Japanese engineers may soon have easy access to high speed Internet in speeds of up to 1.2 gigabits per second. That has Fred White of the ThomasNet Industrial Newsroom worried. Quoting our own Speed Matters report, he notes that even as of October 2006, the Japanese could have high speed Internet connections with 8.5 times the speed but at one-twelfth the cost. Read More »
A report released by the European Commission late last month shows that eight European Union countries have achieved greater high speed Internet penetration than the United States. Read More »
Speaking to Communications Workers of America members from around the country at the annual CWA Legislative-Political Conference, Senators Clinton and Obama reiterated their commitment to making a national high speed Internet policy a top priority. Watch what they had to say. Read More »
Jim Knight, the British minister of schools, is working with major British IT firms and parents to develop a plan to make sure every student in England has high speed Internet access, in part by requiring parents to provide it. Currently, there are more than one million children in England without home computer access. Read More »
The Vermont Public Service Board said a resounding "No" to the proposed sale of Verizon's landlines in northern New England to FairPoint Communications. The Vermont Board's decision left open the opportunity for Verizon and FairPoint to re-apply if it meets certain conditions to alleviate concerns about its finances. But if the companies offer Vermont the same settlement that they have proposed in Maine in response to similar concerns, it would not change the viability of this deal. Read More »
The Labor Party swept into power in last month's Australian elections, and one of its major planks was significantly improving high speed Internet in Australia. Read More »
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development released its latest high speed Internet rankings last month. Not surprisingly, the findings paint a bleak picture of high speed Internet access in the United States. Read More »
Researchers in Japan have developed a new method of data transmission that can transfer "hundreds of terabits per second." This means the connection would be so fast that HD movies could be downloaded in seconds. With a connection of 200 kbps -- the current American definition of high speed Internet -- downloading a movie can take more than six hours. Read More »
Last week the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a bill that would encourage federal agencies to allow workers to make greater use of telecommuting. Read More »
During a recent debate at the Columbia Business School, the United States was described as being in the "middle of the pack" of broadband adoption among developed countries. Despite a pledge by President Bush in 2004 to have universal high speed Internet by the year 2007, we are still without a national high speed Internet policy -- let alone universal access. But if legislation that committees in the House and the Senate have passed becomes law, we will begin to map the future. Read More »
