broadband

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on. In May, Cleveland will become a test bed for a service, spearheaded by Case Western Reserve University, that lets residents of more than 100 homes download data at about 1 gigabit per second. In February, Google said it plans an ultra-high-speed broadband network covering as many as 500,000 users. "The purpose of this project is to experiment and learn," Google said in a blog introducing the idea. "Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there's still more to be done." The U.S.

The race to provide ultrafast broadband is on.

Even as congressional Democrats discuss an opt-out provision for national health-care reform -- a move that undercuts the basic premise of President Obama's proposal, that real efficiencies can only be created when everyone is insured -- private interests are taking aim at the administration's proposal to impose a national broadband tax.

The Federal Communications Commission kicked off a series of potentially bitter debates about how to make high-speed Internet service faster and more popular with the official release Tuesday of its long-awaited National Broadband Plan.

The Senate Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing next Tuesday to explore the FCC's recommendations, which Congress requested last year. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will follow with its own hearing March 25.

It's not only Julius Caesar who should take note of the Ides of March. So should every business with a dot-com address, since that was the date of the first dot-com address -- 25 years ago Monday.

On that date in 1985, a Cambridge, Mass., company named Symbolics became the first to register a dot-com domain. But the Internet at that time was still primarily a network devoted to research and academic use, and Symbolics' move didn't exactly start a land rush. By the end of the year, only five other companies had dot-com addresses, and it was nearly two years before there were a hundred.

Federal regulators have unveiled an ambitious plan to bring high-speed Internet service to millions of Americans who can't get it today, while boosting delivery speeds and lowering prices for 200 million current subscribers.

The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan also aims to leverage broadband to transform nearly every aspect of U.S. society and industry, including health care, education and energy. The FCC will deliver the sweeping blueprint to Congress today.

In what could be the final deathblow to dial-up connections, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday will outline to Congress how it will spend $7.2 billion in stimulus funds to provide high-speed broadband Internet access to millions of Americans.

The Federal Communications Commission unveiled three digital tools Thursday that will enable consumers, businesses, schools and other organizations to test the real-world performance of their fixed and mobile broadband connections and help identify gaps in the nation's broadband coverage. The tools include downloadable applications for mobile devices based on Google's Android platform and Apple's iPhone OS.

Paul Karpowicz has nothing against broadband. But he has no plans to take part in a government effort to bring it to more homes.

Karpowicz is president of Meredith Broadcasting, which owns 12 local TV stations from Portland, Ore., to New Haven, Conn. Meredith also holds unused TV airwaves covering some of those markets and Karpowicz intends to use them to stream programming to handheld devices.

Jared Starkey is going all out for Google broadband. The day after Google said it would provide high-speed Internet access to as many as 500,000 people around the U.S., Starkey set up a Facebook page to lobby Google to bring the service to his hometown, Topeka, Kan. Since then, Starkey has passed out bright-orange necklaces made of the kind of fiber-optic cable used to deliver fast Web connections and rallied 100 people to show up at a downtown redevelopment meeting wearing T-shirts that play on Google's motto for the broadband plan.