SHLB Coalition Launches Effort To Spur 'Gig+' Speeds to Anchor Institutions

paper said 63 percent of schools don't meet current high-speed connectivity goals, 42 percent of public libraries have Internet access of 10 Mbps or slower and rural health clinics often lag their urban counterparts in broadband capacity. “The National Broadband Plan called for gigabit speeds for all anchor institutions by the year 2020, but we are in grave danger of failing to meet that goal,” said SHLB Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen in a release. “Our anchor institutions hold communities together; they provide essential Internet connectivity to our children, the elderly, the poor, and everyone." In a preface to the Vision paper, he said, "The Action Plan will provide a series of policy papers, each of which addresses a barrier to achieving this envisioned future and recommends a range of steps that policymakers can take to make it a reality." The SHLB effort "puts 'meat on the bones' of Goal #4 in the National Broadband Plan, to bring gigabit connectivity to anchor institutions across the country," said Blair Levin, who spearheaded the NBP at the FCC, in a foreword to the paper. The SHLB coalition welcomed a scheduled FCC vote Thursday seeking to curb "excessive pricing" for business data services, "an action that could lower prices and speed the deployment of high speed broadband to millions of schools, libraries and health care providers."