NTIA Sees More Work Ahead Post-Broadband Summit

"When we started the Recovery Act grants program in 2009, the FCC still defined broadband at a speed less than 1 Mbps. Today the FCC recommends download speeds of 25 Mbps. At that rate, nearly 51 million Americans still do not have access to a wired broadband connection." About 250 broadband experts attended Next Century Cities and NTIA's Digital New England Summit in Maine Monday, the agency said in a blog post Tuesday. The event was the third in a series of regional workshops that NTIA is hosting across the country as part of its BroadbandUSA program, it said. The effort builds on NTIA’s broadband grant programs, which were funded by money from the 2009 Recovery Act, it said. NTIA invested more than $4 billion in about 230 projects across the country that have built critical network infrastructure, opened or upgraded public computer centers, and established broadband adoption and digital inclusion programs. The State Broadband Initiative Program invested $300 million to help states collect broadband data for the National Broadband Map and expand broadband capacity, the agency said. The grantees deployed more than 114,000 miles of network miles, connected nearly 26,000 community anchor institutions such as schools and hospitals, and installed or upgraded more than 47,000 computers in public access centers, the agency said. Grantees also enrolled hundreds of thousands of people in broadband services, it said.