Community Anchor Institutions Need Big Broadband

In a filing at the Federal Communications Commission, the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition says community anchor institutions need very high-bandwidth broadband connections to provide essential services, including remote medical care, distance learning, job training, access to e-government benefits, and many more. Because of the increasing prevalence of high-definition video and other bandwidth-intensive uses, these institutions need to upgrade their connections simply to maintain their current level of service, and they need even greater levels of bandwidth to plan for the future. They often need capacity of 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) or even 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), which is far greater than the bandwidth needed by individual households. CAI use these high-capacity broadband capabilities to provide essential services to rural, low-income, disabled, the elderly, students, immigrants and many other underprivileged and vulnerable segments of the population. These reasons alone warrant treating community anchor institutions as significant cornerstones of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. Yet, there is another, equally important reason that community anchor institutions should be considered as essential building blocks of the National Broadband Plan ­ open fiber connections to CAI can benefit the surrounding community.