September 2009

State and local governments said during a Federal Communications Commission workshop on Tuesday that extending broadband is important for economic development purposes. Among the programs discussed at the workshop were those with the past goal of expanding broadband services into areas which were once inaccessible to any form of Internet service, and providing education for these services. "Areas of the country that don't have access to broadband services of at least 10 Megabits [per second (Mbps)] in the next five years will be as economically disadvantaged as those areas in the first half of the 20th century that did not have paved roads or electricity," said Ray Baum, commissioner of the Oregon Public Utilities Commission and head of the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners committee on telecommunications. He said that 10 Mbps was the minimum necessary as the base of broadband for services, including health care and education. However, before the expansion of accessible broadband reaches rural areas, digital literacy, or education in the use of computers and broadband services is a necessity, said Jane Smith Patterson, executive director of e-NC Authority in North Carolina.

Van Jones, an adviser to the Obama administration and a former Free Press board member, resigned from his White House post after being ruthlessly attacked for weeks in a smear campaign started by Fox News pundit Glenn Beck. Beck, who has also called President Obama a "racist," targeted Jones for his background in environmental and civil rights activism.

Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, issued the following statement: "Most Americans want affordable health care, good schools and clean air. But if you watch Glenn Beck's show, you would think the opposite is true: that the only proponents of these ideas are socialist, anti-American radicals operating out of the White House basement. At Free Press, our focus is on structural media policy, not on media content. But we take this extraordinary step because what's happening is so poisonous to American political discourse. That Fox News Channel lets Beck use its media megaphone to stir up hatred and fear of others is repulsive, divisive and beyond all common sense or decency. By giving Beck a nightly platform for such McCarthy-esque witch hunts and smear campaigns, the national news network undermines our democracy. But Fox News is not alone. Unfortunately, this kind of rant is endemic to a media system that cares about ratings far more than about the truth. Beck has a First Amendment right to stoke prejudice, and we do not and will not support efforts to silence him. This is not about censorship; it's about sanity. Our leaders have a responsibility to condemn fear mongering in all its forms, defend those who are unfairly attacked, and support a more diverse media system that provides alternative voices to the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other extremists. The lesson from the shameful McCarthy era that culminated in 1954 is that we must confront the politics of personal attack with decency, reason and a commitment to more political speech, not less. It's time for our elected officials -- from the White House to local town halls -- to join people across the country in a stand against agents of fear and misinformation."

As of August 30, 2009, 99.4 percent of US homes are able to receive digital television signals. This is a gain of more than 572,000 homes in the last month and 1.8 million homes since the week of the June 12 digital television transition. As of August 30, only 710,000 homes were unable to receive digital signals. Among the 56 local markets that Nielsen measures with electronic meters, four markets - Providence-New Bedford, New York, Nashville and Louisville - are completely ready, and 44 markets have less than 1% of TV households completely unready. Las Vegas has overtaken Albuquerque-Santa Fe as the market with the highest percentage of homes (2.2%) that cannot receive digital signals from high-powered U.S. television stations. The markets with the most unready households tend to be in the Western United States, where cable penetration is lower. Also, some viewers in border states continue to receive signals from Mexico and Canada, while other stations in large geographic markets or areas with mountainous topography can continue using analog "translators."

The drivers of the telemedicine market are about as straightforward as they can get. An aging population, skyrocketing costs for health care, overtaxed facilities and doctors, rural areas lacking in basic care, and a federal government interested in upgrading medical IT all add up to an opportunity for telecom service providers to use broadband pipes, wireless devices and intelligent networks to deliver value. That value proposition is also straightforward. Telemedicine can bring diagnostic expertise over the miles to rural areas, enabling quality care that saves lives. Remote monitoring can help the chronically ill, the aging and those recovering from recent trauma or surgery to stay connected to medical care while not occupying hospital beds or making needless trips to the emergency room. Wireless devices, some of which can be embedded, can track everything from blood sugar changes to whether a patient has taken the correct medication at the right time.