DrewClark.com

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 2 - Broadband growth in the United States has effectively stalled over the past five months, a possible victim of the economic slowdown, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Some 55 percent of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection, […]

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News from the Personal Democracy Forum in New York:
By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com
NEW YORK, June 24 – A group of non-profits, businesses and others organizations seeking to guide the creation of a national broadband plan on Tuesday announced the formation of a new initiative, “Internet for Everyone,” seeking the highlight the crucial importance of […]

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By Drew Clark
Google co-founder Larry Page came to Washington last week to take on the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the lobbying group that represents over-the-air television stations. It’s a whole new adversary for the beleaguered broadcasters, who have been fighting cable and satellite television for years.
The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering a proposal, […]

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In a speech just released on her Web site, Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate praised BroadbandCensus.com
In the speech (TXT DOC PDF), which was given at the Broadband Properties conference on April 30, 2008, in Dallas, Texas, Tate said:
I also appreciate and encourage private, state and local efforts to enhance the availability of such information.  […]

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I was writing about how Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., had praised FCC Chairman Michael Powell for his articulation of the “four freedoms” of Internet, or his early articulation of Net Neutrality rules. (It got duplicated on Twitter, and then my delete snagged both items. The same duplication happened with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.)
Pickering went on […]

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I’m live-blogging from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the Internet and Telecommunications, on H.R. 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, on http://twitter.com/drewclark. You can also see my 20 most recent postings, in reverse-chronological order, at the right.

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I’ll be speaking about the quest for data about broadband availability, competition, speeds and prices at a conference on “Information and the Information Economy,” co-sponsored by The Intellectual Property & Communication Law Program at the Michigan State University College of Law, theThe Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University andThe Quello Center for Telecommunications […]

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I just presented BroadbandCensus.com at Freedom to Connect. Two people who are live-blogging or commenting on the event:

Heath Row’s Media Diet
Listics
Suw Charman-Anderson’s Strange Attractor on Corange

One point that I forgot to mention in the talk: BroadbandCensus.com is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, meaning that individuals are free to copy and redistribute the information […]

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Over at IP Democracy, Cynthia Brumfield has this to say about BroadbandCensus.com:
BroadbandCensus is coming online at the right time. As Drew notes in his blog post announcing the new site, a lot of states are trying to collect their own data and legislation is moving in both the House and Senate to collect better […]

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Note: I guest-blogged this morning at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet:
By Drew Clark
Most Americans who have high-speed Internet can’t imagine life without broadband. How could you connect to the Internet of today without it? In today’s world, broadband is as basic as running water and electricity. And yet the U.S. is falling […]

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It’s on the tip of nearly everyone’s tounge: America needs a National Broadband Strategy. With Capital Letters. Now. Or at least by January 20, 2009.
Seriously, it is amazing how much consensus there seems to have developed on this simple point. From the Bell carriers to Googlers, from public interest groups to local legislators, from Democratic […]

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Carol Wilson profiled BroadbandCensus.com today in Telephony Online. She quotes me as follows:
“What we’re trying to do in some respects is fact-check or truth-check the FCC’s numbers,” Clark said. “They have been saying there’s lots of broadband available anywhere. On a ZIP code basis, they have said there are eight, 10, 25 different broadband […]

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By Drew Clark
BroadbandCensus.com, a new Web site designed to provide everyday Internet users with the ability to learn about broadband availability, competition, speeds and prices – in their local areas — launched January 31.
The information launched yesterday evening on BroadbandCensus.com is really only the beginning. We understand that the information we have about local broadband […]

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By Drew Clark
Art Brodsky’s 4,789-word article about Connect Kentucky and its offspring Connected Nation has been the talk of telecom circles over the past week.
Connected Nation is a non-profit entity that has become one of biggest players in the currently topical field of broadband data. Using their work in Kentucky as a model for mapping […]

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With the death of the last year’s video franchising-Net neutrality bill, Democrats have now firmly taken the reins on telecommunications policy in Congress. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii., has legislation designed to map out the availability of broadband, or high-speed Internet connections, in the United States, and it passed out of committee on […]

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