious goal this week for nationwide, affordable broadband. Leaving the details aside for the moment, the underlying concept is important: As Mobile Future consistently has repeated in this blog, all who care about mobility in the US should agree with Chairman Genachowski, about the urgent need to expand wireless capacity so that mobile users continue to have a good quality of service.
As he said only two months ago:
“There may be no greater spur to America's global competitiveness than getting this right. The record contains powerful evidence that the demand on our commercial mobile spectrum is on a course to outstrip the supply.”
Julius’ pledge, though ambitious, is vitally important. But its implementation also will be very expensive.
To effectively walk his talk, the National Broadband Plan he will be submitting shortly to Congress will need to include coherent and practical policies that actually encourage America’s wireless build-out, and enable the considerable private sector investment needed to support it.
The numbers speak for themselves: More than $300 billion invested in wireless during the past 25 years. And according to NY Times tech columnist Randall Stross, even in an urban setting, a typical wi-fi deployment cost in an urban area runs $75,000 to $125,000 per square mile just to install the equipment. The FCC itself as estimated that some $350 billion in new investment will be required to achieve our nation’s broadband goals.
The Chairman has identified a crucial need, and has offered a bold vision for meeting it. Now the pressure’s on for the FCC – and all of us who care about our mobile future -- to work together in creating innovative policies that will help solve that problem rather than exacerbate it.
Posted: 01/07/10 by Mobile Future Team
This week's Pew report on Internet, broadband and wireless demographics has some interesting news regarding Internet and wireless users. Of those aged 20-29, 80 percent have accessed the web wirelessly. Morover, Pew's survey continues to show that wireless is key to bridging the Digital Divide, as African-Americans and Hispanics are using wireless at rates between 7 and 10 percentage points higher that the rate for whites. For more about this, click here.
Posted: 11/02/09 by Mobile Future Team
Mobile Future staff, as well as several attendees, are live-tweeting today's Mobile Future event at the Newseum in Washington, DC. Click here to see their tweets in real-time.
The event, "President Obama's Innovation Agenda: Spurring Investment and Innovation in the Wireless Sector," features Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, Bob Hahn, Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Center and Visiting Senior Fellow at Oxford's Smith School, and Hal Singer, President and Managing Director of Empiris.
The forum will conclude with a panel discussion moderated by Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter and featuring Tom Kalil, Debbie Goldman of the Communications Workers of America, and Mike Rollins of Citi Investment Research.
Posted: 10/21/09 by Mobile Future Team
Today marks the beginning of SuperComm 2009, and the Mobile Future Team is excited to participate in this year's conference.
Every year, SuperComm brings together industry leaders in broadband equipment, converged networks and digital content. This year's show features industry leaders sharing their views on broadband expansion and innovation, along with hundreds of suppliers showcasing their products and services.
We are looking forward to seeing some of the exciting new innovations in wireless technology, and hearing panel discussions on the National Broadband Strategy and its impact on green broadband, digital content, service-oriented networks and social media.
We hope you can make it to the show, and that you'll visit the Mobile Future Booth (#3229) in the West Building of McCormick Place!
Posted: 10/14/09 by Mobile Future Team
The Broadband Breakfast Club hosted an important dialogue yesterday focused on the future of telemedicine. Billed as “Setting the Table for the National Broadband Plan: Health Care,” the panel discussion included four physicians, who – along with Drew Clark, Editor and Executive Director of
BroadbandCensus.com – examined how the development of a national broadband plan will affect health care delivery and outcomes.
The panelists included:
-Dr. Adam Darkins, Department of Veterans' Affairs
-Col. Ron Poropatich, M.D., Department of the Army
-Dr. Jay Sanders, Global Telemedicine Group; the "father of telemedicine"
-Dr. Ted Eytan, Medical Director for Delivery Systems Operations Improvement, Kaiser Permanente
Dr. Sanders was quick to point out that telehealth is an “old idea,” something he’s been working on for nearly 40 year. Though widespread adoption of telemedicince still hasn’t been realized, Dr. Sanders is optimistic about its future and sees broadband as the “umbilical cord” of telehealth. He also predicted that the smartphone will be the key for both health monitoring and the delivery of medical information such as test results and prescriptions.
Dr. Darkins brought up another “old idea” -- hospitals, which he described as an “outdated, Victorian models for health care.” Dr. Darkins argued that the delivery of medical services is moving away from the hospital model toward home-, school-, and work-based care that’s focused on prevention.
Dr. Eytan cited studies showing that telehealth application successfully lowers costs and improves health outcomes. The full panel agreed that health care delivery is shifting from a model based on one doctor’s opinion toward a more advanced “team approach” in which several health care professionals work together in diagnosing and treating a patient.
When an audience member asked about the obstacles preventing widespread adoption of telemedicine, Dr. Sanders responded that outdated regulations, such as state licensing requirements, and CMS reimbursement rules are standing in the way.
The application examples and costs savings potential were so compelling that several audience members asked variations of the question: Why isn’t everyone using telemedicine?
As the health care reform debate moves forward in Congress, we should all be asking this.
Webcasts of the Broadband Breakfast Club are available on the BroadbandCensus.com channel on TV Mainstream <http://www.tvmainstream.com/series/bbclub/.
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