Those fancy electronic signs on public transit platforms? They tell you everything except the time the next trains will arrive, a la London’s Underground. Those year-old parking meter kiosks that take credit cards? Convenient, perhaps—though they also ushered in an era of quadrupled parking fees.

So when city officials unveiled Chicago’s official new website Friday, they took great pains to emphasize that www.cityofchicago.org would make life simpler for residents, businesses and visitors alike.

And just in time, too: with more than 1,000,000 visitors a month, the old website at the same address was feeling the strain of outdated design. With online transactions for city services more than doubling in the last three years—to more than 600,000—it also makes good business sense, too. (Case in point: One in five Chicago vehicle stickers were bought online in 2009, up from 8 percent the year before.)

“This is the first updates to the city’s website in nine years,” said city chief information officer Hardik Bhatt at a press conference Friday. “The underlying infrastructure was outdated and couldn’t support the demand. We knew that our job was to use the most up-to-date technology to create a website that is easy for residents to use. It also helps up to tell Chicago’s story around the world in a way that brings visitors, business and jobs.”

City web designers started with a clean slate, looking at the top 10 websites in the country to make a new portal that, as Bhatt put it, would be “fast and convenient. Nothing on here, as you will see, is more than one or two clicks away.” To do achieve that goal, the city spent $1.8 million, financed by information technology bonds.

With more than 3,500 pages of information, cityofchicago.org has some neat features you won’t find on the typical municipal website. It makes use of embedded video, 225 social media tools (including Twitter and Reddit), RSS feeds—and takes advantage of a service called TechLocator to pinpoint WiFi hotspots in the city.

And yes, Mayor Richard M. Daley has his own YouTube channel.

The site sports a sleek welcome page design, framed on a wavy blue background that features the downtown city skyline as seen from Lake Michigan. Under that panoramic shot, an orange horizontal rail allows users to seek out city services, programs and initiatives, or learn more about Chicago government.

To the left, an expanded city services block allows users to “pay for” a bill, or “apply for” a license. Bhatt demonstrated how the drill-down format allows residents to start filling out an application or making a payment in just a few mouse clicks.

For those who prefer searching, the new website has a Google engine embedded in it for quick searches. Quick, that is, if you can get on the site. The city’s wireless network at the Department of Innovation & Technology slowed to a crawl during the press conference, making the site impossible to access on this reporter’s laptop.

But on computer kiosks provided at the press conference, navigation proved smooth and effortless—something that might freak out the typical Chicago resident used to waiting in horrid lines at city departments for half an afternoon.

Residents may also be surprised to learn that the new site comes with a promise of increased government transparency.

Bhatt insisted that the new site will provide, and continue to further facilitate, city documents requested through the Freedom of Information Act, city contract information and other documents that reflect how city money gets spent.

“We’re trying to make city of Chicago information more accessible to residents,” Bhatt said. “But we’re trying to remind everyone that this is a work in progress. There will be glitches, and improvements over the next few months. We want to hear from users. We need to know if we have overlooked anything.”

The current trial, which uses a speed of 50 megabits per second, is confined to a few hundred inhabitants of a small village called Woolhampton about 50 miles west of London.

If the trial is successful, it will pave the way for other third parties to pile in with similar services to more remote communities. Virgin’s scheme has been stimulated by the government’s determination that the advent of ultra fast “super” broadband will not open up a new digital divide just when the old one was being fixed.

Currently 18.3 million U.K. inhabitants have Internet access. About 90 percent of those have broadband speeds usually defined as 2 mbps or more – the U.K. government’s target figure for universal access by 2012.

But this is nowhere near enough for emerging broadband requirements including downloading video from the country’s TV services such as BBC iPlayer, which allows consumers to find and play programs that were aired within the prior seven days. The iPlayer soon will be available in high definition.

The surge in bandwidth-hungry services has prompted the government to consider setting a new higher target, probably 50 mbps, for around 2017, and to adopt policies that stimulate deployment of fiber.

The Virgin trial is able to avoid the cost of trenching to lay fiber by using existing overhead poles, reducing deployment costs. This makes it economic to drive into more remote, less densely populated areas where the cost of trenching cannot be justified. Equally significantly, it soon may not be necessary to drive all the way to every home to provide 50 mbps or even 100 mbps, since emerging spectral management techniques will enable copper to run at VDSL2 (Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line) speeds over greater distances than had been thought, perhaps up to 5 kilometers compared with then earlier estimates of 1.5 kilometers.

This could create an alternative avenue for serving rural communities in the United Kingdom, given that almost every household has access to the copper infrastructure for telephony.

Separately, national carrier British Telecom is in discussions over opening its fiber ducts to third parties to stimulate super broadband roll out. Third party operators already have access to BT’s own fiber network through its local access division called BT Open Reach, but this limits their flexibility to deploy new services quickly in selected areas.

Now BT is trying to establish a regime where all operators, including rivals such as Virgin Media from the cable side, practice an open-access policy to their ducting. This move will be most relevant in more densely populated areas where ducting is widely available.

Back in the United States, local operators likely will eye these U.K. plans with some envy. There is an absence of readily available overhead poles for fiber in many remote communities, while major providers have so far tended to resist federal pressure to build out their networks to rural areas.

The distances are greater and the communities often very small, with the most promising candidate perhaps being VDSL2 since this would only require deploying a fiber to a technology known as a DSLAM, or Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer, in each community. DSLAMs allow telephone lines to make faster connections to the Internet. However it remains to be seen to what extent the Federal Communication Commission’s upcoming national broadband plan will change the situation by subsidizing the upfront capital investment.

Track the action. Either attend (if you’re in the DC area) or watch the archived webcast of this March 16 BroadbandBreakfast.com event: Top Congressional tech staffers will discuss Setting the Table for the National Broadband Plan: Where to from Here?. Representatives of the main Congressional committiees hashing over the plan will be there: the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. (Good committees to start monitoring regularly.)

The National Broadband Plan is highly controversial—expect a big political battle here. Large, established businesses such as cable companies, broadcasters, and telcos have much at stake and are throwing substantial lobbying muscle toward protecting their interests. Expect that the there will be changes to the plan between the time it goes to committee and the version that eventually makes it to the floor of Congress.

Another great resource for tracking this issue is Drew Clark’s BroadbandBreakfast.com blog—one of the best sources of news and update for national, regional, and state broadband issues.

The Knight Digital Media Center is a partnership between USC Annenberg and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism funded by the Knight Foundation.

Registration for the event is available at http://broadbandbreakfast.eventbrite.com. Confirmed speakers include:

• Shawn H. Chang, Majority Counsel, Communications and Technology Policy, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Neil Fried, Minority Counsel, Telecommunications, House Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Brian Hendricks, Minority General Counsel, US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
• Daniel Sepulveda, Senior Advisor, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Genachowski told members of the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing on “Consumers, Competition and Consolidation in the Video and Broadband Market” that the FCC is poised to protect and advance the interests of consumers, including children, while ensuring effective competition and encouraging the broad and rapid deployment of broadband and other advanced communications services.

However, he cautioned that the FCC must consider that the communications landscape “today is very different from five and 10 years ago, and will be very different five and 10 years from now.”

Genachowski noted that the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, which governs the FCC’s merger transaction strategy, “requires strict confidentiality,” but he added that he’s committed to working with fellow agency commissioners to ensure that its “review procedures meet the highest standards of openness, transparency, rigor, and fairness and minimize costs and delay while fully protecting the public interest.”

The FCC chief reminded senators that the agency begins its transaction-review process once a complete application has been received from the parties. In the Comcast/NBC Universal proceeding, the companies filed an initial application on Jan. 28 and sent the FCC a supplemental economic report as recent as Mar. 5.

He noted that “in the past, some have expressed concerns about whether FCC review of some transactions has taken longer than the circumstances warranted” but the agency is eager to move forward.

The commission soon will issue a notice that begins the public comment period and lets consumers know how they can address the applicants’ submissions and participate in the FCC proceeding, according to Genachowski.

He added that an FCC dedicated team has already begun to work on the proposed transaction.

Users will randomly be assigned to one of two speed and measurement test when they visit www.broadband.gov. One of the tests will utilize the open source Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) developed by Internet2, a consortium of researchers. BroadbandCensus.com has been using the NDT speed test since February 2008.

The other test, uses Ookla, Inc.’s Speedtest.net, has been used by Communications Workers of America’s SpeedMatters.org web site since 2007.

“Transparency empowers consumers, promotes innovation and investment, and encourages competition,” said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

“The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country,” he said. “By informing consumers about their broadband service quality, these tools help eliminate confusion and make the market work more effectively.”

The FCC also said that it did not endorse any specific testing application.

In addition to the “Consumer Broadband Test,” the FCC on Thursday also launched a mobile application — a first for the agency — that is available through the Apple and Android app stores.  Called the “Broadband Dead Zone Report,” the mobile tool enables Americans to submit the street address location of a broadband “Dead Zone” where broadband is unavailable for purchase.

On the Consumer Broadband Test, the FCC is asking users to submit their address for internal purposes. BroadbandCensus.com links NDT speed test data to self-reported data about consumers’ broadband carriers, their ZIP+4 code, and the consumers’ ratings of their provider’s perfomance.

The FCC said that it would utilize the NDT speed test as further developed by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative. Open Technology Initiative, together with Google and Princeton University’s PlanetLab Consortium, launched Measurement Lab, or M-Lab, in January 2009. M-Lab uses an open, distributed server infrastructure.

As with BroadbandCensus.com and the FCC, among M-Lab’s core goals is to advance network research by actively promoting openness and transparency: research tools on M-Lab must publicly publish their source code. Further, the NDT data collected is being made publicly available on the Measurement Lab Data Repository under a Creative Commons license.  More than 2.8 million NDT tests have already been run, and M-Lab publicly released the first 500 Gigabytes of data earlier this year.

BroadbandCensus.com also posts all the broadband data sets — the NDT results, as well as user-generated comments and ratings — under a Creative Commons license.

“The Network Diagnostic Tool released by the FCC will collect important information about the true state of broadband in the United States,” said Sascha Meinrath, Director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative.

“Through using M-Lab’s NDT tool, not only is the Commission empowering consumers with vital information regarding actual performance of their broadband connections versus unrealistic ‘up to’ speeds currently utilized by providers, but also contributing to research that is essential to informing good public policy,” said Benjamin Lennett, Policy Analyst for the Open Technology Initiative.

This is partly because European regions tend to be more densely populated, often with shorter distances to their remote communities. Some have fewer topographic challenges than others, making it easier to bring broadband to all homes.

However, in many cases Europeans are benefiting from firm commitments from local and central governments that began as many as 10 years ago.

Such commitment led Finland to become the first European country to legislate for universal broadband in October 2009, requiring telecommunications firms to provide residents with access at 1 megabit or more by July 2010.

By December 2010, each region will have a telecom firm subject to a Universal Service Order, as defined by the European Union in its i2010 strategy to heal the digital divide among its member states. Others are following Finland’s move. Austria set a target of 25 mbps for its residents by 2013, aiming to achieve this through legislation stimulating wholesale provision and cooperative ventures between operators.

Universal provision is certainly far easier for some countries to provide than others. Finland was well placed since 96 percent of its people were already within reach of broadband by 2005.

Some, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, now have virtually 100 percent coverage anyway, compared with 98.5 percent in France, 95 percent in Germany, and just 82 percent in the United States, according to a report (pdf) from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

This same report also highlighted the problems comparing broadband coverage in different countries given the variety of service types and definitions. The report defined broadband as being 500 kbps or faster downstream, but that itself looks like an outdated measure given that it’s woefully inadequate for delivering a growing number of services such as high-definition television.

For most countries, the challenge for universal broadband remains the last mile in remote areas, or might be called the “last 10 percent”, with various measures being adopted.

Finland is leveraging its world-class expertise in wireless, having invested in High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology to cover most of the country by providing up to 21 mbps downstream. This forms part of its highly ambitious plan to step up universal broadband to 100 mbps by 2015.

The United Kingdom also aims to exploit its mobile network, with the emphasis on filling in the gaps to reach the 15 percent of households incapable of receiving 2 mbps or more over their digital subscriber line connections. The United Kingdom also highlights the problem of definition. The OECD says the United Kingdom has 100 percent broadband coverage, but many of its more remotely located citizens would disagree as they struggle to gain access even at 500 kbps.

By contrast, South Korea already provides most of its population with 100 mbps over its fiber-dense networks. This is precisely the FCC’s plan for 100 million homes within the United States, but not until 2020.

Meanwhile, some countries and regions are leaning more heavily on their existing cable TV networks to fill out top-end broadband within populated areas, now that an international telecommunications standard known as the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem standard supports downstream speeds up to 100 Mbps with the aid of channel bonding. Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, or DOCSIS, allows the addition of high-speed data transfer to a cable TV system.

Cable networks accounted for about 38 percent of the Netherlands’s 5.996 million broadband connections by Sept. 30, 2000 and was gaining ground over DSL, according to the Dutch telecom journal Telecompaper.

The importance of cable networks for broadband competition has been reflected in some countries by the regulator including them in unbundling programs. Danish telecom regulator National IT and Telecom Agency has ordered the operator TDC to open both its copper and cable networks to other broadband providers.

This Danish move highlights a possible deficiency in the U.S. plan to stimulate competition and price competitiveness. While Denmark, in common with many European countries, has promoted competition between multiple service providers, the FCC’s focus has been more on creating alternative broadband modes of delivery, such as DSL and cable. The trouble with this is that the same operator may provide both, leaving little incentive to price competitively.

In a letter sent last week, the SBA’s Office of Advocacy asked the FCC to consider changes “needed mainly to reflect the financial and technological changes that have occurred in the market.”

The SBA points out to the FCC that there currently are three North American Industry Classification System codes defining telecommunications and related services, but additional classifications “may be needed to account for small broadband and telecommunications providers” as they are currently lumped in with one of the broader categories and not explicitly accounted for.

A NAICS code is the standard used by federal statistical agencies to classify businesses for collecting and analyzing data related to the U.S. business economy. Any firm wishing to do business with the federal government is required to know and use its NAICS code.

The current NAICS categories in the telecom field are:

1. Telecommunications, which includes firms like wireless carriers and satellite firms;
2. Data Processing, Hosting and Related Services
3. Other Information Services, which includes news syndicates, libraries, Internet portals and Web search portals

Neither BroadbandCensus.com nor BroadbandBreakfast.com endorse the views in the commentary. We invite officials, experts and individuals interested in the state of broadband to offer commentaries of their own. To offer a commentary, please e-mail commentary@broadbandcensus.com. Not all commentaries may be published.

By Congressman Lee Terry, Republican from Nebraska

Thank you to Chairman Genechowski and the Knight Foundation for the opportunity to speak here today. As many of you know, I have been working on Universal Service reform for the better part of the past five years and it has been a real honor to have worked with Chairman Boucher along the way. We share a deep passion in ensuring that Americans continue to have access to advanced and affordable telecommunications.

Representing a congressional district that includes Omaha, Nebraska I know firsthand the benefits of advanced telecommunications. Omaha is home to four Fortune 500 companies and as highlighted in Stephen Colbert’s “Better Know a District,” Omaha is the teleservices capital of the country. Omaha is the teleservices capital not because Omahans lack of a notable accent as Colbert notes, but rather because Omaha has benefited from a very robust telecommunications network. In fact, Omaha has consistently maintained its place at the forefront of new telecommunications technologies. In the early 1980’s, Omaha was one of the first cities in the U.S. to develop a fiber optic cable network. By 1992, multiple carrier fiber optic networks provided service to the Omaha metro area, giving rise to a proliferation of teleservices operations in Omaha.

Omaha’s leadership in information technology has been enabled by one of the strongest telecommunications infrastructures in the nation with access to major north, south, east and west fiber optics networks, multiple points of presence and direct high-capacity connections. Reliable, state-of-the-art equipment assures that telecommunications transmissions run smoothly and accurately throughout the metro area as well as into and out of the city.

But while Omaha’s economy continues to grow because of increased broadband investment, most of rural Nebraska continues to struggle to keep up in an increasingly connected world. These broadband challenges are not unique to rural Nebraska. As more services including healthcare, education, and e-commerce rapidly move to broadband, millions of Americans in unserved markets are missing the opportunity to participate in this necessary sphere. Also, as globalization substantially increases competition for high-wage jobs and professional services, continued U.S. economic expansion demands that all Americans participate in the worldwide marketplace, something impossible without affordable access to broadband.

There are a number of great success stories that I would like to share with you about rural communities in Nebraska that have been greatly affected by having access to broadband:

An entrepreneur from Verdigre, Nebraska (population 519 in northeast Nebraska) who does work for Boeing designing computer chips is able to use the high capacity fiber to the home network in Verdigre to video conference in real time with other Boeing employees in Seattle and around the world without ever leaving the good life of small town U.S.A.

Nebraska is also seen as a leader and innovator for using broadband to expand educational opportunities to K-12 schools throughout the state. Thanks to federal and state funds, some of which come from the federal Universal Service Fund in partnership with the local telecommunication company’s civic and corporate dedication, it’s not uncommon to have schools being supplied with speeds up to 40 megabits-per-second. Such speeds allow kids and teachers in communities like Indianola, Nebraska (population 642) and Rushville, Nebraska (population 1,100 and 312 miles from Denver, 450 miles to Omaha, and 130 miles to Rapid City, S.D.) to expand their educational opportunities and retain teachers and salaries in small towns.

Nebraskans have also used broadband as a new tool to reenergize and rebuild the main streets that have been abandoned over the years. A veterinarian in Ewing, Nebraska (population 433) uses broadband to diagnose animals around the world. And we all know the story of a small meat locker in Diller, Nebraska who now sells boxed beef around the country out of their store front on Main Street in Diller (they deliver to the greater Washington metro area). Mr. Chairman, I’ll have to have you accompany me out to Diller sometime for a tour and a steak.

You can now begin to see why it’s imperative that Congress and the FCC commit to a policy that will deliver broadband to all Americans. While the stories highlight what Nebraskans are capable of if they have broadband, the reality is that only 90 percent of Nebraskans have access to high-speed broadband and that’s why we need to work on reforming the Universal Service Fund to deliver a nearly ubiquitous broadband network.

As the headline for today’s event properly notes, “Working together to expand opportunity through universal access” the Congress and the FCC must work together to take on the monumental task of reforming the Universal Service Fund. And I am pleased that soon, we’ll have a National Broadband Plan document that will kick start an overdue debate on how to improve the lives of millions of Americans living without broadband today.

On top of the $50 million derived from the Nebraska State USF, Nebraska received over $128 million from the Federal Universal Service Fund in 2009 and from this total $9 million was used to keep public schools and libraries across Nebraska connected to the internet, providing our kids with access to information and increased educational opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have. If USF was eliminated, a Nebraskan living in a rural area would pay an additional $235.41 on average each year to receive telecommunications services and I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that a monthly retail rate could top $500 for comparable broadband if there was no mechanism for reimbursement. The fact is that in many rural areas there is no valid retail rate to cover costs of rural broadband without USF, as there is no business case because there would be no customers. The costs of both capital construction and ongoing expenses in these areas for operations require that the USF support be ongoing.

As we move forward in reforming the USF, it is important to remember that the entire telecommunications network which includes wireless and voice over internet protocol (VOIP) uses the wireline network. The Universal Service Fund is critical to ensuring that this network remains efficient

As many of you know, I am not without an opinion with respect to reforming the Universal Service Fund. Congressman Boucher and I have identified a number of principles to guide us in our task to reform the Universal Service Fund. First, Universal Service must be updated to include broadband. The fact that it’s 2010 and broadband is still not a supported service is simply unacceptable. Second, the Fund must better target support to all consumers living in rural America. The current system of distributing support hurts consumers who are served by a carrier who also provides service in large metropolitan cities within the same state. Fixing this inequality will immediately provide support for carriers to deploy broadband networks to consumers who are desperately waiting for broadband. And third, the base of contributors must be expanded to ensure the Fund remains solvent and proper accountability measures must be adopted to protect the integrity of the Fund.

As an elected official who understands the importance of small business, I have a public duty to make sure that all of my constituents are given every tool necessary to participate and succeed in this 21st century global economy. I praise Chairman Genechowski for his hard work and for acknowledging that we must tackle the issue of USF reform within the framework of a national broadband plan for our country. I sincerely look forward to the upcoming debate on this topic as we move toward enactment reform.

The future will surely be an exciting time, as our country’s will to innovate and develop new technologies will continue to elevate society and transform the way in which we live and communicate with one another.

With the recent battle between Cablevision and Disney over Retransmission Consent in New York regarding WABC-TV carriage on Cablevisions 3.1 million subscribers, and thereby producing a coalition of Cable Providers to petition the FCC to intervene in negotiations, is akin to the saying: (be careful what you ask for).

It seems to me, this is a business market negotiation best handled through competitive market forces rather than asking the FCC to get involved in a dispute between two companies. The (ax can cut both ways) when it comes to oversight of the pipeline distribution and broadcasting industries. Yes, consumers are caught in the middle, wanting pertinent and relevant programming for a reasonable price, while public negotiations and threats of signal cuts dominate the headlines; see (Cable firms seek FCC help in fee disputes).

The issue remains, how much is WABC-TV worth to Cablevision for carriage and distribution of their signal. Retransmission Consent was formulated years ago when broadcast stations wanted assurance that cable companies would carry their local signals, and be compensated for their original programming.  In the beginning most broadcasters just asked for Must-Carry, or assurance their signals would be distributed by pipeline providers for 3 years, see (Moody’s expects to see more retrans battles).

Fast-Forward to today and times have changed. Providers are paying substantial sums per month to distribute most of their programming to consumers. Cable Programmers have reaped the benefits of these carriage agreements in producing top-quality programs through carriage fees along with ad supported revenues; a dual revenue model. Broadcasters are struggling to stay afloat with the single, Ad Revenue Model. Therefore, Retransmission Consent has become a battleground for demanding monthly carriage fees, just as most Cable Programmers ask for, and receive. Broadcasters have seen a significant drop in Ad Revenues in recent years along with a lose network subsidies. Without additional revenue streams, broadcasters are looking to lucrative distribution agreements to make up the short-fall.

This is a market demand negotiation, not a regulation matter for the FCC to consider. If Cable Providers want to lessen the impact of these carriage fees, they should consider (Tiering) Broadcast signals to accommodate and moderate fee increases. Yes, if negotiations demand an unreasonable price for most customers, negotiate for the signal to be on a Tier where consumers can pay an extra cost if they value the programming. Some consumers will lose in this scenario, but overall consumer rates would be adjusted for those who can afford the additional cost.

This is not a regulatory issue, but one of market demand and supply. In my opinion the coalition of cable providers should think twice before asking the FCC to intervene in their business negotiations, or risk having regulations that regulate them into non-existence. This is a Free Market System, let it work as intended.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Time Warner Cable to ask FCC for new rules on negotiating programming deals (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Cable and satellite operators take their case to Congress (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Cable Companies Petition FCC (online.wsj.com)

A few weeks ago, Google announced their own efforts to expand broadband through a trial of high-speed fiber-optic network which would deliver speeds of one Gigabit per second (1Gbps). As part of their application, the city has even created an amusing Youtube video, saying that all first-born children will be named Google.

YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03pCyixPuws

The video was in response to the town of Topeka, Kansas, which renamed itself Google – but just for the for the month of March – in order to receive favorable treatment in their bid.