[Senate Hearing 110-1225]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-1225
WHY BROADBAND MATTERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
__________
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Transportation
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Chairman
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas,
Virginia Ranking
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts TED STEVENS, Alaska
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
BARBARA BOXER, California OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
BILL NELSON, Florida GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
Margaret L. Cummisky, Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Lila Harper Helms, Democratic Deputy Staff Director and Policy Director
Christine D. Kurth, Republican Staff Director and General Counsel
Paul Nagle, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on September 16, 2008............................... 1
Statement of Senator Inouye...................................... 1
Statement of Senator Klobuchar................................... 53
Statement of Senator McCaskill................................... 48
Statement of Senator Nelson...................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Statement of Senator Pryor....................................... 51
Statement of Senator Stevens..................................... 2
Statement of Senator Thune....................................... 56
Witnesses
Cohen, Larry, President, Communications Workers of America (CWA). 7
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Conroy, Margaret M., Missouri State Librarian, on behalf of the
American Library Association (ALA)............................. 23
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Linkous, Jonathan D., Chief Executive Officer, American
Telemedicine Association....................................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Mayor, Ph.D., Mara, Member, Board of Directors, AARP............. 19
Prepared statement........................................... 21
Peltola, Gene, President and Chief Executive Officer, Yukon-
Kuskokwim Health Corporation................................... 40
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Ramsey, Rey, Chief Executive Officer, One Economy Corporation.... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Appendix
American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance, prepared statement...... 62
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-United States
of America (IEEE-USA), prepared statement...................... 66
Letter, dated November 18, 2008, from Margaret M. Conroy,
Missouri State Librarian to Hon. Claire McCaskill, U.S. Senator
from Missouri.................................................. 75
Response to written questions submitted by Hon. John F. Kerry to:
Larry Cohen.................................................. 70
Margaret M. Conroy........................................... 74
Jonathan Linkous............................................. 71
Mara Mayor, Ph.D............................................. 72
Townsend, Charles, President and CEO, Atlantic Wireless L.P.,
prepared statement............................................. 61
WHY BROADBAND MATTERS
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:37 a.m., in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K.
Inouye, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. INOUYE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII
The Chairman. Good morning. In this morning's hearing, we
explore the question why broadband matters. Broadband matters
because broadband communications have become the great economic
engine of our time. Broadband deployment drives opportunities
for business, education, health care. It provides widespread
access to information that can change the way we communicate
with one another and improve the quality of our lives.
This is why our discussion this morning is not about pipes
and providers. It is about people. Our citizens stand to gain
the most from universal broadband adoption. By some estimates,
universal broadband adoption would add $500 billion to the
United States economy and create more than a million new jobs,
and added to this, hundreds of millions of dollars in savings
through government and telemedicine initiatives and untold
riches we can reap by tapping the genius of Web-based
entrepreneurs in every corner of this country. I think the case
for better broadband is very clear.
Still, our broadband state is not what it should be. Though
controversial in some quarters, rankings among the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed the
United States slipping down the international broadband ranks.
As of this year, for the first time, China has a larger number
of broadband subscribers than the U.S. By some measures, Asian
and European countries have high-speed connections that are 20
times faster than ours and for just half the cost. And I
believe that all of us will agree this is unacceptable and we
should do better.
So let me offer my thoughts about where to begin. I believe
we cannot manage problems that we cannot measure. For this
reason, last year I introduced S. 1492, the Broadband Data
Improvement Act, which is designed to enhance our understanding
of broadband deployment and adoption in every state. This bill
is not about regulation or deregulation. This is about getting
the facts because from good information flows good policy.
So I hope in the remaining days of this Congress that
Members of this Committee can work together to advance this
measure or something similar to that in the Senate. Together I
believe we can look back and say we understand that broadband
matters and we did something about it.
Senator Stevens?
STATEMENT OF HON. TED STEVENS,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
Senator Stevens. Mr. Chairman, thank you for scheduling
this hearing.
In Alaska, our residents, especially our elderly residents,
depend upon the ability of their health care providers to be
able to communicate rapidly and effectively over the Internet
with the health care community. Many Alaskans live off the road
system in our rural areas, and the bottom line is that
broadband is often the only way for them to receive the same
quality of health care as Americans living in what we call the
South 48.
Today I intend to introduce the Telehealth for America Act
of 2008, which will be a bill to improve health care for rural
America by allowing smaller rural health care providers to
participate in the Universal Service Program. The Universal
Service Fund was meant to provide the Nation's rural health
care providers with access to advance telecommunications
services.
Currently, however, the Communications Act only provides
for Universal Service Fund support to larger health care
providers, but it is clear that smaller, remotely located
health care providers also need to be connected to the
Internet. Allowing smaller, specialized rural health care
entities to access the Universal Service Fund will enable them
to combine forces with the health care community.
For example, this bill would enable small providers to
share information such as medical records, provide improved
training to health care personnel through videoconferencing
without requiring the personnel to travel away from the
provider area and to enhance the overall ability of the health
care community to provide rapid and coordinated responses to
all Americans in time of crisis.
Specifically, my bill will revise the definition of health
care providers eligible to receive Universal Service support to
include smaller, specialized rural health care entities such as
doctors' offices, emergency medical facilities, hospices, blood
banks, pharmacies, dental clinics, and facilities caring for
our veterans.
The bill will also require the Federal Communications
Commission to report to Congress on its system of fiscal
controls and accountability over the Universal Service Fund
programs. The Universal Service Fund program is vital to our
schools, libraries, and health care providers. It is equally
important that these programs be involved with advanced
technology and grow with the Internet.
And I look forward to working to try and move this bill
forward so that Americans in all parts of the Nation can have
improved access to quality health care, particularly in rural
Alaska.
Again, I want to thank you for including at the end of this
testimony, testimony from the President of the YKH Corporation
in Bethel, Alaska. I think you will find it is going to be a
very interesting conversation. Thank you.
The Chairman. If I may, may I be listed as a co-sponsor?
Senator Stevens. I would be delighted to have you co-
sponsor, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Nelson?
STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,
U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA
Senator Nelson. Mr. Chairman, you said it well. I do not
need to add anything except to say I am a co-sponsor of the
Broadband Data Improvement Act and hope we can get it moving.
We had hearings on it last July.
So thank you for having this hearing today, and if I may, I
will submit the statement for the record.
The Chairman. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Senator Nelson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Bill Nelson, U.S. Senator from Florida
For more and more Americans, affordable and accessible broadband
service is no longer something that is merely desirable.
It's now a necessary component of our economy.
From telecommuting to telemedicine, increased broadband
connectivity has the potential to improve our productivity and the
overall quality of our lives.
Unfortunately, the true promise of broadband in the United States
has not been met.
After years of discussion, we are still one of the few developed
countries lacking a comprehensive national plan for universal broadband
access.
And the results of that failure are starting to show.
In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) began ranking broadband subscribership.
That year, we ranked 4th among 30 nations surveyed.
Now we are 15th.
A similar study by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
puts us 24th in the world--behind Korea, Denmark, Iceland, Canada and
Sweden.
We've let this lack of national planning go on for far too long--
and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Through this hearing today, I hope we can further illustrate the
benefits of universal broadband access.
In addition, I really hope we can also get some movement on some
sort of national planning mechanism.
The Broadband Data Improvement Act (S. 1492), of which I am a co-
sponsor, represents a major step in that direction.
We reported it out of Committee last July.
Now it's time for the full Senate to pass this legislation.
Senator Stevens. I might say to the Senator from Florida,
we might be able to make this small bill I am putting in as an
amendment to your bill. I would like to chat with you about
that.
The Chairman. We have six witnesses this morning: first,
the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of One Economy
Corporation of Washington, Mr. Rey Ramsey; the President of the
Communications Workers of America, Mr. Larry Cohen; the
Executive Director of the American Telemedicine Association,
Mr. Jonathan Linkous; AARP Board Member, Dr. Mara Mayor;
Missouri State Librarian, Ms. Margaret Conroy; and the
President and CEO of Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation of
Bethel, Alaska, Mr. Gene Peltola.
May I call upon Mr. Ramsey?
STATEMENT OF REY RAMSEY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
ONE ECONOMY CORPORATION
Mr. Ramsey. Chairman Inouye, Ranking Member Hutchison, and
Senator Stevens, it is a pleasure to be here today. I have
submitted testimony, and I will refer to some of the testimony,
but I would rather just speak with you candidly about some of
the issues that I see with broadband issues in this country and
why it matters.
First, a quick note on One Economy Corporation. We founded
One Economy Corporation 8 years ago, and I sort of smile
sometimes when I think about the timing of it because that is
when the technology bubble burst. And when I told my father I
was starting One Economy Corporation, he smiled about the
timing and told me I had had a good job.
So we started One Economy with the goal of using broadband
to assist low-income individuals with a double-sided approach,
to look at both the supply side and the demand side.
So on the supply side, particularly in the year 2000, what
we discovered very quickly was too many low-income individuals
and individuals living in rural communities did not have access
to broadband. And our strategy really focused on three basic
principles: to make sure broadband would be affordable, to make
sure it would available, and very importantly, to make sure it
would be useful. And I would like to just unpack those three
issues because all three are important.
The affordability issue has been crucial, and I think some
of the things around competition, the lowering of the costs of
broadband, networking affordable housing developments, has had
some impact on driving down some of the costs, although there
is more to be done.
Available. As you know, Mr. Chairman, there are many rural
communities that it is still not available the way it should
be, but I would like to spend more time focusing on the issue
of how useful it is, and that is the issue of the demand side
of broadband.
I think this is the most crucial area for us to focus on in
this country. We started at One Economy to focus on this area
that we refer to as content, public purpose content, public
purpose media, and when we look at the issue of poverty, we
said one of the most important issues is making sure that we do
not have information haves and information have nots. There is
a nexus, a very important nexus, between the quality of
information and the quality of life. There are a lot of people
who do not have access to a doctor and do not know where to get
a doctor. There are many people who are trapped in poor
performing schools, and yet we have the means to be able to
bring content and teaching tools to those individuals if we are
smart about how we apply broadband.
And so in this whole supposed digital divide movement, most
of the attention has been paid to the issue of supply, and I
think that is important. But we would like to see more
attention paid to the applications of the technology.
So just to give you a few examples. We launched a website a
number of years ago called the Beehive, www.thebeehive.org,
which is a portal design for low- and moderate-income
individuals to deliver information on health, on jobs, getting
the Earned Income Tax Credit, taking advantage of several
programs. In the past couple of years alone, as we have done
outreach campaigns online to help low-income people--just this
past tax season, we helped people get $10 million back just in
a few cities of the campaign on their taxes, and it was all
filed online. And these were low-income, limited literacy
individuals, proving that you could use technology to help
people. We have had more than 15 million individuals use that
website to be able to access important public purpose
information.
Later this year, December 11 of this year, we will be
launching our most ambitious effort yet called the Public
Internet Channel, which will be an online space that is
designed to be able to bring information around health, around
employment, around starting a business, around a whole host of
areas in partnership with many other organizations, in both
English and in Spanish, to be able to bring the benefits of
broadband to more people.
So our focus and what we urge Congress and many others to
look at is how we can make sure broadband is affordable, it is
available, and it is useful to people because, again, it is
both a supply and a demand side issue, and we would like to see
more attention paid to the demand side because we could do
more. We are not making enough investments on the applications
of technology, and where a lot of focus is spent on who has
broadband and who does not, the real issue is if we can make
sure there are applications available to buttress our health
care system, to buttress our education system, to buttress our
workforce development system, you will get more innovation,
more people wanting to go online. There are people now that
have broadband available to them, but they do not avail
themselves because they do not see that the applications are
actually speaking to them.
And this is where I think there is an ideal collaboration
between the private sector and a nonprofit like ours. So we
team up with companies both on the supply side and the demand
side, the Ciscos, the Verizons, the AT&Ts, the cable industry.
We work very closely with Google on content so that our content
is searchable for people. So we will not rest as an
organization until we can form more partnerships to make sure
broadband has that universal application that we think this
country so desperately needs.
So I submit that to you as my remarks today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ramsey follows:]
Prepared Statement of Rey Ramsey, Chief Executive Officer,
One Economy Corporation
Chairman Inouye, Ranking Member Hutchison, I thank you for the
opportunity to be here today. My name is Rey Ramsey, and I am the Chief
Executive Officer of One Economy Corporation.
One Economy is a global nonprofit that leverages the power of
technology and information to connect low-income people to the economic
mainstream. We bring broadband into the homes of low-income people,
produce public-purpose media, and train and employ youth to enhance
communities' technology capacity. Our work has taken hold in four
continents, from big cities to small rural towns. Since our founding in
2000, our work has reached 15 million people.
When I look at the state of broadband today, I see good news and
bad news.
The good news is that our country's efforts to stimulate the supply
of broadband have worked well. Most Americans have access to broadband
service--by which I mean it is available where they live if they want a
connection to their home computer. In fact, according to the Federal
Communications Commission's Zip Code level data, in more than 90
percent of the United States, consumers can choose from three or more
broadband providers. Nearly 60 percent of Americans have adopted
broadband by paying for a high-speed connection.
But those positive trends in broadband availability should not
overshadow the significant inequality in broadband adoption between
rich and poor communities. According to the most recent Census Bureau
data, while 76 percent of households earning more than $50,000 per year
are connected, only 35 percent of homes with annual income less than
$50,000 have adopted broadband in their homes.
At One Economy, we have focused our efforts on low-income
consumers--increasing and aggregating their demand for broadband.
Technology--broadband in particular--is at the forefront of the 21st
century fight against poverty because there is an increasingly
important connection between the quality of information available to
people and their quality of life.
For example, 70 percent of working families who receive the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC) pay for professional help preparing and filing
their taxes and as many as 25 percent of families who qualified for the
EITC did not receive it.
This year, we partnered with H&R Block and E*TRADE to make free tax
preparation and filing available online. Families using our site, the
Beehive (www.thebeehive.org), received nearly $10 million in state and
Federal refunds. In addition to the $1,000 average refund they
received, broadband made possible the education and support these
families needed to file for themselves, saving hundreds of dollars in
fees.
Broadband is a particularly powerful tool for fighting poverty
because it minimizes problems of time, mobility, and geographic
isolation.
One Economy recently began work with the Warm Springs Indian
Reservation in Oregon, home to nearly 4,000 members of the Warm Spring,
Wasco, and Paiute tribes. Broadband is already available on the
reservation; the Warm Springs Tribe built a Motorola canopy-based
wireless solution to provide broadband to the local government and
individuals. But uptake among residents has been slow, in part because
the average monthly cost is $50--out of reach for many area families.
In the coming months, we will work with reservation leaders to make
broadband a relevant and affordable tool. In addition to lowering the
cost of home access and creating public access points, we will use
broadband and the applications it makes possible to expand tribal
member participation in government, support small business development,
preserve native culture, and improve members' digital skills. Young
people will be trained in technical and leadership skills so they can
become cultural bridges between their community and technology.
Government can play a role in stimulating demand, as the tribal
government in Warm Springs is doing. Creating public-purpose online
media--media that puts vital information and tools directly in the
hands of citizens--can demonstrate the value proposition of bringing
broadband into their lives and homes. For low-income people, who are
often caught in a web of government programs and services, simple and
direct online access to those programs can mean the difference between
missing a day of work to stand in line at a municipal building and
getting help in the comfort of one's home.
Above all, we believe in meeting people where they are. Our
signature website, the Beehive, was created to be useful and useable
for an audience that may have a lower literacy level and may not speak
English as their primary language. The Beehive provides low-income
individuals with online access to the information and connections they
need on a local level to improve their lives while eliminating the
language, literacy and cultural barriers that keep over 50 million
Americans from fully utilizing the benefits offered by the World Wide
Web.
The results have been dramatic. Among them: 600,000 high school
students have received help with their homework, 415,000 people have
learned about managing diabetes, and nearly 1 million people have
learned how to secure their computers and stay safe online.
We create these online tools and resources not only to help people
improve their lives, but also to introduce them to the wealth of life-
changing information available online.
Independent research and our own experience suggest that the
principle barriers to people adopting broadband in their homes have
less to do with access and affordability and more to do with helping
people to understand the value of broadband, helping to alleviate
concerns about online safety, and a series of other educational and
cultural issues. A 2007 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life
project asked non-Internet users why they are not online. You might
expect the number one reason to be cost. In fact, one-third of people
not using the Internet said they are just not interested.
This is not to discount the importance of cost and the work that
still needs to be done in that area, but these findings show that even
when broadband is available and affordable, other concerns remain to be
addressed.
These opportunities to improve health, education, and economic
livelihood in low-income communities demonstrate that while universal
access is an important goal, it is only a starting point. Our
experience has shown that additional steps--efforts that are less about
a specific technology and more about education and creating a culture
of use--are needed to ensure that the benefits of the Digital Age are
reaching the communities that need them most.
At One Economy, we believe that the time has come for a broad-based
effort to provide these kinds of information and tools online. To that
end, we have created the Public Internet Channel (PIC.tv): public-
purpose programming designed to inform, engage, and help people take
action. The Public Internet Channel grew out of our experience
delivering culturally relevant, multilingual information to low-income
and low-literacy audiences.
For every new 20th-century communications technology, Americans
have created public-purpose programming that uses the power of the
airwaves to spread common knowledge and bring people together on common
ground. On television, the Public Broadcasting System's viewers explore
national and local issues. On the radio, listeners tune into local
National Public Radio affiliates to hear educational and civic-minded
content that cuts across differences in race, class, gender, and
geography.
By providing the Public Internet Channel directly to all Americans,
we hope to narrow the information gap that divides communities and
provide a common space that crosses racial, gender, age, religious,
geographic and political barriers.
The millions of people who have taken advantage of our online
resources to file their taxes, find better schools for their children,
start new businesses, and take other steps to improve their lives
demonstrate the need for such an effort.
Again, I appreciate the Committee's interest in how broadband
stands to benefit low-income communities. I believe that a policy that
brings the traditional conception of universal service into the digital
age, while addressing the broad spectrum of reasons why people are not
online, stands to improve the lives of millions of Americans.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Ramsey.
May we now receive testimony from President Cohen?
STATEMENT OF LARRY COHEN, PRESIDENT,
COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA (CWA)
Mr. Cohen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's great to be here.
I appreciate the opportunity and also the focus of this work by
the Committee.
I am Larry Cohen, the President of CWA. We represent
700,000 members. Our members build, maintain, and service these
networks that we are discussing here today and are also
journalists and broadcasters and others who create the content
that travels over the communication networks of our country. So
our members and our union everyday see why broadband matters
and why the speed of broadband matters.
Two years ago, we launched our national campaign called
Speed Matters. The main website is speedmatters.org. Over the
past two years, CWA members, working with community groups and
activists across the country, have tried to boost up the public
attention and information about why broadband matters, and
specifically why the speed of broadband matters.
There are dozens of examples which you wil1 find in my
written testimony. I am not going to go through the examples,
but they range from workers in the communications industry
itself like 500 customer service workers in rural Virginia who
work at an AT&T call center. If there were no broadband there,
they obviously would not be employed. It used to be a mining
area. So in terms of the conversion of our economy for the 21st
century, high speed broadband is absolutely critical.
But also small business. In our Speed Matters campaign, we
talked to farmers in rural Vermont who told us their broadband
connection allowed them to double their maple syrup business
through Internet marketing and sales. Farmers in Iowa, a
similar thing. They were part of the global economy and it
would make a huge difference. Small businesses in Appalachia
and southern Ohio creating new jobs through Connect Ohio, a
public/private partnership, similar to the one Mr. Ramsey
described, and bringing high-speed Internet to an industrial
park in an underserved area.
Examples go on and on. Internet learning. We now estimate
3.5 million students a year take one or more courses on the
Internet. So the demand side is growing. We need to stimulate
that demand.
I want to jump, though, to this chart. Part of our focus in
Speed Matters has been that Internet speed matters, that we
have defined broadband totally inadequately in the United
States, so we actually overstate its presence.
[The information referred to follows:]
Source: International data from the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation (ITIF); U.S. data from speedmatters.org test
results. Most test participants had DSL or cable modem connections.
What we see on this chart is the United States, and we
could have many more countries, but we picked the U.S., Canada,
France, Finland, South Korea, and Japan. The U.S. is trailing,
where the average download speeds in the U.S. now, based on our
survey, is 2.3 megabits per second. This is people who have
broadband. And then you see Japan leading the world in Internet
speeds where the average download speed is 63 megabits per
second. That gap is enormous in terms of what that produces.
And this is the average speed. So in Japan today, 85 percent of
homes are passed by 100 megabit service. In the United States,
it is a small fraction.
Actually with me in the audience--I would just ask him to
stand--Shoji Morishima is the head of our equivalent, the NWJ,
in Japan. And what we have seen in Japan for years is the union
there, the NWJ, partnering with NTT and the government to
promote high speed broadband deployment--this is not an
accident that this happened in Japan. It is because that was
the focus of their public policy.
And more than anything else today, we are here to applaud
really S. 1492 as a beginning. We are the only industrial
country in the world that has no policy in this way, and
whether we talk about South Korea or Finland or France and
Japan, all of them have had public policy for years now not
only to promote broadband, but to define broadband in 21st
century terms. In that regard, we applaud not only the
Committee and the bipartisan support for S. 1492, but Senator
Rockefeller and his resolution for setting goals.
And in our Speed Matters campaign, we have a similar goal,
10 megabits per second passing every American house by 2010. We
are not going to get there unless we have real dramatic action
and now. And again, 10 megabits per second. Look at where we
would be on the chart even with that.
Right now, the only progress we can report in the last year
is that the FCC, with your help, has increased the definition
of broadband from 200 kilobits to 768 kilobits per second. That
happened only this year, again, more than a year into our
campaign and more than a year, as Senator Nelson said, since
this bill S. 1492 was introduced. 768 kilobits, less than
three-quarters of a megabit, and the global standard is
actually 100 megabits per second.
And so part two of Senator Rockefeller's resolution is to
set a standard of 100 megabits per second in both directions
because uploading matters as well. Otherwise, we are only
receiving, we are not sharing. And his resolution would call
for 100 megabits per second by 2015. We need goals like this
and we need the action to bring it about.
How would we do that?
First, as Mr. Ramsey said, public-private partnerships. I
am not going to repeat that. He covered that well.
Actually first I would say is pass S. 1492.
Second, establish the kind of goals that Senator
Rockefeller has talked about.
Third, public-private partnerships.
Fourth, the Universal Service Fund. We need to, in the
future here, look at what we are funding with $6 billion a
year. Dial tone does not need that kind of funding anymore. We
need to take, in our view, the funds from the Universal Service
Fund and focus on high-speed Internet in rural and underserved
urban communities in this country. They are not going to get it
through the market alone.
And finally, as this Committee has discussed before as
well, preserving an open Internet with reasonable network
management.
If we do all these things together, we believe that this
chart could look different at least two or three years from now
and that we are no longer talking about what are other
countries doing, but once again, as we were in the 1990s, we
are talking about what this country is doing and how we are
leading and how we are providing the kind of jobs and
education, telemedicine and the other things that others on
this panel will talk about today for our children, for our
parents, for our communities, for our future. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:]
Prepared Statement of Larry Cohen, President,
Communications Workers of America
Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Senate Commerce
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on why
broadband matters.
I am Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of
America. CWA represents 700,000 workers in communications, media,
airlines, manufacturing and public service. Our members build,
maintain, service, and create the content that travels over our
Nation's vital communications networks. Everyday they see why broadband
matters.
Speed Matters on the Internet
Two years ago CWA launched our Speed Matters campaign. Over these
past 24 months, CWA activists have been spreading the word about why
speed matters on the Internet. We've talked about it at state fairs, in
union halls, before educators and health care professionals and farm
organizations, in dozens of state houses and city council chambers and
state broadband commissions. Everywhere we've gone, people get it.
Speed Matters on the Internet. We've helped move state broadband
initiatives to bring the benefits of this technology to every American
household, business, and community in America.
Now it's time to bring national leadership to this critical issue.
It is long past time for the Senate to adopt S. 1492, the Broadband
Data Improvement Act. This bill would improve Federal broadband data
collection, provide grants to states for broadband mapping and for
public-private partnerships to stimulate supply of and demand for
broadband networks and services. States such as Kentucky, Tennessee,
Ohio, Virginia, Washington, North Carolina, California and others have
demonstrated the effectiveness of such partnerships, but their work is
hampered by state fiscal constraints and the lack of a nationally-
focused effort.\1\ Adopting a national policy to stimulate broadband
subscription where it is already available, and deployment where it is
not, could have dramatic and far-reaching economic impacts, estimated
at more than $134 billion.\2\ A broad-based alliance of 31 groups
representing health care, education, labor, rural and public interest
organizations, telecommunications and cable companies, and trade
associations have joined together to urge Congress to act now to adopt
S. 1492 as a critical first step in moving this Nation forward on a
broadband agenda. (A copy of this letter is attached to my testimony.)
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\1\ States that have adopted the Connected Nation public-private
partnership model include Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, and
South Carolina. Additional states with broadband task forces,
commissions, authorities or reports include Arkansas, California,
Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina,
Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia. For more information on state
programs, see CWA and Alliance for Public Technology, ``State Broadband
Initiatives,'' 2008 (available at http://www.speedmatters.org/
statepolicy)
\2\ Connected Nation found that increased broadband adoption by 7
percent could result in 2.4 million new jobs; $552 million annual
health care savings; $6.4 billion annual savings from unnecessary
driving; $18 million in carbon credits associated with 3.2 billion
fewer pounds of CO2 emissions per years; and $35.2 billion
in 3.8 billion hours saved from accessing broadband at home. Connected
Nation, ``The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally,''
Feb. 2008 (available at http://www.connectednation.org/research/
economic_impact_study/index.php).
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High-speed broadband is the critical infrastructure for the 21st
century. In the same way that railroads, canals, and the postal service
drove economic development in the 19th century, and interstate highways
and universal telephone service helped make us the richest nation on
earth in the 20th century, high-speed broadband networks are the
platform upon which we will grow jobs and our economy in the coming
years. Equally important, advanced networks support innovations in
health care, education, public safety, energy, and public services that
will improve our lives and communities.
U.S. Trails Behind Other Countries
Our nation is falling behind other industrialized countries in the
deployment and adoption of high-speed Internet. You've heard the
statistics. The U.S. has dropped to 15th among the world's advanced
economies in home broadband penetration.\3\ There's a serious digital
divide based on income and geography. Families in rural areas are much
less likely to subscribe to broadband than those living in urban or
suburban communities. And only one-quarter of low-income Americans have
broadband, compared to 85 percent of those at the top of the income
scale.\4\
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\3\ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007
(report available at
http://www.oecd.org/document/54/
0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html). The U.S. ranked 24th in
broadband subscribers among all countries, according to the
International Telecommunications Union, World Telecommunications Data
base 2007 (available At http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/newslog/
ITU+Broadband+Statistics+For+1+January+2005.aspx)
\4\ Fifty-seven percent of urban households and 60 percent of
suburban households subscribe to broadband, compared to only 38 percent
or rural households. Whereas 85 percent of Americans who earn over
$100,000 a year have broadband, only 25 percent of households that earn
less than $20,000 subscribe. Only about one-half (49 percent) of
middle-income families earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year
subscribe to broadband. Pew Internet & American Life Project, ``Home
Broadband Adoption 2008.'' (available at http://www.pewinternet.org/
PPF/r/257/report_display.asp)
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Moreover, we're falling behind our global competitors in the
capacity of our broadband networks. Last month, CWA released the
results of our second annual survey of Internet speeds in all 50
states. You can see the results on the chart--the United States
continues to lag far behind other countries.
According to the survey, the median Internet download speed for the
Nation is 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). Contrast this to Japan, where
the median download speed is 63 megabits per second--30 times faster
than in the U.S., and yet the Japanese pay about the same as we do for
their faster Internet connection. The U.S. also trails South Korea,
Finland, France, Canada, and even Croatia.\5\
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\5\ For international data, see Robert D. Atkinson, Daniel K.
Correa, Julie K. Hedlund, Explaining International Broadband
Leadership, Washington, D.C.: The Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation, May 2008 (available at http://www.itif.org/files/
ExplainingBB
Leadership.pdf). The CWA Speed Matters 2008 report is available at
http://speedmatters.org.
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Equally troubling, the 2008 speed test shows that the median
Internet download speed increased by only four-tenths of one megabit
per second over last year. At this rate of progress, it will take the
U.S. more than 100 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in
Japan.
The CWA report details median Internet download and upload speeds
in every state. But whatever state you live in, your Internet
connection speed likely trails those of residents of our northern
neighbor Canada, a large country with a significant rural population.
Speed Matters for U.S. Economic Growth and Job Creation
Why does speed matter on the Internet? Speed determines what is
possible. I'm talking about more than the speed at which you can
download movies. Job creation, rural development, telemedicine,
distance learning, even solutions to global warming all rely on truly
high-speed, universal networks.
High-speed broadband is essential for economic growth. In a report
prepared for the U.S. Department of Commerce, economists found that
communities with broadband experienced a higher rate of job growth and
new business start-ups than communities without high-speed networks.
Another study of the central Appalachian region found that firms in
communities with broadband were 14 to 17 percent more productive than
those in communities without high-speed Internet access. A Brookings
Institution paper calculated that build-out of broadband infrastructure
to all households would add $500 billion to gross domestic product and
1.2 million additional jobs. Another report warned that the failure to
improve broadband performance could reduce U.S. productivity by 1
percentage point or more per year.\6\
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\6\ William Lehr, Carlos A. Osorio, Sharon E. Gillett, and Marvin
Sirbu, ``Measuring Broadband's Economic Impact,'' U.S. Department of
Commerce, Economic Development Administration (Feb. 2006) (available at
http://www.eda.gov/ImageCache/EDAPublic/documents/pdfdocs2006/
mitcmubbimpactreport_2epdf/v1/rnitcmubbimpactreport.pdf); Mark L.
Burton and Michael J. Hicks, ``The Residential and Commercial Benefits
of Rural Broadband: Evidence from Central Appalachia,'' June 2005,
Paper prepared for the West Virginia Development Office, Center for
Business and Economic Research, Marshall University; R. Crandall and C.
Jackson, ``The $500 Billion Opportunity: The Potential Economic Benefit
of Widespread Diffusion of Broadband Internet Access,'' Criterion
Economics, 2001 (available at www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/broadband/
comments/verizon/ExhibitA.pdf); C. Ferguson, ``The United States
Broadband Problem: Analysis and Recommendations,'' Brookings
Institution Working Paper, 2002 (available at http://www.brookings.edu/
views/papers/ferguson/working_paper_
20020531.pdf)
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Behind these statistics are real stories that people have shared
with our Speed Matters team about the ways in which high-speed Internet
creates economic opportunity and good jobs across our great nation.
Just ask any of the 500 CWA members working at an AT&T call center in
southwestern Virginia, an area suffering from the decline of the coal
and tobacco industries. They'll tell you that building a fiber backbone
to their region was literally a lifeline for themselves and their
families. Or ask Daniel and Karen Fortin of rural northern Vermont, who
told us that their broadband connection allowed them to double their
maple syrup business through Internet marketing and sales. A hog farmer
in Iowa let us know that direct marketing to customers around the globe
using broadband boosted his profit margin. And the owners of several
small businesses in the Appalachian region of southern Ohio told us
that they were able to create 60 new jobs once Connect Ohio's public-
private partnership found a way to bring a high-speed connection to
their industrial park. The examples go on and on . . .
Speed Matters Offers Solutions to High Gas Prices and Global Warming
High-speed broadband also offers opportunities to address our
energy crisis and to save on gas expenses through reduced travel time.
Telehealth, distance learning, teleconferencing, and telecommuting
allow people to learn, work, and receive health care services at home
without getting in their car. One study estimates that widespread
adoption of these broadband applications over 10 years could save the
equivalent of 11 percent of annual U.S. oil imports.\7\ Other nations
and some states and localities are experimenting with the use of smart
meters and electric grids to reduce energy consumption by transmitting
real-time information about energy use over two-way broadband networks.
A statewide pilot project in California found that the information
provided to consumers using smart meters reduced energy bills by 10
percent. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that
investment in smart grid technology, including a modernized high-speed
Internet communications system, would yield a 20-year benefit of
ranging from $638 billion to $802 billion.\8\
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\7\ Joseph P. Fuhr and Stephen B. Pociask, ``Broadband Services:
Economic and Environmental Benefits,'' Oct. 2007 (available at http://
www.internetinnovation.org/Portals/0/Documents/
Final_Green_Benefits.pdf).
\8\ See Report of Governmental Affairs Division, Committee on
Consumer Affairs, New York City Council, Nov. 15, 2006 (available at
http://webdocs.nyccouncil.info/attaehments/75
229.htm); Economic Power Research Institute, ``Power Delivery System of
the Future: A Preliminary Estimate of Costs and Benefits,'' 2006
(available at http://my.epri.com/portal/
server.pt?open=512&objID=210&mode=2&in_hi_userid=2&cached=true).
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Speed Matters for Education and Lifelong Learning
Advanced broadband networks open opportunities for students to
participate in online learning and lifelong education. Almost 3.5
million students take one or more courses online every year, according
to the Sloan Foundation.\9\ Many of these are non-traditional
students--working parents, employees who want to advance their careers,
or unemployed adults entering the work force. They find the convenience
of online learning allows them to take courses without the conflicts of
child care, busy schedules, or non-traditional work hours. Online
learners who have two-way, video connections carried over truly high-
speed broadband can participate in class discussions and ask questions
in real-time, creating a virtual classroom experience. States such as
New Jersey and Texas have used Federal job training monies to help low-
income adults gain new skills through online coursework.\10\ CWA offers
online education and training programs in three areas--
telecommunications, digital media, and criminal justice. Our CWA/NETT
Academy, as we call it, allows our members to meet new technical
requirements and branch into new areas of study in rapidly-changing
industries so they can succeed in their careers. As the quality of U.S.
broadband networks improves, our university partners are able to
provide ever-more engaging interactive, multi-media learning
experiences for our members.\11\
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\9\ The Sloan Consortium of Institutions and Organizations
Committed to Quality Online Education (available at http://www.sloan-
c.org/)
\10\ Dr. Mary Gatt, ``The New Digital Divide for Workforce
Development Policy: Broadband Access and Skills Training,'' Sloan
Center on Innovative Training and Workforce Development, Center for
Women and Work, Rutgers University, 2006 (available at http://www.itwd
.rutgers.edu/mainPages/index.htm).
\11\ For more information, see CWA/Nett Academy at http://
www.cwanett.org.
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The U.S. Must Adopt a National Broadband Policy
The United States is the only industrial nation without a national
broadband policy to promote high-speed broadband. There are a number of
bold but specific steps that the U.S. should take to recover our lost
leadership and competitive position to ensure that all residents
benefit from affordable, high-speed Internet access.
First, we must improve our broadband data collection. The Federal
Communications Commission took a first step earlier this year,
requiring all carriers to report the number of broadband subscribers at
the census tract level by technology type and upload and download
speed. Now, the Commission is considering reporting requirements on
broadband infrastructure.
S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act, would fill in
important gaps in the Commission's broadband data collection. For
example, the bill would require the Commission to analyze demographic
information in areas without broadband and report on international
broadband comparisons; it would require the Census Bureau to collect
detailed information about broadband prices, technology, applications,
and subscription in its annual consumer survey; and it would require
the Government Accounting Office to study best practices for reporting
broadband price, speed, and other critical issues.
As I noted earlier, S. 1492 would also authorize a program of
grants to states to conduct broadband mapping and fund initiatives to
stimulate broadband adoption where it is available, and deployment
where it is not. In Kentucky, such a program resulted in a three-year
increase in broadband availability from 60 percent to 95 percent of
households.\12\ CWA members sit on a number of state broadband
commissions, and know first-hand the fiscal limitations those bodies
face in moving forward with their work. I strongly urge Congress to
pass S.1492 this session to improve our knowledge base on broadband
deployment and adoption, and to assist states in their important
efforts.
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\12\ Information on Connect Kentucky available at http://
www.connectkentucky.org.
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Looking ahead, CWA supports a number of other policies to stimulate
broadband deployment and adoption. First, we must establish a national
policy goal. CWA recommends we set a two tiered goal of build-out of
networks with enough capacity for 10 megabits per second downstream and
1 megabit per second upstream by 2010, and capable of delivering 100
megabits per second in both directions by 2015, as proposed by Senator
Rockefeller in S. Res. 191. Second, we need to reform our universal
service system to support affordable high-speed Internet for all.
Third, we should adopt policies that spur deployment of faster, second-
generation networks through tax incentives and low-interest loans.
Fourth, we should support demand-stimulation programs that fund grants
for community-based public-interest broadband applications and
services, digital literacy programs, and provision of free and low-cost
computers to low-income households. Finally, we must preserve an open
Internet, subject to reasonable network management. In all these
initiatives, we must continue to safeguard consumers and promote good
career jobs for workers in the industry.
I want to conclude with a story that captures how Speed Matters can
erase the barriers of time and distance to improve lives. This past
summer, Marine Lance Corporal Michael Cintron was 6,000 miles away from
home when his wife Jeanine gave birth to his son. Cintron was able to
watch the birth over a four-hour webcast from Maimonides Medical Center
in Brooklyn, New York. As reported in the New York Daily News, this
soldier stationed in Iraq heard the baby's heartbeat and got to see his
son in New York even before the birth mother, as they put the webcam up
to the side of the baby. (A copy of the article is attached)
This is the power of broadband. It's up to us to make sure that
every American has access to the power of this technology. Speed
Matters.
Thank you.
Attachment A
July 11, 2008
Hon. Daniel K. Inouye,
Chairman,
Senate Commerce Committee,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Ted Stevens,
Vice Chairman,
Senate Commerce Committee,
Washington, DC.
Hon. John D. Dingell,
Chairman,
House Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Joe Barton,
Ranking Member,
House Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Inouye, Vice Chairman Stevens, Chairman Dingell and
Ranking Member Barton:
The undersigned organizations write to express our strong support
for Congressional action to promote greater availability and adoption
of broadband high-speed Internet services.
The leading bills pending before Congress (S. 1492, the Broadband
Data Improvement Act and H.R. 3919, the Broadband Census of America Act
of 2007) would improve information-gathering about current broadband
deployment and assist in targeting resources to areas in need of such
services. A recent FCC order requires more focused broadband data
collection from broadband providers but does not address other
important broadband mapping elements contained in the pending
legislation.
We believe Congress should adopt legislation this year that
provides Federal Government support for state initiatives using public-
private partnerships to identify gaps in broadband coverage and to
develop both the supply of and demand for broadband in those areas. The
ability to accelerate deployment and adoption by bringing together
government, broadband providers, business, labor, farm organizations,
librarians, educators, and consumer groups in public-private
partnerships is greater than the ability of these diverse players
standing alone.
Adopting a national policy to stimulate subscription where it is
already available, and deployment where it is not, could have dramatic
and far-reaching economic impacts. For example, a Connected Nation
study released February 2008 estimated the total annual economic impact
of accelerating broadband across the Nation to be more than $134
billion. In addition to the $134 billion total benefit, the study found
that increasing broadband adoption by another 7 percent could result
in:
$92 billion through an additional 2.4 million jobs per year
created or retained;
$662 million saved per year in reduced healthcare costs;
$6.4 billion per year in mileage savings from unnecessary
driving;
$18 million in carbon credits associated with 3.2 billion
fewer pounds of CO2 emissions per year in the United
States; and
$35.2 billion in value from 3.8 billion more hours saved per
year from accessing broadband at home.
We cannot afford to let another year go by without adopting
policies that will stimulate the economy in such ways, while expanding
use of the networks that are already deployed and providing broadband
in previously underserved areas. That is why we urge you to work in a
bipartisan, bicameral way to enact Federal legislation this year.
Thank you for your timely consideration of this important issue.
Sincerely,
AT&T
Alliance for Public Technology
American Association of People with Disabilities
American Library Association
Cablevision
Charter Communications
The Children's Partnership
Comcast
Communications Workers of America
Connected Nation
Cox Communications
EDUCAUSE
Embarq
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
Internet Innovation Alliance
NIC, Inc.
National Cable and Telecommunications Association
National Farmers Union
The National Grange
National Rural Health Association
Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small
Telecommunications Companies
Qwest
Time Warner Cable
U.S. Cattlemen's Association
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
United States Telecom Association
Verizon
Western Telecommunications Association
Windstream
Attachment B
New York Daily News Writers--Thursday, July 10, 2008, 4.58 PM
Marine sees birth, thanks to 6,000-mile Web hookup
By Jenny Merkin and Owen Moritz
He was 6,000 miles from Brooklyn, but Marine Lance Cpl. Michael
Cintron got a glimpse of his newborn son before his wife did.
``Hi. I'm your daddy,'' Cintron announced to his minutes-old son.
``Look, your nose is squishy.''
In a remarkable four-hour Web cast from a maternity ward at
Maimonides Medical Center, mom Jeannine Cintron's delivery of son
Michael James Cintron was beamed clear across ocean and land to his 26-
year-old father in Iraq.
The baby weighed in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces and the new dad weighed
in with a fatherly shriek: ``Look! He's looking at me!''
In Maimonides' first ever video conference of a baby delivery,
Cintron first heard the baby's heartbeat.
``What's that knocking sound I hear,'' laughed the Staten Island
native.
Then the camera followed as Jeannine was wheeled into an operating
room to undergo a C-section on Tuesday. That's when the Marine got to
see the baby emerging from his wife's womb.
``He got to see our son first from 6,000 miles away,'' Jeannine
marveled. ``He actually saw the baby before I did. They put the Webcam
up to the side with the baby.''
The video conference was initiated by a nonprofit organization
called Freedom Calls, which arranged with Maimonides for covering
little Michael's birth.
The proud parents were still in a state of disbelief Wednesday, not
only about the birth of their first child, but the electronic wizardry
that gave dad a real-time maternity room experience.
``This is surreal,'' Jeannine said. ``I didn't expect this. I feel
so blessed. There are so many women in my situation that don't have
this.
``I didn't know what I was in for,'' she added. ``It's only my
first baby.''
``Pretty much throughout my entire pregnancy, I was most sad about
doing it [birth] by myself,'' she went on. ``Delivering by myself was
horrifying. No, he couldn't hold my hand, but he was there for hours.''
Jeannine, 25, who works in sales for Clear Channel and hails from
Sheepshead Bay, and Michael, 26, a sanitation worker from Staten Island
assigned to First Supply Battalion S6, were married last year.
The couple found out Michael was going to Iraq only a few weeks
after they learned Jeannine was pregnant.
``I think I'll keep him [the baby],'' the ecstatic mom said.
For more information on how to donate to the Freedom Calls
Foundation, visit www.freedomcalls.org
The Chairman. I thank you very much.
I would like to advise the panel that their full statements
will be made part of the record, and if you wish to add, please
feel free to do so.
Next we have Mr. Jonathan Linkous.
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN D. LINKOUS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
AMERICAN TELEMEDICINE ASSOCIATION
Mr. Linkous. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here as the CEO
of the American Telemedicine Association. We are a national and
international organization composed of physicians, hospitals,
providers of health care, as well as telecommunications
companies and others around the country, around the world that
are providing telemedicine to patients no matter where they
live.
My thoughts on broadband this morning are really shaped
around my own personal experience. I came to Washington, D.C.
working with the Appalachian Regional Commission. My mom and
dad were both born in the Appalachian Region and suffered from
the isolation. When President Johnson started the Appalachian
Commission, we realized the Federal Government could best help
those people by building a highway system and opening up the
isolation of Appalachia by building those highways to give them
access to education and jobs and health care. The highways of
today are communication lines, and it is just as important to
provide high-speed telecommunications, broadband, to open up
the isolation of a lot of Americans, no matter where they live.
Twenty years ago, telemedicine was largely composed of
federally funded grants and demonstrations that provided access
to rural clinics linking them together with the major hospital
systems. A good example is what we have certainly in Hawaii, as
well as Alaska, and pretty much every state in the country. We
now have about 200 hospital-based networks reaching out to
3,000 sites across America.
The rural health care program, as part of the
Telecommunications Act that was established by Senator
Rockefeller and Senator Snowe, has certainly been a tremendous
help to establishing these hub and spoke networks. The program
probably should be revisited and expanded as we are today, but
nevertheless, it is really vital to those people that have it.
And no other state has benefited more, I might add, than the
state of Alaska, which has had tremendous access to those
programs and has shown really what can be done.
But having built those networks, we now need to ensure that
their interconnections are available on a continuous basis,
that we have the broadband networks that connect them, as well
as to the patients that they serve.
The second stage of telemedicine is moving into the home.
We now have about 80,000 Americans that are receiving their
vital signs directly into their home, transmitting those to
health care professionals, people with chronic diseases who are
being managed and monitored on a daily basis. As a matter of
fact, people with cardiac devices or with the heart-implantable
pacemakers--there are almost a million Americans that are now
having those monitored remotely using telecommunications lines.
Many of these are based on plain old telephone service, but we
have new emerging applications that are now going to require
broadband.
So today, we are entering really the third stage of
telemedicine that moves beyond the hospitals and clinics and
even moves beyond the home. And these are using applications
that are being developed actually by the patients themselves
and by the doctors. They allow users to track their own vital
signs, to go on a weight loss diet, to track for drug
interactions.
A good example is the new iPhone that was introduced this
year now has over 100 applications dealing with health care.
The number one health care application is something called
Hippocrates, which your physician might use if you go there to
have your drug interaction checked with other drugs. Now
consumers are downloading it into their own phone and using it
themselves.
There are a lot of other applications that allow doctors to
use cell phones to transmit medical MRIs or other types of
images. They will send tissue samples by video or single images
using the phone lines to pathologists. It is kind of amazing
what is going on.
Online video game support like Second Life now has major
support groups for diabetes, alcoholics, people with various
types of diseases. And it is really expanding as a part of
health care.
I would like to share a personal story to really illustrate
what this broadband has meant to people and really starting
very personally, my own sister Diana. She was diagnosed with
stage 3 breast cancer, and she is 60 years old. She lives
alone. She is about 30 miles outside of Washington in a rural
area. And since getting her diagnosis, Diana has relied on
access to the outside world via telecommunications. She has no
car. She is very isolated where she is.
She looks up the complicated terms that her doctors give
her by going on the Internet. She logs into the American Cancer
Society site to find out what types of applications and where
she can go. She relies on friends that she has developed
through her own online community as part of the video
activities that she is involved in, which is now her personal
support group. She has an online blog in an effort to reach out
to others, and she even uses the Internet site to occasionally
order groceries from a delivery firm.
Broadband has allowed my sister to get help with her health
care. It has certainly reduced her costs for what she has. And
it has improved her life. I would say broadband is my sister's
lifeline and it is extremely important for her well-being.
This is what I call telemedicine 3.0. It is where we are
today for some Americans, but not all Americans.
Other countries, as the previous testifier just mentioned,
have had a lot more experience and progress than we have. I
note that Canada and several Scandinavian countries have
established specific national goals. Certainly Japan has done
an excellent job, and Korea. I was just in Korea 2 months ago
looking at their system, and I was very impressed with what
they have been able to do.
But we are finding actually even countries in Africa have
leapt ahead of the United States in terms of providing cell
phone wireless applications and broadband deployment. And they
are having access to certain applications that are own citizens
do not have these days.
So it is really important whether someone is living in the
remote islands of Hawaii or if they are living in a remote area
of Alaska, if they are on the plains of west Texas, or even if
they are downtown in Washington and isolated at home, if they
are homebound, they all need access to the communications, all
need access to the services just the way my mom and dad did in
Appalachia. So we cannot concentrate on building concrete and
blacktop everywhere, but we can use telecommunications to open
up their lives. So I think that should be a priority for this
Congress, as well as the next Congress and the next
Administration.
So finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your
support over the years for the expansion of telemedicine and
the support of other Members of this Committee. It has really
benefited for what we have, and I think the future holds even
more promises. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Linkous follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jonathan D. Linkous, Chief Executive Officer,
American Telemedicine Association
Mr. Chairman:
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to this Committee about
the importance of broadband networks for healthcare. I am the CEO of
American Telemedicine Association. ATA promotes telemedicine, sometimes
called telehealth or telecare, and resolves barriers to its deployment.
Members of ATA include physicians, administrators and other health
providers as well as hospital networks and suppliers of
telecommunications and technology used in telemedicine.
My thoughts on broadband are shaped by my personal experience. My
mother and father were born and raised in Appalachia. So, it's no
surprise that when I came to Washington, D.C. in 1975, I went to work
for the Appalachian Regional Commission. At the Commission, I learned
the importance of opening up isolated rural communities by the
construction of a networked highway system throughout the Appalachian
Mountains providing access to education, jobs and health care. The
highways of today are located providing healthcare through
telecommunications technology on the wired and wireless communications
lines that open up the isolation of Americans, no matter where they
live.
For the last two decades telemedicine has been evolving in stages.
Each stage has dramatically changed the way we get healthcare and
changed the need for broadband networks.
Twenty years ago telemedicine was largely composed of federally
funded demonstration grants and small projects that connected large
hospitals with rural clinics to provide access to basic medical
services and specialty care where it wasn't previously available. Since
then, these first stage initiatives blossomed into 200 hospital-based
networks reaching out to over 3,000 sites across America. The rural
healthcare program established by Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay
Rockefeller in the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act targeted the
growth of these hub-and-spoke networks. Although the program has been
smaller than originally expected, for Americans living in some of the
most remote parts of the country it has allowed them access to
healthcare. Having built these networks, we now need to ensure their
use by interconnecting them and ensuring we have affordable broadband
services to all healthcare centers as well as having physicians fully
reimbursed when they use telemedicine to provide care.
The second stage of telemedicine provides healthcare directly into
the home through the use of remote monitoring for those with chronic
ailments. Today, almost 80,000 Americans are having their vital signs
remotely monitored by a healthcare professional, helping them to manage
their disease and providing an early warning for any complications.
Over a million patients are using home-based remote monitoring for
their heart rhythms or check up on their pacemakers. This is saving
thousands of lives and saving millions of dollars by keeping people out
of emergency rooms, hospitals and nursing homes and allowing them to
stay in their own homes and communities.
Because many of these home based monitoring services use plain old
telephone service for their connections, for several years I was not
convinced that broadband connections to the home was a priority for
telemedicine.
However, today, we are entering the third stage of telemedicine,
moving beyond the walls of hospitals and clinics and even beyond the
home. In many cases, this is a consumer-based initiative, piggybacking
on popular PC programs and using cell phones to help the patients help
themselves. In fact, these remote healthcare applications are often
designed and developed by patients and caregivers. They allow users to
track their own vital signs, get information about drug interactions or
start on a weight loss diet. There are already over 100 health-related
applications available for download just for the new Apple iPhone.
Other applications allow physicians to use their new cell phones to
look at diagnostic images such as an MRI or transmit images of tissue
samples to pathologists. Online and video game support groups for
patients have exploded. There are active healthcare support groups in
the video game Second Life dealing with alcoholism, diabetes, and
domestic violence among others. These are not novelty applications.
They are an emerging part of healthcare delivery around the world and
it is having a major impact on how our life and children's lives are
lived.
I want to share a personal story to illustrate the impact of this
stage of telemedicine. About 3 months ago, my sister, Diana, was
diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. She is over 60, lives alone,
without a car, about 30 miles outside of Washington, D.C. Since getting
her diagnosis, Diana has relied on her access to the outside world via
telecommunications in a variety of ways. She looks up the complicated
terms used by her doctors using the Internet and logs on to the
American Cancer Society's site to find out about the latest advances in
treatment. She relies on friends she developed and communicates with
through an online community as part of her own personal support group.
She has started an online blog in an effort to reach out to others. She
uses an Internet site to occasionally order groceries from a local
delivery firm. Broadband has allowed my sister to access help for her
health. It has certainly reduced her costs. And, it has improved her
life. Broadband is my sister's lifeline.
This is telemedicine 3.0 and it's a reason why we need to ensure
all citizens of the U.S. have access to broadband communications no
matter where they live and no matter where they travel.
Other countries, notably Canada and several Scandinavian countries
have established specific national goals toward universal deployment of
high speed telecommunications. Even underdeveloped nations are leaping
ahead of the United States in deploying wireless broadband. Congress
and the next administration should establish goals to ensure the
availability of broadband telecommunications to every business, every
home and every citizen in America.
Whether someone is living on a remote island of Hawaii or on the
plains of west Texas or in an urban area living homebound and alone,
they are just as isolated as the people living in the hollows of
Appalachia. We can't use concrete or blacktop to build highways to
everyone but we can use telecommunications to open up their isolation
and help them build a better life.
Finally, I want to thank the Chairman for your strong support and
your leadership over the years in getting important legislation passed
that has helped the deployment of telemedicine. I will be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
May I now call on Dr. Mayor?
STATEMENT OF MARA MAYOR, Ph.D., MEMBER,
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, AARP
Dr. Mayor. Chairman Inouye, Members of the Commerce
Committee, I am honored to appear here before you this morning
on behalf of AARP to provide our perspective on the question of
why broadband matters.
I am Mara Mayor from Bethesda, Maryland and a member of
AARP's Board of Directors. In my professional career as an
educator, I have focused on extending learning opportunities,
particularly to adults, in both formal and informal settings,
especially through the creative uses of technologies.
Broadband matters to AARP's 40 million members. High
quality broadband networks have the potential to make the world
more accessible to people over age 50 and, in turn, to enable
them to contribute in many ways.
Let me just touch on three key areas where broadband can
make a major difference: livable communities, work
opportunities, and lifelong learning.
Creating livable communities is an important policy goal
for AARP. Livable communities seek to combine diverse and
affordable housing, adequate mobility options, employment
opportunities, entertainment, and supportive services that
allow people of all ages to remain independent, active, and
engaged. Livable communities are connected communities. We tend
to think of community in terms of the immediate neighborhood,
but in fact, our definition is being transformed by broadband
to include not only the people down the block, but groups of
like-minded people who may live anywhere.
While all have a fundamental need to connect with one
another, staying connected is particularly important for older
adults, and we need to abandon our outdated image of older
adults. Most, regardless of chronological age, are vibrant and
eager to live well and enjoy life. They often find that the
later years present more potential opportunities for enhanced
working, learning, and social contact than ever before. And
with the 50-plus population projected to increase by 21 percent
by 2020, which is around the corner, and those over 65 growing
by 33 percent, all communities need to find ways to keep this
growing population connected and productive.
Connectivity also makes it easier, as you have just heard
from Mr. Linkous, to monitor and maintain our health.
Telemedicine, support monitoring devices, interactive video,
and home health care all become more viable options for
consumers with broadband in their home and particularly benefit
those with limited mobility or not well enough to travel.
AARP views broadband Internet technology as the 21st
century bridge and facilitator for enhanced connectivity and
successful aging. It believes that the goal of Federal policy
should be to ensure sufficient or requisite connectivity, which
has been defined as maintaining contact at the rate, richness,
and intensity that we desire for a given task or social
outcome.
High quality broadband networks will help many older
Americans achieve that requisite connectivity. Broadband allows
for greater information carrying capacity and speed than
earlier networks and really equally important, enables real-
time interaction and more precise, expressive communication
almost of the kind that you have a in a face-to-face, in-person
meeting. With it, we can have livable communities with people
staying in their homes, which we know is where they want to be,
in which we are truly connected.
Creating work opportunities is a second area where access
to broadband can make a huge difference. Many of AARP's 50-plus
members are still active in the work force, and they find
telecommuting very attractive with the high-speed broadband
connection. Trends indicate that people will work much longer
as they continue to mature. Access to broadband makes it easier
to have flexible work schedules, to work part-time where that
is appropriate, to take on consulting, and most important to
continue to earn a living.
And in addition, access to affordable broadband can make
telecommuting an option for volunteer work which is so
important to our nonprofit institutions and the millions they
serve.
A third key area of importance to people over 50 is access
to distance learning. Years ago, I was Director of something
called the Annenberg Projects at the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, and in those days--it was the early 1990s--we
pioneered technology-based distance learning which initially
meant using television and radio to reach people.
And then with the Internet came the possibility for true
interactivity between faculty and students and among students.
With broadband, distance learning can occur at convenient times
and places and with greater visual enhancement than previously
available, especially for those with jobs or disabilities or
family care responsibilities that make it difficult for them to
travel to a classroom. Lifelong learning is important in so
many ways. It keeps us mentally stimulated, opens new doors,
and enables us to keep our skills and knowledge base relevant
in a high-tech world. Again, broadband is the key.
However, despite the bright promise of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, as well as know, universal
access has not been fully realized. Simply put, the digital
divide for older Americans remains far too wide in just two
statistics. Only 50 percent of adults aged 50 to 64 and 19
percent of those 65 and older have broadband in their home, and
only 38 percent of rural adults have broadband at home compared
to 57 percent for urban adults and 60 percent for suburban
adults. We have to do better. A new public policy toward
broadband is needed to stimulate the development of universally
available, affordable, and high-quality broadband.
AARP would encourage Congress to pass broadband mapping
legislation. Senate bill 1492 and House-passed legislation 3919
will help local communities and States assess their broadband
inventory. Broadband mapping will collect accurate data that
demonstrate current deployment, forecast deployment milestones,
and identify areas where follow up measures are required. The
information that these bills provide is extremely important
and, as you all know, is needed now.
Mr. Chairman, helping people aged 50 and older stay
connected, informed, and engaged is central to AARP's
commitment to its members. The potential of affordable
broadband technology can greatly enhance the ability of older
Americans to remain independent, in their homes, in their
communities, work longer in settings that are supportive, and
continue to learn and grow.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you this
morning.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Mayor follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mara Mayor, Ph.D., Member,
Board of Directors, AARP
Chairman Inouye, Ranking Member Hutchison, and Members of the
Commerce Committee, I am Mara Mayor from Bethesda, Maryland. I am a
member of AARP's Board of Directors. I am honored to appear before the
Committee this morning on behalf of AARP \1\ to provide our perspective
on the question of ``Why Broadband Matters.''
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\1\ AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that
helps people age 50+ maintain independence, choice, and control in ways
that are beneficial and affordable to them and to society as a whole.
With 40 million members, it is the largest organization representing
the interests of Americans age 50 and older and their families.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Broadband matters to AARP Members. High-quality broadband networks
have the potential to make the world more accessible to persons over
age 50, providing convenient pathways to the economic and social
activities that are not only vital for leading comfortable and
meaningful lives, but also for fostering and sustaining livable
communities. Creating livable communities is an important policy goal
for AARP. More than just a concept, livable communities seek to combine
diverse and affordable housing, adequate mobility options, employment
opportunities, entertainment and supportive community services to allow
persons of all ages to remain independent, active and engaged.
Livable communities are connected communities. While all people
have a fundamental need to connect with one another and be part of a
broader community, staying connected is particularly important for
older adults. ``Gerontologists identify active engagement with life,
which involves continued involvement with productive activities and
maintenance of social ties, as a critical component of successful
aging.'' \2\ Older adults often find that later life presents more
potential opportunities for enhanced working, learning and social
contact than ever before. And with the age 50 and older population
projected to increase by 21 percent by 2020, and those over 65 growing
by 33 percent, all communities need to find ways to keep this large and
growing senior population connected and engaged.\3\
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\2\ Rowe, J.W., Kahn, R.L. (1988), Successful Aging, New York:
Random House, define successful aging as the ability to maintain three
key behaviors or characteristics: (1) low risk of disease and disease
related disability, (2) high mental and physical function, and (3)
active engagement with life.
\3\ Beyond 50.05: A Report to the Nation on Livable Communities,
``Creating Environments for Successful Aging.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AARP views broadband Internet technology as the 21st century bridge
and facilitator for enhanced connectivity and successful aging.
Available and affordable broadband can overcome many critical
limitations for older users that are inherent in current communications
technology. Communicating through telephone calls or e-mails does not
involve the physical presence that occurs with in-person meeting and
thus does not convey visual and physical cues, such as facial features
or body language, that not only enrich conversations, but convey
critical information. For example, doctors trying to diagnose or treat
a patient by telephone would not benefit from important visual cues,
such as the grimace of a patient in pain or the lack of eye contact
from a depressed patient. E-mails are often open to misinterpretation
because of the inherent difficulty in conveying emotion or tone in
written communication. In addition, sending an e-mail does not
guarantee an immediate response, making it an ineffective tool for
communicating urgent or emergency messages.
All persons should have the means to stay connected to an extent
that ensures independence and quality of life. In this regard, the goal
of Federal policy should be one of assuring sufficient or requisite
connectivity: which is ``the state of having robust and reliable
communication and/or transportation modes, with operable alternative
work-around options, so that contact may be initiated or maintained at
the rate, richness, and intensity that we desire for a given task or
social outcome.''
High-quality broadband networks will help many older Americans
achieve ``requisite connectivity''. Broadband allows for greater
information-carrying capacity and speed than earlier networks and
enables real-time interaction and more precise, expressive
communication, almost of the kind that can occur during an in-person,
face-to-face meeting.\4\
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\4\ AARP Public Policy Institute, Connecting for Successful Aging:
Promoting Broadband for the Opportunities and Challenges of Later Life,
Chris A. Baker.
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Telemedicine, support monitoring devices, interactive video and
home health care all become more viable options for consumers with
broadband, particularly persons with limited mobility or those not well
enough to travel. In a recent survey of Older Americans age 65 and
over, 98 percent of respondents agree that they like to know as much as
they can about their health conditions regardless of their demographic
characteristics. Furthermore, almost all (96 percent) of respondents
agreed they would like to help their doctor monitor their health. More
than a majority of respondents agreed they wish their doctor had a
device that allows him/her to perform a variety of standard
telepharmacy tasks such as checking medication history, prescription
drug benefits, insurance coverage of specific medications and
electronic forwarding of prescriptions to their pharmacy to be filled
before travel for pick-up.\5\
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\5\ AARP ``Healthy @Home'', Knowledge Management. Linda L. Barrett,
Ph.D.
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Distance learning is not only facilitated with broadband, but can
be conducted with greater personal convenience and with greater visual
enhancement than previously available. This is especially true for
persons with jobs, disabilities or family care responsibilities that
make it difficult to travel to a classroom.
Many of AARP's age 50+ members are still active in the workforce
and find telecommuting very attractive with a high-speed broadband
connection. Trends indicate that people will work much longer as they
continue to mature:
According to an AARP study on work and careers, 69 percent
of workers age 45 to 74 plan to work in some capacity during
their retirement years.
Many, however, want to work on different terms, with more
flexibility and autonomy, than they did during their earlier
careers.
In fact, 70 percent of workers age 45 to 74 say they are
looking for ways to better balance their work and personal
lives, and 41 percent report that the ability to work from home
is an absolutely essential part of their ideal job.\6\
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\6\ AARP ``Healthy @Home''.
Not only can affordable access to broadband Internet make
telecommuting a more realistic option for older workers, it can enhance
opportunities for volunteer work as well. For organizations facing
shortages of volunteers, virtual volunteer with broadband technology
will allow greater numbers of people with time constraints, physical
limitation or home care obligations to engage in needed charitable
activities with organizations in their own communities and around the
world.
Where broadband is widely available, innovative uses of
videoconferencing can provide older consumers with unlimited
opportunities to expand their civic and social ties and enrich their
lives.
However, despite the bright promise of the Telecommunications Act
of 1996, universal access of advanced telecommunications services has
not been fully realized. With all of the research and potential
benefits of high-quality broadband Internet technology, our Nation that
invented the Internet is losing its place as a leader in the deployment
of broadband Internet technology. Simply put, the digital divide for
older Americans remains far too wide:
Thirty-eight percent of rural adults have broadband at home,
as compared with 57 percent for urban adults, and 60 percent
for suburban adults.
Twenty-five percent of households with income under $20,000
per year have broadband at home, as compared to 85 percent of
households with income greater than $100,000 per year.
Fifty percent of adults age 50 to 64 and 19 percent of those
65 and older have broadband in their home.\7\
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\7\ AARP ``Aging in Internet Time--Harnessing the Benefits of
Broadband for Older Americans''.
A new public policy toward broadband is needed to stimulate the
development of universally available, affordable and high-quality
broadband.
A new public policy for broadband deployment should incorporate the
following principles:
1. Greater promotion of broadband adoption, especially among
the older and underserved populations;
2. Promotion of open and standardized broadband platforms;
3. Transparency and accountability that ensures the collection
and public reporting of timely and accurate data on the quality
of the broadband technology being deployed, the prices at which
the broadband technology is available, and the interoperability
of networks and technologies; and
4. Increased use of broadband mapping to ensure the efficient
utilization of resources to achieve rapid advance of broadband
deployment.\8\
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\8\ AARP ``Aging in Internet Time''.
AARP encourages Congress to pass broadband mapping legislation.
Senate bill 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act passed by this
Committee and House-passed legislation H.R. 3919, the Broadband Census
of America of 2007, will help local communities and states assess their
broadband inventory. Broadband mapping will collect accurate data that
demonstrate current broadband deployment, forecast deployment
milestones and identify areas where follow-up measures are required.
The information that these bills provide is extremely important and is
needed now if all American are to realize the promise of broadband
technology.
Mr. Chairman, helping people age 50 and older stay connected,
informed and engaged is central to AARP's work of encouraging positive
social change and fostering more livable communities. The potential and
possibilities of affordable broadband technology are unlimited.
Increased broadband deployment can greatly enhance the ability of older
Americans to remain independent in their communities, providing
convenient access to the services and activities they need to address
the complexities of aging and lead more comfortable and meaningful
lives.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
May I now call upon the Missouri State Librarian, Ms.
Conroy?
STATEMENT OF MARGARET M. CONROY, MISSOURI STATE
LIBRARIAN, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION (ALA)
Ms. Conroy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the
Committee. It is with great pleasure that I submit this
testimony on behalf of the American Library Association, the
ALA. I am Margaret Conroy. I am the State Librarian of the
State of Missouri, and I am also a member of ALA, which is the
oldest and largest library association in the world.
Today I am here to talk with you about the importance of
broadband Internet in libraries and to share with you how the
residents of the ``Show Me'' state are using broadband through
their public libraries.
Some had predicted that the rise of the Internet would lead
to the demise of the public library, but as Missouri native
Mark Twain wrote, ``Reports of my death are greatly
exaggerated.'' Libraries are very lively places and they are at
the forefront of the information age. By providing Internet
access to the general public, libraries have become the social
and economic hubs of their communities. They are often the only
place Internet access is provided in their community, and
especially now during difficult economic times, use is growing
ever higher. Broadband technologies play an increasingly vital
role in enabling public libraries to provide their essential
services.
Current research shows that while computer use has
increased substantially, many homes still do not have computers
or Internet access. Libraries are working to close this digital
divide. Nationwide 73 percent of all public libraries report
they are the only provider of no-fee Internet access in their
communities, and this statistic rises to 83 percent in rural
areas.
How do our patrons use the Internet? 78 percent of
libraries reported that education resources and data bases
purchased for K-12 students are their most important service,
followed closely by job hunting and e-government services and
information.
Librarians can also share with you many stories about how
libraries are increasingly involved with emergency preparedness
and disaster recovery in conjunction with local and State
governments. For example, residents of Marble Hill flocked to
their library this spring to file FEMA paperwork when their
homes were flooded. Even though the library had also been
flooded by the rise of a local creek, it remained open to
provide access for their distressed residents in Marble Hill.
Some other stories, from a librarian in Nevada, Missouri. I
have been moved when I helped a wife who needed to instant
message her husband in Iraq or a grandmother who, for the first
time, saw her grandchild on the Internet, or a child who needed
to find a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech. None of these people
have computers in their homes.
From McDonald County, which is down by the Arkansas border:
During a 3-hour period last week, I encountered five different
languages at one time, helped Somali refugees fill out
citizenship forms, observed online college courses being taken,
and helped an older gentleman send an e-mail to his son in the
military in Japan.
From Wright County: In our rural community, the only public
access to broadband is the library. Business people come in to
research and order products because it takes them less time to
use the library's connection than it does to use the connection
at their businesses.
From Warrensburg: The Social Security office in Warrensburg
closed last year. Connections are faster at the library, so
they can assist those who cannot travel the 30 miles to the
nearest Social Security office or those who have no computer or
decent connection speed at home.
From Morgan County: People come in to apply for jobs online
on a weekly basis. More local companies, as well as chains like
Target, Lowes, and WalMart now require online job applications.
Truckers are even applying for jobs online now.
From Columbia, Missouri: We are opening our computer
training lab on Friday mornings for Refugee and Immigration
Services to help their clients. We also have added a special
time each week in the computer training center to help people
with online job applications and resume writing. This is in
addition to normal classes and partnering with AARP to provide
electronic tax filing for senior citizens and low-income
members of the community.
From Oregon County: Internet access means that our local
college students can work online, communicate with their
professors, e-mail their assignments, take classes, and compete
on a level playing field with students from metropolitan areas.
You can see from just these examples why librarians well
understand the essential nature of the importance of broadband.
Not only have librarians embraced the digital age, we also
maintain our more traditional services, services that are now
in ever greater demand because technology has made them better
known and easier to share.
While our efforts to enhance Internet connectivity have
been incredibly rewarding, we need to do more. 57 percent of
public libraries report that their broadband connections are
inadequate to serve growing demand. Broadband needs for a
library are not the same as for home users. Libraries support
simultaneous multiple users both in the building and people
connecting from home or their offices. In Missouri, we are
lucky to have MOREnet which helps provide Internet connectivity
for public education in libraries. And you can read more about
MOREnet in my written testimony.
Libraries across the country truly appreciate the foresight
of this committee in originating the E-rate discount program.
Thank you so much. The E-rate program has been an incredibly
valuable resource that enables many libraries to afford
telecommunications and Internet services. The program is
working. Without the E-rate, many of our libraries could just
not afford the levels of connectivity that they need.
There are some adjustments to the program that would
encourage increased library participation that we have proposed
to the FCC, and we hope that the commission will move forward
on our recommendations in the near future.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot say strongly enough how indebted we
are to your leadership and to this Committee for the enormous
progress we have made in the last decade. On behalf of the
American Library Association and the libraries in the State of
Missouri, we look forward to working closely with you in
addressing the issues of expanding broadband deployment and
meeting the telecommunications needs of all Americans. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Conroy follows:]
Prepared Statement of Margaret M. Conroy, Missouri State Librarian, on
Behalf of the American Library Association (ALA)
Chairman Inouye, Ranking Member Hutchison, Members of the
Committee, it is with great pleasure that I submit this testimony on
behalf of the American Library Association (ALA). My name is Margaret
Conroy, and I am the State Librarian for the great State of Missouri. I
am also a member of the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest
and largest library association in the world with 66,000 members who
are primarily school, public, academic and some special librarians, as
well as trustees, publishers and friends of libraries.
I am here to share with you how the residents of the ``Show Me''
state are using broadband (and too-often slower connectivity) through
our public libraries. You will see that our experiences in Missouri
track closely with research findings in the report, Libraries Connect
Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2007-
2008,\1\ released just 2 weeks ago by the American Library Association
and the Information Institute at the College of Information at Florida
State University. This report assesses public access to computers, the
Internet and Internet-related services in public libraries across the
United States, and gauges the impact of library funding changes on
connectivity, technology deployment and sustainability. Chairman
Inouye, I request that the Executive Summary of this report be
submitted into the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Bertot, John Carlo, et al. Libraries Connect Communities:
Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2007-2008. American
Library Association. September, 2008.
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Broadband technologies play an increasingly vital role in enabling
public libraries to provide essential services to all, especially
important for the ``have-nots.'' Because so many people do not have
broadband, libraries are trying to meet all of the new demands that our
patrons need because we are the only institution that they can come to
for access and information.
Some naysayers predicted that the rise of the Internet would lead
to the demise of the public library. But as Missouri native Mark Twain
wrote, ``reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.'' Libraries are
now very lively places and at the forefront of the ``Information Age.''
By providing Internet access to the general public, public libraries
have become the social and economic hubs of their communities, often
times providing the only Internet access for many low-income and
elderly people, students, job seekers, immigrants, travelers, and many
others.
A Pew Foundation study on how Americans search for information
released in December 2007 shows that people who used the Internet were
more likely to use the library than people who do not use the
Internet.\2\ This was true regardless of income. This study also
revealed significant new information on who is using our libraries.
Traditionally, the profile of the library user was a middle-aged
female. This study shows a dramatic shift in that profile to young
people ages 18 to 30. This shift indicates two current realities about
our libraries: (1) libraries are successful in offering technology that
attracts younger users; and, (2) it charges libraries with keeping pace
with emerging technologies to continue to support the information needs
of young people as they grow into adulthood.
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\2\ Leigh Estabrook, Evans Witt, and Lee Rainee, Information
Searches That Solve Problems: How people use the Internet, libraries,
and government agencies when they need help, (Pew Internet and American
Life Project, December 30, 2007). Available on the Internet at http://
www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/231/report_display.asp.
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Libraries offer technology to link communities around the country
and provide users access to information through state, regional,
national and international networks. Librarians can also share with you
the many stories about how libraries are increasingly involved with
emergency preparedness and disaster response in conjunction with local
governments and other organizations. Many libraries are part of
statewide networks that provides enriched content data bases and open
access to resources, and services that our local libraries just cannot
afford on their own.
However, while computer use has increased substantially in the
United States, many American households still do not have computers or
Internet access in their homes. Libraries are working to close this
``digital divide'' in many of our Nation's distressed communities by
providing no-fee, public access to computers and the Internet.
Nationwide, 73 percent of all public libraries report they are the only
provider of free Internet access in their communities. In rural areas,
the role of the library is even more critical as 83 percent of
libraries are the only no-fee Internet provider.
To demonstrate the pervasiveness of public libraries in America,
let me present this comparison: There are more public libraries in the
U.S. than McDonald's restaurants--a total of 16,549 public libraries,
including branches. Statistics also show that 63 percent of adults in
the U.S. have public library cards.\3\ Furthermore, nationwide, there
are now 1.3 billion visits per year to our Nation's public libraries.
Over 2 billion items were checked out in 2006, when ALA conducted a
poll that found that 92 percent of respondents expect libraries to be
needed in the future, despite the increased availability of information
on the Internet.\4\
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\3\ American Library Association. @ your library: Attitudes Toward
Public Libraries Survey 2006, p. 1.
\4\ Ibid., p. 12.
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Why have libraries remained so essential? Part of the answer is
that public libraries across the country have installed thousands of
computers for the general public--some with help from organizations
such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and also with major
investment from local governments and creative budgeting by library
administrators. The Federal ``E-rate'' program, which originated in
this very Committee and for which libraries and library patrons are
enormously grateful, has played a tremendous role in expanding the
ability of public libraries to connect patrons to the Internet
connections. Public librarians provide training to educate users on how
to use computer applications and the Internet. Furthermore, our studies
show 98.9 percent of public libraries now provide Internet public
access at no-fee, and 65.9 percent of public libraries also provide
wireless Internet access for those patrons who bring their own laptop
computers.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Bertot et al., p. 28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Library access is especially important in rural areas and for low-
income families. Approximately 38 percent of rural households have
broadband. The percentages are higher in urban and suburban: 57 percent
and 60 percent respectively. Among households with incomes over
$100,000, 85 percent have broadband access. Among households with
incomes $20,000 and under, only 25 percent have broadband service.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Communications Workers of America, Speed Matters: A Report on
the Internet Speeds in All 50 States, August 2008, p. 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ALA-Florida State report found that America's 16,543 public
libraries are leveraging technology to help students of all ages
succeed in school and support lifelong learning. More than 83 percent
of libraries now offer online homework resources, including live tutors
and collections of reliable Web sources--an increase of 15 percent in 1
year. Libraries also reported significant increases in the number of
audiobooks and podcasts (33 percent increase), videos (32 percent
increase), e-books (13.5 percent increase) and digitized special
collections (13 percent increase). As Americans are changing the ways
they meet their educational, entrepreneurial and entertainment needs,
libraries are changing with them and ensuring access for patrons in our
libraries as well as for remote access users.
How do our patrons use the Internet? The research shows:
78% of the libraries reported that education resources and
data bases purchased for K-12 students are their most important
service. Since over 90 percent of school districts are
assigning homework that involves Internet usage and school
library media centers are closing across the country, this
priority is not surprising.
62% reported job-hunting as another high priority. Given our
challenged economy, and knowing that the majority of the top-
100 retailers only accept electronic and online job
applications, you can see why this is so important. Libraries
offer access to data bases with job listings, training for
resume development and interviewing techniques--all necessary
21st century skills to get that new job.
55% of libraries reported that access to government
information has become another high priority.\7\ We know that,
at every level of government, agencies increasingly require
online-only interactions with residents for information,
applications, appointments, and more.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Bertot et al., p. 10.
Note also the increasing use of media services over the Internet.
Libraries report a 30 percent growth in both video and audio content
over the last year.\8\ Also, libraries are increasingly using two-way
videoconferencing for their staff to reduce costs. More and more
students are relying on videostreaming for class lectures from their
college or university for distance learning and media content
dissemination. Some state and local governments now require video
training, for example to obtain a driver's license. More and more
websites employ Web 2.0 applications that involve greater interaction
with the user. Health care providers and businesses are integrating
streaming video into standard components of their websites.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Ibid., p. 51.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While this research is extraordinarily important, perhaps more
memorable are the reports I received from my libraries in Missouri. In
preparation for this hearing, I asked my libraries to send me examples
of how their Internet access has benefited their communities. Here are
a few of these examples.
From a librarian in Nevada, MO:
I have been moved when I helped a wife who needed to IM her
husband in Iraq, or a grandmother who, for the first time, saw
a grandchild on the Internet, or a child who needed to find a
Martin Luther King, Jr. speech. None of these people have their
own computers at home. This is like the whole Carnegie movement
for books, i.e., it tried to provide information to the people
who could not afford books. Now, the challenge that we face is
that people cannot afford computers or Internet. This is
especially true in rural America. These individuals might have
computers, but getting access to an Internet connection is
difficult if not impossible. I've seen all these examples and
more and they always make me think that what we do is worth it.
From a librarian in the McDonald County Library, Pineville MO:
The little Noel branch library has a small computer lab, and
during a 3-hour period last week, . . . I encountered 5
different languages at one time, helped Somali refugees fill
out citizenship forms, watched a toddler in a diaper handle the
mouse on the children's computer like a pro, observed online
college courses being taken, helped an older gentleman send an
e-mail to his son in Japan in the military--the only way he
could afford to communicate with him. Our little computer lab
provided access to job searching and a way to ``escape'' this
small rural impoverished town with our high-speed connection.
From a librarian in Wright County, MO:
In our rural community the only public access to broadband IS
the library. Business people come in to order and research
products because it takes them less time to do these tasks if
they use our computers rather than use the slower ones they
have at their places of business. We are an impoverished
community and we have a lot of patrons that are going to
college 2 days a week, they come into the library and download
their lessons, talk to their professors, do some of their
assignments on-line and then send in their homework on-line.
They often compliment us on having such a fast connection.
We do our cataloging through the Internet because we do not
have the money in our budget to hire a professional catalog
employee. This helps our library budget out tremendously since
I do not know where we could find the money for this position.
I believe that this is one of the best things that the State
helps us with--the fast Internet connections we have at all
branches.
From a librarian in Oregon County, MO:
What Internet access means to the Oregon County Library
District and our patrons? It means that a 90-year-old great
grandma can come into the library and read her e-mail, see a
picture of a great granddaughter in Texas on her first day of
kindergarten and print out the picture to show everyone. It
means that our local college students can work on-line,
communicate with their professors, e-mail their assignments,
take on-line classes and compete on a level playing field with
students from metropolitan areas. It means local citizens who
can't afford personal home computers and a fast Internet
connection can come to the public library and use our
resources. You must keep in mind; Oregon County is a rural,
economically disadvantaged county. The Alton Public Library is
located about ``fifty miles from anywhere''. What does Internet
access mean to us? It means everything!
From a librarian in Warrensburg, MO:
The Social Security office in Warrensburg closed last year. The
nearest physical offices are now in Sedalia or Lee's Summit--a
30+-mile drive for nearly everyone in the two counties we
serve. Since many of the activities related to Social Security
(go to http://www.ssa.gov/onlineservices/ for a list) can be
done online, it is crucial for the 80,000 residents of Johnson
& Lafayette Counties to have access to the Internet. Our
connections are quick (T1 and faster) so we can assist those
who cannot travel to the Social Security offices or those who
have no computer or decent connection speed.
From a librarian in Morgan County, MO:
High-speed Internet access is critical in Morgan County. We are
a poor rural community. Students who cannot afford to go away
to college stay at home to work and take online classes and we
proctor many of their tests monthly. We have kids who commute
to the local community college and come to the library to check
and complete assignments. This is their only opportunity to
continue their education. We have MANY grandparents for whom
the public computer is their only link to children and
grandchildren. We print a lot of family photos! Seniors who do
not drive great distances rely on us to bring their families
together.
Society has made it necessary for almost everyone to have
computer access. People come in to apply for jobs online on a
weekly basis now that large chain stores like Target, Lowe's,
Applebee's, and Wal-Mart require people to apply for jobs
online. More local companies now require online applications
and even truckers apply for jobs online. Our community would be
at a great loss without the Internet.
The dad in a local family was being sent to Argentina for his
job and the family wanted current information on climate, food,
culture, etc. The library did not have books on modern
Argentina (not much demand usually), so the Internet brought
Argentina to them. Home-school families, who do not have a
school library computer, use our library to access the Internet
for world news, homework help and more.
From a librarian in Centralia, MO:
Internet is vital to Centralia patrons for online job
applications. More and more companies are requiring job
applications to be done by computer. The staff has helped
numerous grateful patrons that need a non-technical job but
have no computer skills to apply. How sad it would be if
community members were unemployed just because they had no
Internet access or computer skills.
From a librarian in a suburb of St. Louis, MO:
When I was at the Richmond Heights Memorial Library, I observed
a nice young man who came in frequently to use our computers. I
never really knew what he was doing, but one afternoon he came
up to me at the reference desk and proudly announced, `I got
into medical school!' I congratulated him, and he thanked me,
noting that he had done the entire application process right
there on the library's computers. I thought it was the kind of
success story for which we live.
From a librarian in the town of Ozark in southwest Missouri:
I remember the young man who didn't live in Ozark but was just
traveling through and came into the library on 9/11. His sister
worked in the Twin Towers and he came to our library to check
the news and send e-mails to his family in New York City.
From a librarian at Wood Place Public Library:
Providing reliable, fast Internet access has become an
increasingly necessary library service in my small rural
community. Today it is used by many of the lowest income
patrons and is vital for anyone who is trying to ``get ahead''.
The GED classes that are held here have started using Internet
based study programs. There are also several individuals that
come in regularly to work on their on-line college classes.
Having college classes available is making it possible for more
non-traditional students in our community to take college
classes.
I stopped in a convenience store recently and the clerk was one
of the middle-aged patrons that have been coming into the
library to take college classes on-line. She said the
convenience store job is her second job and in addition to
working two jobs and raising a family she is slowly working her
way through college in order to eventually obtain a better
paying job. It's rewarding to see someone working so hard to
become financially stable.
I also see lots of individuals here that are not working or not
able to make ends meet. Their first step toward becoming
financially independent is to find work, so they don't need to
rely on public aid for food and other necessities. The local
McDonald's is one of the businesses that hire individuals with
no prior work experience. McDonald's now only accepts online
applications, and of course many of the people who need these
jobs don't have access to the Internet at home. We help many
individuals find their way into the online application website
for McDonald's.
We recently used an LSTA grant to fund an upgrade and expansion
of our public access computers. I thought that after this
project was complete, we'd have all the Internet services
needed for this small community. I was wrong! Everything was
done in June 2008 and already the demand has increased to the
point where people are often waiting for their turn to use the
Internet. We have set aside a room to add a computer lab and
have furniture available. I know that there is an LSTA grant
available that will partially fund the equipment we now need in
order to meet the basic needs of our patrons.
However, we don't currently have enough funds to even provide
the 25 percent match that is required with that grant. I don't
think the taxpayers will approve additional funding for us and
the local businesses and organizations that we used to rely on
to help fund library projects are already overwhelmed with
requests for financial assistance from other entities.
I hope your visit to Washington will help inform Congress that
funding for increased broadband Internet access at libraries is
necessary for the good of our country.
From a librarian at Macon Public Library:
Here at Macon Public Library we feel our MOREnet Internet
access is as important to our community as our state and
Federal highways. Our computers are used daily and often people
come to us in a panic like the lady who had very little travel
experience and had ordered airline tickets over the phone but
was told she had to go online and print her tickets. She had no
computer, no Internet access and no computer skills. We easily
helped this woman and lessened her stress so she could enjoy
her trip.
Wal-Mart employees use our public terminals to access their pay
history. They have online access at work, but when they need
assistance and have privacy concerns, they prefer to ask us
instead of someone at their place of employment. We do more and
more online test proctoring for students of all ages and
abilities who are often on a budget and saving travel miles
really makes a difference. These are just a few examples of how
average citizens in a City of 5,500 people depend on public
broadband access in their libraries and feel it is a necessity.
From a librarian at Daniel Boone Regional Library, Columbia, MO:
We are opening our computer-training lab on Friday mornings for
Refugee and Immigration Services to help their clients. We also
have added a special time each week in the computer-training
center to help people with on line job applications and writing
resumes. This is in addition to our normal classes and
partnering with AARP to provide electronic tax filing for
people over 65 and low-income members of the community. They
are always so grateful--when I walked by 1 day last week I was
greeted with a round of applause for allowing AARP to use the
space. I know computer access means a lot to them. At CPL, we
had 2,800 people log on using our wireless access just in July.
We see more and more business people, travelers and students
taking online classes and others using our wireless capacity.
From a librarian in the Doniphan-Ripley County Library:
We had a patron who had a good deal of pain due to blockages in
the veins in her legs and needed surgery. She had heard of a
new kind of procedure with a cool laser that needed much less
recovery time but she couldn't find anybody who knew anything
about it. With some research on the Internet, I found a surgeon
in Springfield, MO who specialized in the surgery and
successfully performed it on her. A year and a half later, the
hospitals in Cape Girardeau, MO (closer to her home) had the
equipment but it was too because the patron needed the surgery
immediately and we were able to help her avoid a long and
painful recovery with the old technique.
You can see from these examples why librarians well understand the
importance of broadband. Not only have we embraced the digital
revolution, we also maintain our more traditional services--services
that are now in greater demand because technology has also made our
traditional resources better known, increasingly used and easier to
share through interlibrary loans and online bibliographic catalogs.
While our efforts to enhance Internet connectivity have been
incredibly rewarding, we need to do more. Broadband needs for a library
are not the same as the needs for home users. Libraries need to respond
to a wide range of bandwidth-intensive applications requiring
simultaneous robust connectivity for multiple users. We must support
user needs at in-library computer workstations, for those connecting
wirelessly on their laptops, and for those connecting remotely from
home.
As I mentioned earlier, the Internet has grown beyond all our
previous wildest expectations, and libraries across the country are
constantly playing catch-up with the growth in demand. Video-based
services require exceptional levels of capacity. Even ordinary
consumers will soon be demanding huge amounts of capacity for basic
uses. Or, as some advocates have said, ``today's bandwidth hog is
tomorrow's average Internet user.''
While policy-makers and libraries have made extraordinary efforts
to adapt to this rapidly changing environment, libraries are challenged
to take maximum advantage of these new services. Public libraries
across the country are struggling to find, install and pay for large
enough broadband ``pipes'' to meet the great demand for Internet
access. Frequently, patrons must wait in line to use the computers and
librarians often find that their networks slow to a crawl, especially
in the afternoon when students get out of school and come to the
library to do homework. Several libraries have delayed purchasing
popular online resources, such as the interactive homework help site
www.tutor.com, in an effort not to exacerbate already slow access
speeds.
These problems are particularly acute because of the rapid
innovations of Internet-based technologies. As Moore's Law says,
Internet usage is doubling approximately every 18 months, and public
libraries are no exception. Libraries that installed a basic T1
connection last year, believing it would satisfy several years of
demand, are finding that the capacity is already overwhelmed with
additional demand. Our studies how that 82.5 percent of public
libraries have fewer computers available than patrons who want to use
them, at least some of the time (up from 77.5 percent in 2006-2007) and
57.5 percent of public libraries report that their Internet bandwidth
is insufficient to meet the demand some or all of the time (up from
nearly 52 percent in 2006-2007).\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Ibid., p. 29.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are many reasons why public libraries cannot satisfy this
burgeoning demand.
Sometimes there is simply no broadband capacity available
from any of the existing broadband providers. Many libraries,
located in more rural areas, require connectivity that
resembles the needs of a large business, and providers may not
even have sufficient pipes to satisfy library needs in those
locations.
Sometimes the cost of the new capacity is prohibitively
expensive. We often find that there is little competition among
broadband providers so there is little incentive for them to
reduce their rates to affordable levels.
Sometimes local budgets cannot bear the increased costs,
even with E-rate discounts.
In Missouri, we have taken special efforts to address the need for
greater Internet connectivity. Established in 1991, the Missouri
Research and Education Network (MOREnet) provides Internet
connectivity, access to Internet2, technical support, videoconferencing
services and training to Missouri's K-12 schools, colleges and
universities, public libraries, health care, state government and other
affiliated organizations.
MOREnet encouraged the state's telecommunications providers to
construct a MOREnet-designed, advanced, high-speed, high-bandwidth
network throughout Missouri. These connections, managed by MOREnet on
behalf of the state's schools and libraries, also laid the groundwork
for Internet availability to thousands of rural Missourians. MOREnet is
tremendously important to our 152 public library systems, with 372
physical library locations and 29 bookmobiles serving more than 5.1
million residents. Currently, 245 of our physical library locations are
served by connections from 1.5 Mbps to 100 Mbps capacity.
[Missouri's public libraries are primarily organized as library
districts (88.6 percent) with the rest organized as municipal
government libraries (9.4 percent) and as association libraries within
a municipality (1.3 percent).\10\]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Ibid., p. 97.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, Missouri is the exception rather than the rule, as
most states do not have the resources to adopt such a framework. Most
states are struggling to meet a demand that simply will not wait.
As I mentioned before, the E-rate program is an incredibly valuable
resource without which many libraries could not afford
telecommunications and Internet service. Libraries across the country
have great appreciation for the foresight of this Committee in
originating this program. In the coming months and years, the library
community is ready to work with you, the FCC and other stakeholders to
make appropriate refinements that could enhance the program. Many
libraries cannot benefit fully from this program because of the
burdensome application and disbursement process. Furthermore, the
discount formula does not work as well for libraries as it does for
schools so that library discount rates may not accurately reflect the
local poverty levels. To encourage more library participation, ALA has
submitted a simplification proposal to the FCC. We hope that the
Commission will move forward on our recommendations in the near future.
In this way ALA hopes to increase library participation in the E-rate
and our libraries' ability to serve the American public.
Mr. Chairman, I cannot say strongly enough how indebted we are to
your leadership and to this Committee for the enormous progress we have
made in the last decade. We know that 99 percent of public libraries
can now offer the public some level of no-fee public access computing.
We know that the American public is benefiting from our services.
Public libraries are at the forefront of the Information Society and
provide invaluable access to the Internet that cannot be obtained in
other ways.
But as we champion the many public services and benefits brought to
us by broadband, we want to ensure that public libraries can continue
to serve and enhance our service to the public. It has been clearly
demonstrated that Americans need the services and applications that
broadband technology delivers. Public libraries require faster and
cheaper broadband services to deliver those services to the public.
I applaud this Committee for expressing interest in the role that
public libraries play in increasing the availability of Internet access
for all Americans. On behalf of the American Library Association, we
look forward to working closely with you in addressing the issues of
expanding broadband deployment and meeting the telecommunications needs
of all Americans.
Attachment
Libraries Connect Communities
Executive Brief
The State of Technology and Funding in U.S. Public Libraries in 2008
Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding and
Technology Access Study 2007-2008 marks the second year of the study,
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the American
Library Association (ALA), and continues the research of previous
surveys conducted by John Carlo Bertot and Charles R. McClure, with
others, since 1994.\1\ The study presents national and state data
gathered through three integrated approaches: a national survey that
collected information about public library Internet connectivity, use,
services, funding and sustainability issues; a questionnaire sent to
the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA); and focus groups
and site visits held in four states: New York, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania and Virginia.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Information about the reports from the 1994-2006 studies is
available at http://www.ii.fsu.edu/plInternet.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This year's study reinforces a key finding from 2006-2007: Library
infrastructure (staffing, space and bandwidth) is being stretched to
capacity. This year's report expands our understanding regarding the
strain on public libraries to provide public access to the Internet and
other technology, and sounds a warning about the long-term
sustainability and future quality of free public access to the Internet
and other technology in our Nation's libraries. Report highlights
include:
Libraries serve a unique and important role in providing
free access to all types of information and telecommunications
services. The demand for such services has increased
significantly with growing need for access to digital and
online information--including e-government, continuing
education and employment opportunities. Almost 73 percent of
libraries report they are the only source of free access to
computers and the Internet in their communities.
Funding data indicate volatility in how libraries support
this public technology access. Even libraries with historically
stable funding are experiencing flat levels of local funding,
and have reacted to this by shifting to soft funding sources
(fees/fines, donations, grants, etc.) as a way to support
public access computing services. Local government revenue and
``other'' (soft funding) account for nearly 90 percent of
overall public library funding.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries in
the United States: Fiscal Year 2005. (NCESES 2008-301). Washington,
D.C.: NCESES, 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008301.pdf.
Staffing levels are not keeping pace with patron demand--
both for those staff who provide training and other direct
patron services, as well as for those staff who maintain the
information technology infrastructure. Libraries cite the need
for greater staff expertise and availability as a barrier to
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
being able to support and manage public access technologies.
An increase in the number of libraries reporting connection
speeds greater than 769 kbps (up 11 percent from last year) is
tempered by the vast majority of libraries (75 percent) who
report their wireless and desktop computers share the same
network, thus diminishing the effective speed of access to the
Internet at the workstation. Further, libraries are not moving
above the 1.5 Mbps speed as had been anticipated during 2006-
2007.
Public access Internet services (including homework
resources, e-books, audio and video) grew dramatically over the
past year. These resources provide far more options for library
patrons to use inside the library and remotely from home, work
and school, but also impact the library's public services and
technology infrastructure.
Many library buildings, inadequate in terms of space and
infrastructure (e.g., wiring and cabling), cannot support
additional public access computers and technology
infrastructure.
The interconnectedness of funding, staffing, buildings and
maintenance cannot be underestimated, as all have a direct impact on
the amount and quality of public access technology services that public
libraries can provide to their patrons.
Key Findings
For some library users and supporters, library technology is
defined simply as a working computer on a desk with Internet access and
a printer. Anyone working in a public library, however, knows that
simple definition inadequately describes the range of technology
infrastructure support needed to provide current public access
computing. A range of issues detailed in this report require attention
to maintain and improve technology access, and can be dangerous if
ignored.
The last decade has seen steady growth in the integration of public
access computing services within libraries. Public libraries provide an
impressive array of services that are critical to the communities they
serve, but the underlying support needed to maintain and improve these
services has been lagging for many U.S. public libraries. As libraries
introduce more computers and more robust technology-based services,
keeping up with patron demand is an ongoing challenge.
Funding Remains Flat for Many Public Libraries
``Money is going to be tight. There'll be more pressure to do
more with less as we've been doing.''
Between 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, overall budgets have remained
level for most libraries. Although libraries experienced an average
annual increase of 4 percent in operating funds from 1996-2005,\3\
preliminary national data suggest decreases during Fiscal Year 2006 in
both library expenditures and their distribution. Indications are that
individual libraries have experienced a shifting of expenditures away
from collections to other line items (e.g., technology, utilities,
building maintenance).\4\ Redistributing existing resources to other
types of expenditures is not uncommon, especially with staffing
expenses being the most inflexible of library expenditures. In a 2006
ALA study on funding,\5\ libraries reported that when operating budgets
decline, reductions in staff, services and collections follow this
pattern, in priority of order of cuts:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries in
the United States (FY1996-2005). http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/
getpubcats.asp?sid=041#. Note: Beginning in fall 2007, the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS) began publishing the Public
Libraries in the United States reports. Individual reports are now
online at http://harvester
.census.gov/imls/pubs/pls/index.asp.
\4\ Institute of Museum and Library Services. Compare Public
Libraries, Fiscal Year 2006 [online search tool of public library
data]. http://harvester.census.gov/imls/compare/index.asp.
\5\ American Library Association. Office for Research & Statistics.
Funding Issues in U.S. Public Libraries, Fiscal Years 2003-2006.
(2006). http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/reports/funding
issuesinuspls.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Materials (average of 68.3 percent of libraries responding).
2. Staffing (average of 41.6 percent of libraries responding).
3. Hours open (average of 24.6 percent of libraries
responding).
4. Electronic access (12.6 percent of libraries responding).
When scrutinized at a local level, expenditures varied much more
than could be discerned at the national level. For instance, when
comparing anticipated FY2007 operating expenditures reported in the
2006-2007 Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study (PLFTAS)
\6\ with actual expenditures in this year's study, it is apparent that
projected expenditures were not realized. Overall operating
expenditures fell short of anticipated levels by 15.5 percent, and
varied by specific expenditure type from those anticipated by as much
20 percent:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding and
Technology Access Study 2006-2007. Chicago: American Library
Association, 2007. http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/plftas/0607report.cfm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
20 percent below anticipated expenditures for salaries.
0.8 percent below anticipated expenditures for collections.
12.5 percent above anticipated expenditures for other
expenditures.
Libraries reported actual spending of about 58 percent of operating
budgets on salaries in FY 2007 and about 26 percent of the operating
budget on ``other'' expenditures--building maintenance, technology,
utilities, etc. In addition to the steady shift of expenditures away
from collections to ``other,'' it appears we may be starting to see a
shift away from salaries to ``other'' expenditures, as well.
In this year's questionnaire to COSLA, a majority of state
libraries reported level or modest increases in state funding for
public libraries in FY 2007, similar to previous years. Coupled with
the 2006 ALA study on funding, such spending suggests that public
libraries have been grappling with declining purchasing power since as
early as 2003. State funding makes up about 10 percent of public
library operating revenue. Half of state libraries estimated flat or 1-
2 percent increases in overall funding for public libraries, and 28.6
percent estimated overall funding growth at 5-10 percent. The extent to
which these gains can be sustained given the recent economic downturn
remains unclear.
While the detailed financial data section of this study provides
more in-depth information, it is important to note that a greater
reliance on non-tax sources of funding and a larger proportion of
expenditures shifting toward ``other'' line items and away from staff
and collections expenditures are important trends to watch. These are
key questions to track when the national public library data (Institute
of Museum and Library Services) are reported for FY2007.
Staffing at a Standstill
``The technology was brought in, and a whole new service
created, without additional staff. It was just double the work
for no more money, you know.''
Library staff members at all levels play vital intermediary roles
in supporting, managing and maintaining public access to computers and
the Internet. For first-time users, a computer is only as good as the
library staff available to orient them--including how to use a mouse,
how to open an e-mail account and how to search the Internet
effectively. In addition to the one-on-one assistance offered in all
libraries, almost three-quarters of libraries (73.4 percent) offer
information technology training for library patrons. More library staff
report they are scheduling one-hour sessions with patrons to orient
them to the broad range of skills necessary to do research, find jobs
or apply for government assistance. Many librarians report that
applying for jobs and government services are among the most staff-
intensive patron Internet needs.
Another impact on front-line staff is evident in the high
percentage of libraries reporting that managing time limits imposed on
patron use of workstations has to be done manually. Close to half (45.9
percent) of all public libraries and 63.6 percent of rural libraries
manage computer time limits with paper lists and taps on the shoulder.
Not only is this labor intensive, but many library staff reported that
it is the most stressful task that they perform. Libraries increasingly
are turning to software solutions that allow users to reserve access to
a computer and/or automatically cutoff Internet sessions without staff
intervention. While all library staff interviewed prefer this time
management method, they agree that it adds a level of complexity to the
computing environment, and implementation snags are common.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries
in the United States (Fiscal Years 2000-2005). http://nces.ed.gov/
pubsearch/getpubcats.asp?sid=041#
While the reported average is about 50 percent, some library staff,
particularly those on library reference desks and in libraries that
manually manage computer time limits, estimate that as much as 80
percent of their time is spent in any given day on technology-related
tasks.
Beyond direct patron assistance and training, library technical
staff develop technology plans and hardware replacement schedules;
build and support integrated library systems for circulation,
cataloging, online public access catalog, acquisitions and computer
management; troubleshoot hardware, software and telecommunications
networks; select, purchase and organize data bases and other electronic
resources for patron use; plan for and negotiate telecommunications
networks; build and update library Web pages; raise awareness of new
Internet services . . . and more.
Like additional cars on the interstate, additional computers and
Internet services in libraries contribute to the ``traffic'' and create
additional demands for staff to orient patrons and mediate public
access to these resources. Along with an 86 percent increase in the
number of computers in U.S. public libraries, there was an 18.6 percent
increase in library visits from 1.15 billion in 2000 to 1.36 billion in
2005. The number of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff grew only 6
percent over the same time period.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries in
the United States (FY 2000-2005). http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/
getpubcats.asp?sid=041#.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
When examined by population service size, the impact on the
smallest public libraries (serving fewer than 10,000 residents) is even
stronger. Libraries serving fewer than 1,000 residents saw the greatest
percentage increase in the number of public computers (up 98 percent),
along with a decline in the number of FTETE staff (-3 percent).
Responding to an open-ended question about the three most
significant challenges libraries face in maintaining their public
access computers and Internet access, adequate staffing topped the
list, closely followed by financial concerns and computer maintenance
and management. These challenges included staff skill levels and
training needs, availability of IT staff support and overall inadequate
staff levels. Rural libraries (65.2 percent) were more likely to name
the need for more staff as their top challenge, when compared with
their suburban (60.5 percent) and urban (44.4 percent) counterparts.
Staff Training Needs Outpace Supply
``I really wish there was an easier way to get the technology
and training. We teach ourselves, and we try to help each
other. It should be easier.''
The impact on staff to support the increasing services is often
expressed with frustration. There is a limited amount of time for staff
to train themselves on the new technology-based services offered to the
public, as well as the time to adequately support their patrons' needs
for training and instruction.
With almost 60 percent of libraries staffed by fewer than five
full-time staff members,\8\ the difficulty of providing coverage for
staff to receive training elsewhere is a challenge often compounded by
long travel times for rural library staff. Scheduling time for in-
library training is also complicated, especially when there is little
overlap time in schedules for part-time and full-time staff.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries in
the United States: Fiscal Year 2005. (NCESES 2008-301). Washington,
D.C.: NCESES, 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008301.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the questionnaire to COSLA, about 90 percent reported offering
some formal training to public library staff in six categories that
build skills in funding, public awareness and/or management of
technology in libraries. Technology planning (34 percent) was most
likely to be offered at least once a year, followed by advocacy/
marketing (22 percent) and technology evaluation (19 percent).
IT Support Lags
``It comes down to me. I'm learning as I go. I've waited up to
a week to get a computer hard drive fixed by county IT staff.''
The need for dedicated technology support staff was identified as
one of three main themes that emerged from the 2006-2007 study, and
this need continues unresolved, as evidenced by data collected during
the current study. In fact, for the first time, the 2007-2008 survey
asked who provides information technology (IT) support (e.g.,
troubleshooting desktop issues, Internet connectivity, the library Web
page) for the library. The three most common types of support reported
were:
Building-based staff, not trained as an IT specialist (39.6
percent)
System-level IT staff (38.5 percent)
Outside vendor or contractor (30 percent)
The disparities are once again pronounced between urban and rural
libraries, however. Rural libraries are far more likely than urban
libraries to depend on librarians or other library staff who are not
trained in IT (44.1 percent) and on outside vendors (36.3 percent)--or
even volunteers (14.4 percent)--to support their technology. Urban
libraries are most likely to have system-level IT staff (76 percent).
One source of IT support for about 21 percent of urban libraries
and 16 percent of suburban libraries--county/city IT staff--can be both
a benefit and a challenge. Several library directors reported a clash
between the library's mission of providing open access to computer and
Internet resources for a wide range of users and user abilities, and
the typical county/city IT approach that protects data and limits
access, as would be more common in an office environment. One director
reported this is an issue for ongoing education and discussion--
including the decisions about when to schedule live updates on the
city/county network, and what may be uploaded or downloaded via library
computers. Additionally, many city/county IT departments are
understaffed, and libraries are one of many agencies in need of
technology support.
Another complicating factor for libraries working to hire and
retain IT staff is the salary available to compensate these high-demand
staff. In the general population, computer and information systems
managers are compensated at an average of $101,580,\9\ compared with
$59,974 in a public library setting.\10\ The 2007 average public
library director salary is $77,200.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook.
2008-09 edition.
\10\ American Library Association-Allied Professional Association.
ALA-APA Salary Survey 2007: A Survey of Public and Academic Library
Positions Requiring an ALA-Accredited Master's Degree. Chicago:
American Library Association, 2007.
\11\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Internet Access Speeds Bump Up, Fall Short
``Our IT department looked at our bandwidth (1.5 Mbps) and
found that at 2 p.m. in the afternoon, it was slower than dial-
up, we had so many people using it.''
A positive development is that the number of libraries reporting
connection speeds of 769 kbps or faster increased 11 percent since last
year. More than half of urban libraries (51.6 percent), 42.1 percent of
suburban and 32.1 percent of rural libraries now report offering a T1
connection. In the COSLA questionnaire, several state librarians
suggested T1 should be the minimum level of connectivity for all
libraries in their states. Although many libraries improved access by
moving to T1 from lower speeds, there was a slight decline (about 3
percent) in the number of libraries reporting access speeds above 1.5
Mbps.
There also is evidence in the 2007-2008 study that more libraries
have reached capacity in their technology infrastructure. Even with
more libraries at T1 speeds, the percentage of libraries that report
their connection speed is insufficient to meet patron demand some or
all of the time is up about 5 percent over the 2006-2007 study. This
may be attributed to shared connections between wireless and desktop
computers (up 25 percent from last year), the broadband demands of
online services and resources, and the continual use of library public
access computers.
About 17 percent of libraries reporting in 2007-2008 had plans to
increase access speeds in the coming year, up about 3 percent from the
2006-2007 study. Slightly more libraries reported that they were at
their maximum connection speed available (17.1 percent compared with
16.6 percent last year), or were unable to afford additional bandwidth
(21.2 percent compared with 18.1 percent last year). Proportionally,
all libraries (rural, suburban and urban) considered the cost of
increasing access speeds to be a barrier hindering upgrades, but rural
libraries (24.8 percent) disproportionately reported that they are at
the maximum level of connectivity.
Although funding is a strong indicator of growth and sustainability
when providing computer-based services for the public, the overall
quality of these services depends heavily both on access speeds and on
the adequacy of hardware--having enough computers as well as the age of
those computers.
This year's study revealed that the age range for library computers
in use is quite broad; libraries in all types of communities are
keeping computers older than 4 years in use to support patron demand.
When asked about key factors affecting the replacement of public access
computers, 89.6 percent of libraries reported cost and 33.1 percent
reported maintenance and general upkeep issues as factors. Clearly, the
impact of reliance on soft funding and insufficient IT staff are
recognized as growing barriers to supporting ongoing public technology
access.
Internet Services Show Double-Digit Growth
``We're not being used less; we're being used differently.''
In addition to the hardware and software offered in every U.S.
public library building, most libraries have created increasingly
robust virtual collections of online resources via their websites and
online catalogs. This year's survey found that nearly every category of
public Internet service offered in U.S. public libraries increased--
sometimes dramatically--from the 2006-2007 study.
The survey indicated double-digit growth in the availability of a
range of resources in five key online services:
Audio content increased 33 percent (from 38 to 71 percent).
Video content is up 32 percent (from 16.6 to 48.9 percent).
Homework resources grew 15 percent (from 68.1 to 83.4
percent).
E-book availability increased 13.5 percent (from 38.3 to
51.8 percent).
Digitized special collections increased by almost 13 percent
(from 21.1 to 33.8 percent).
Licensed data bases to support education (like World Book and test
preparation materials), business (like Standard and Poor's) and life
interests (such as genealogy) are still the most commonly provided
Internet-based services--available in 98 percent of urban libraries, 93
percent of suburban libraries and 80 percent of rural libraries.
Also of interest is that these online services grew in libraries of
all sizes. Urban libraries--which generally benefit from greater
Internet access speeds, dedicated technology budgets and dedicated IT
staff--lead in every category of online services. But their rural
counterparts reported the greatest percentage growth in offering
homework resources (up 15 percent) and audio content (up 34 percent).
Suburban libraries, too, increased all online services and led their
counterparts in the percentage growth of online instructional courses/
tutorials provision (up 13 percent).
Library staff rank the top two uses of public Internet service that
are as critical to their community: education for K-12 students (78.7
percent); and job-seeking services (62.2 percent). In fact, these
responses increased significantly in both categories since last year.
The third most critical use is providing access to government
information (55.6 percent), which has now grown larger than the service
categories for providing education resources and data bases for adults/
continuing education services (46.9 percent) or computer and Internet
skills training (37.6 percent).
In addition to providing these informational and lifelong learning
resources, libraries also provide peripheral device support to library
patrons. The 2007-2008 study asked about these devices for the first
time and found that public libraries allow users to access and store
content on USB storage devices (e.g., flash drives, portable drives) or
other devices (72 percent), make use of digital camera connection and
manipulation (37.4 percent) and burn CDs/DVDs (34.7 percent).
The results and effects of these increases in online public library
services are manifold. The good news is that library users who visit
the library in person or virtually via its website have more access to
more resources--many of which are unavailable or too expensive to
purchase at the individual consumer level. The tradeoff is that these
services often come at the expense of reduced Internet speeds, funding
for other library resources and higher expectations by patrons for
library staff assistance in using these resources.
Buildings and Infrastructure Further Stretched
``Our headquarters library is twenty years old this year, and
it was built with no provision for Internet access.''
This year also marked the first increase in the number of new
computers in libraries since 2002.\12\ The average number of public
access computers increased by 1.3 per library in 2007-2008. Urban
libraries gained the most--2.7 more, now averaging 21 per library.
Suburban libraries reported modest gains, adding about one computer per
library and now averaging nearly 14 computers per library outlet. Rural
libraries gained the least, adding only about 0.4 computers, averaging
about 7.5 computers per library in 2007-2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Bertot, J.C. and C.R. McClure. Information Use Management and
Policy Institute, Florida State University. Public Libraries and the
Internet 2002: Internet Connectivity and Networked Services. (2002).
http://www.ii.fsu.edu/plinternet_reports.cfm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the second year, libraries reported space issues and challenges
in maintaining an adequate supply of building-based electrical and IT
wiring to support technology-based services. More than three-quarters
of libraries (77.7 percent) reported that space limitations are a key
factor when considering adding public access computers. Another 36.4
percent reported the lack of availability of electrical outlets,
cabling or other infrastructure as a barrier--up from 31.2 percent in
2006-2007.
Although purchasing equipment and basic building maintenance may be
paid from annual operating sources, significant building improvements
are typically made from capital revenue sources. Fewer than 50 percent
of public libraries benefit from capital revenue sources and most
receive less than $10,000--an inadequate amount when rewiring or
significant cabling is required to increase technology-based
services.\13\ A majority of library buildings are 25 to 50 years old,
and 40 percent of library buildings are estimated to be in fair or poor
condition.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ National Center for Education Statistics. Public Libraries in
the United States: Fiscal Year 2005. (NCESES 2008-301). Washington,
D.C.: NCESES, 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008301.pdf.
\14\ Chief Officers of State Libraries Agencies (COSLA),
Legislative Committee, National Construction Survey, 2007. Prepared by
the New Jersey State Library for COSLA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To respond to these challenges, many libraries have added wireless
to support patrons bringing their own computers to the library or to
support laptop check-out for in-library users. Libraries also reported
the growing need for staff training in implementing wireless, as they
continue to dedicate desktop computers to patron use, and rely on
wireless laptops for training or the demonstration of new Internet
services.
During site visits, a number of library directors indicated there
was high demand for more workstations and wireless connectivity at
their libraries. But, for the reasons noted above, such was unlikely to
occur. Moreover, obtaining more workstations or wireless connectivity
might only exacerbate the strain of providing technology training to
users and staff, and could put even more pressure on the library's
budget to purchase additional software and other resources for the
workstations, as well as require additional funds to address
workstation maintenance issues.
Fifty-six percent of libraries have no plans to add computers in
the coming year. This, together with the issues of insufficiency of
bandwidth access, ongoing challenges to fund staff support for IT and
the inadequacy of building capacity and technology infrastructure,
suggest the growing strain that libraries face to keep up with user
demand for public access computing.
Call to Action
There must be a greater awareness of the challenging issues facing
public libraries and a renewed focus on sustainable solutions that
improve the quality--as well as the quantity--of public technology
access in U.S. public libraries.
Millions of people throughout the United States depend upon
libraries for their access to online educational opportunities, job-
seeking assistance, e-government interactions, and help in using
information resources. Almost 73 percent of libraries report they are
the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their
communities.
This study also revealed that public libraries indicate that their
workstations are in near constant use. Although wireless access is
available in almost two-thirds of libraries, there are also increased
levels of service and resource demands for e-government, digital
content and a range of other patron services that impose a greater load
and impact on available bandwidth.
Public library advocates must focus on specific areas needing
urgent attention:
Public libraries need stable and sustainable funding for
technology services. Libraries currently are shifting
expenditures to cover technology costs and/or relying on
``soft'' (non-tax) support to fund technology. In doing so,
libraries mask the impacts of funding cuts and increased
operating costs--sometimes until they are literally forced to
close their doors.
Librarians and policymakers must re-think Federal and state
support to public libraries. Only a small portion of public
library funding (0.5 percent) comes from the Federal
Government, yet public libraries have important social roles
and responsibilities to American society and overall quality of
life. New strategies for national support to public libraries
should be developed.
The public library community needs to develop new models for
deploying and managing technology. In addition to participating
in library networks, cooperatives and consortia that leverage
shared resources, libraries need to develop strategies to work
with other community organizations to promote additional public
access technologies. Collaboration with educational
organizations, such as public schools and community colleges,
other local community groups and private sector firms may
produce ideas and strategies that can integrate with, extend
and/or enhance public library networked services. Such
collaborations can be an important component of the library's
advocacy strategy, alleviate pressure on the public library as
the sole provider of public access and create a more robust
community-wide public access infrastructure.
Investing in additional public library staff and staff
training activities are investments in technology. The one-on-
one and formal trainings offered in libraries are essential for
many patrons, and for many, this is the only avenue for them to
learn how to successfully use Internet-based resources for
work, school and life interests. Increasingly complex networked
environments also demand dedicated IT staffing.
These are only some of the most important areas where public
library advocates should focus their attention. Additional suggestions
and possible strategies are discussed elsewhere in this report.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Ms. Conroy.
May I now call upon Senator Stevens to introduce our final
witness?
Senator Stevens. Mr. Chairman, I think we should thank Mr.
Peltola for being where he is because he came to his office at
6 a.m. this morning because of the 4 hour time zone difference.
I want to show you first--this is a chart that shows the
road map of the United States, the roads in the South 48 and
the roads in Alaska. Now, in Alaska, without roads, we
proceeded to adopt the whole concept of telemedicine, and the
YKHC, headed by Gene Peltola, has led in this effort.
The Chairman actually was with us as we went up to visit
Gene in Bethel, Alaska right there. This is a map that shows
our transportation system. We basically have no transportation
system. We have gone to telemedicine and tele-education in
Alaska far ahead of the rest of the country. And the leader in
this now is Gene Peltola, who heads the Yukon Delta area.
Really it is the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation now.
And Gene I thank you very much for coming. It is your turn
to make your comments. Thank you for agreeing to do this.
STATEMENT OF GENE PELTOLA, PRESIDENT
AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
YUKON-KUSKOKWIM HEALTH CORPORATION
Mr. Peltola. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Inouye,
Senator Stevens, Senator Hutchison. I am Gene Peltola,
President and CEO of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. I
thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today by
video teleconferencing about the hugely positive impact that
broadband deployment has had on the delivery of health care
services to some of the most isolated and economically
challenged citizens in the United States.
As I said, I am the President and CEO of the Yukon-
Kuskokwim Health Corporation, also known as YKHC, a consortium
established by 58 federally recognized Native American tribes.
We provide comprehensive health care to approximately 28,000
largely Yup'ik Eskimo people living in 50 communities spread
across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a roadless region
approximately the size of the state of Oregon.
The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which is depicted on the map
attached to my testimony, is located on the Bering Sea on the
western coast of Alaska, nearly 4,000 miles away from
Washington, D.C. The average per capita income of our patients
is approximately $15,000 a year.
Providing health care for YKHC's patients is a profoundly
difficult challenge.
First, transportation costs in the Y-K Delta, where
villages are reachable only by plane, boat, or in the winter by
snow machine, have always been high. Now that the cost of
gasoline is approaching $8 a gallon in our villages, the cost
of transporting a patient from a village to a subregional
clinic or to our regional hospital in Bethel for anything but
the most essential services or the most serious illnesses or
injury has become cost prohibitive.
Second, during our long, dark winter, the Bering Sea
generates some of the most violent weather in the world. This
can isolate our villages for days or even weeks.
Broadband deployment has transformed the delivery of health
care services in the Y-K Delta. Broadband plays a critical role
in YKHC's efforts to manage the challenges I have just
described.
Five years ago, YKHC challenged the telecommunications
providers in the Y-K Delta to improve their satellite-based
broadband services. In response to YKHC's challenge and in
reliance on the Universal Service Fund's rural health care
program and other Federal broadband programs, private industry
made a $50 million-plus investment in a terrestrial microwave
network, which we call DeltaNet, which links substantially our
villages. The high speed and low latency of this new network
are ideal for medical applications.
We are proud that YKHC now leads Alaska in the delivery of
broadband medical services. This year, YKHC decided to increase
bandwidth to 3 megabits per second for all of our clinics, 5
megabits per second for our subregional clinics, and a 7.5
megabits link to the Internet in Anchorage. Key benefits of
this higher-speed network are found in the areas of
telepsychiatry and teleradiology.
The need for behavioral health services in rural Alaska is
growing disproportionately to the size of the population. Rural
Alaska has high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, fetal alcohol
syndrome, and suicide. In 2004, Alaska's National Guard was
called upon for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many
of these guardsmen have completed at least one tour and have
returned to their villages, bringing with them the same mental
health issues affecting combat veterans across our country.
Rural Alaska veterans, however, are a long way from the nearest
Veterans Affairs facilities in Anchorage, Alaska.
In conjunction with bandwidth increases, YKHC has deployed
53 high definition video teleconferencing units throughout our
service area. Using high definition video, YKHC has begun
delivering behavioral health evaluation, treatment, and
consultation for veterans and other patients at its residential
facilities in Bethel and at clinics in our Y-K Delta villages
through health professionals working from Bethel and the Alaska
Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage and soon with a psychiatric
group out of the State of Minnesota.
Because of our terrestrial broadband network, YKHC is now
able to offer full remote diagnostic imaging services to its
patients not only in Bethel, but also in our four subregional
clinics. Those are located in Aniak, St. Mary's, Toksook Bay,
and Emmonak. Because of our inability to recruit a full-time
radiologist to Bethel, we must rely on teleradiology to meet
our needs. We have two full-time radiologists reading all
images 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from Dayton, Ohio. Using
our broadband network, we are able to send patient images
directly to the radiologists in Dayton. There they read the
exams in real time. There is no delay. They are waiting at
their computers for the exams to cover over the Internet and
send us their initial evaluation within 15 minutes from the
time the patient was imaged or X-rayed within our organization.
Teleradiology has substantially increased patient access
and operational efficiency in diagnosing a multitude of
diseases such as pneumonia, fractures, head injuries,
appendicitis, and cancers, just to name a few. It has also
decreased the long wait times previously associated with
patient treatment.
For example, fractures or small changes in a chest X-ray
can sometimes be missed by health care providers. This
situation usually requires calling the patients back into the
health care facility. With the use of teleradiology, we have
the ability to communicate and consult with our radiologists on
every case to ensure that we have the right diagnosis so that
we can start appropriate treatment before our patient leaves
the hospital or subregional clinic.
We recently had a patient involved in an ATV accident in
the small village of Lower Kalskag. We were able to send the
patient to the Aniak subregional clinic, which is only 15
minutes away via plane, to have the patient's lower leg X-
rayed. Using teleradiology, it was determined that the patient
fractured his fibula. The films were then sent over the network
to the orthopedic surgeon in ANMC hospital in Anchorage, Alaska
who made the call that the patient did not require surgery,
only a cast. This not only saved the patient from coming to
Bethel, 120 miles away, and an hour-long plane ride, but also
saved him a very expensive trip to Anchorage to see a
specialist.
All of this broadband-related progress would not be
possible without the Universal Service Fund's rural health care
program which the chairman, Senator Stevens, and other members
of the Committee and the Congress have supported for many
years. On behalf of the Alaska rural health care provider
community, I want to thank you all for that support, which has
saved countless individual lives in Alaska and dramatically has
improved the quality of life of all rural Alaskans.
In closing, I would like to make five recommendations to
the Committee.
One, expand Medicaid reimbursement to cover telepsychiatry
treatment, including patient-site presentation services for
behavioral health clinicians and case managers.
Two, address licensing and reimbursement issues for medical
professionals participating in distance health care delivery
across State lines.
Three, encourage the Veterans Administration to use the
Indian Health Service and IHS-contracted medical facilities to
provide medical and behavioral health care to rural Alaska
veterans.
Four, increase the RHC support mechanism percentage for
Internet access from the current 25 percent and add support for
advanced services such as managed videoconferencing and network
management, which would allow YKHC to focus on the delivery of
health care rather than managing core telecom infrastructure.
Finally, five, expand eligibility of USF subsidies to cover
the infrastructure that the remote providers need for distance-
delivered medical services. This might include bandwidth and
videoconferencing hardware.
Once again, I thank you for the opportunity and honor to
address your Committee today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Peltola follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gene Peltola, President and Chief Executive
Officer, Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Hutchison, Senator Stevens, and
other Members of the Committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity
to talk to you today by video teleconferencing about the hugely
positive impact that broadband deployment has had on the delivery of
healthcare services to some of the most isolated and economically
challenged citizens of the United States.
I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Yukon-
Kuskokwim Health Corporation, also known as YKHC, a consortium
established by 58 federally recognized Native American tribes. We
provide comprehensive healthcare to 28,000 largely Yup'ik Eskimo people
living in 50 communities spread across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a
roadless region the size of Oregon. The Y-K Delta, which is depicted in
the map attached to my testimony, is located on the Bering Sea on the
western coast of Alaska, nearly 4,000 miles away from Washington, D.C.
The average per capita income of our patients is $15,000 a year.
Providing healthcare for YKHC's patients is a profoundly difficult
challenge.
First, transportation costs in the Y-K Delta, where villages
are reachable only by plane, boat, or the in the winter, snow
machine, have always been high. Now that the cost of a gallon
of unleaded gasoline is approaching $8 in these villages, the
cost of transporting a patient from a village to a subregional
clinic or to our hospital in Bethel for anything but the most
essential service or the most serious illness or injury has
become nearly prohibitive.
Second, during our long, dark winter, the Bering Sea
generates some of the most violent weather in the world; this
can isolate our villages for days or weeks at a time.
Broadband deployment has transformed the delivery of healthcare
services in the Y-K Delta. Broadband plays a critical role in YKHC's
efforts to manage the challenges I've just described.
Five years ago YKHC challenged the telecommunications providers in
the Y-K Delta to improve their satellite-based broadband services. In
response to YKHC's challenge, and in reliance on the Universal Service
Fund's Rural Health Care program and other Federal broadband programs,
private industry made a $50 million-plus investment in a terrestrial
microwave network, DeltaNet, which links the substantial majority of
YKHC's villages. The high speed and low latency of this new network are
ideal for medical applications.
We are proud that YKHC now leads Alaska in the delivery of
broadband-based medical services. This year, YKHC decided to increase
bandwidth to 3 Mbps (megabits-persecond) for all of our clinics, 5 Mbps
for our sub-regional clinics, and a 7.5 Mbps link to the Internet in
Anchorage. Key benefits of this higher-speed network are found in the
areas of telepsychiatry and teleradiology.
The need for behavioral health services in rural Alaska is growing
disproportionately to the size of the population. Rural Alaska has high
rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, and suicide.
In 2004, Alaska's National Guard was called out for combat operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these guardsmen have completed at
least one tour and have returned to their villages, bringing with them
the same mental health issues afflicting combat veterans across the
country. Rural Alaska veterans, however, are a long way from the
nearest Veterans Affairs facilities in Anchorage.
In conjunction with bandwidth increases, YKHC has deployed 53 HD
(high definition) video teleconference units through its service area.
Using HD video, YKHC has begun delivering behavioral health evaluation,
treatment, and consultation for veterans and other patients at its
residential facilities in Bethel and at clinics in Y-K Delta villages,
through health professionals working from Bethel and the Alaska
Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, and soon with a psychiatric group
in Minnesota.
Using its terrestrial broadband network, YKHC is now able to offer
full remote diagnostic imaging services to its patients, not only in
Bethel but also in our four subregional clinics, Aniak, St. Mary's,
Toksook Bay, and Emmonak. Because of our inability to recruit a full-
time radiologist to Bethel, we must rely on teleradiology to meet our
needs. We have two full-time radiologists, reading all images 24 hours
a day 7 days a week from Dayton Ohio. Using our broadband network, we
are able to send patient images directly to the radiologists' homes in
Ohio. There, they read the exams in real time (there is no delay; they
are waiting at their computers for the exams to come over the Internet)
and send us their initial evaluation within 15 minutes from the time
the patient was imaged in our x-ray departments.
Tele-radiology has substantially increased patient access and
operational efficiency in diagnosing a multitude of diseases such as
pneumonia, fractures, head injuries, appendicitis and cancers, just to
name a few. It has also decreased the long wait times previously
associated with patient treatment.
For example, subtle fractures, or small changes in a chest x-ray,
can sometimes be missed by health care providers. This situation
usually requires calling the patients back into the healthcare
facility. With the use of tele-radiology, we have the ability to
communicate and consult with our radiologists on every case to ensure
that we have the right diagnosis so that we can start appropriate
treatment before our patient leaves the hospital or subregional clinic.
We recently had a patient involved in an ATV accident in the small
village of Lower Kalskag. We were able to send the patient to the Aniak
subregional clinic which is only 15 minutes away via plane to have the
patient's lower leg X-rayed. Using teleradiology, it was determined
that the patient fractured his fibula. The films were then sent over
the network to the orthopedic surgeon at ANMC hospital in Anchorage who
made the call that the patient did not need surgery, only a cast. This
not only saved the patient from coming into Bethel, 120 miles away and
an hour-long plane ride, but also saved him a very expensive trip into
Anchorage to see a specialist.
All of this broadband-related progress would not be possible
without the Universal Service Fund's Rural Health Care (RHC) program
which the Chairman, Senator Stevens, and the other Members of this
Committee and Congress have supported for many years. On behalf of the
Alaska rural healthcare provider community, I want to thank all of you
for that support, which has saved countless individual lives in Alaska
and dramatically improved the quality of life of all rural Alaskans.
In closing, I would like to make five recommendations to the
Committee.
1. Expand Medicaid reimbursement to cover telepsychiatry
treatment, including patient-site presentation services for
behavioral health clinicians and case managers.
2. Address licensing and reimbursement issues for medical
professionals participating in distance healthcare delivery
across state lines.
3. Encourage the Department of Veterans Affairs to use IHS and
HIS-contracted medical facilities to provide medical and
behavioral health care to rural Alaska veterans.
4. Increase the RHC support mechanism percentage for Internet
access from the current 25 percent, and add support for
advanced services such as managed video conferencing and
network management, which would allow YKHC to focus on the
delivery of healthcare, rather than managing core telecom
infrastructure.
5. Expand eligibility of USF subsidies to cover the infrastructure
that the remote providers need for distance-delivered medical service.
This might include bandwidth and video conference hardware.
Thank you for the opportunity and honor to address your Committee
today.
The region served by the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation
DeltaNet--Broadband Microwave Network in the YKHC Region
Some of the Village DeltaNet Towers
Senator Stevens. Mr. Chairman, he is light years ahead of
the rest of the State. That is the main point I want to make to
the Committee. We have not been able to do this all over
Alaska. We have been able to do it because of Gene Peltola's
initiative in his area. I urge that the rest of the members
study this as far as their rural areas and the application,
particularly the psychiatric application, is going to be very
interesting for veterans throughout the country. Thank you.
The Chairman. I would like to thank all the witnesses for
their testimony this morning.
If we may, we would like to question our witnesses. Senator
Stevens?
Senator Stevens. I have no questions.
I must say, I think it has been a very good panel and I
support wholeheartedly the total recommendation that we find
some way to expand this concept so that we are covering the
areas that are in great need, particularly our veterans
services in rural America. When we consider the fact that some
of our veterans, as Gene has said, are literally 1,000 miles
from the nearest real veterans service, it is going to be very
difficult to keep up with some of these people unless we do, in
fact, adopt his recommendation that we use the Indian Health
Service and other telecommunications services to keep track of
these veterans. Under the law, the Veterans Administration is
now required to keep track of our veterans for 5 years after
their separation. They can only do that through
telecommunications.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator McCaskill?
STATEMENT OF HON. CLAIRE McCASKILL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
Senator McCaskill. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, I want to say how proud I am of Ms. Conroy for being
here today. She is a terrific librarian, and I sincerely hope
that not only do we continue to enhance the availability of the
Internet through libraries, that we never lose sight of that
unique experience of walking into a library and seeing those
grand and glorious books everywhere. And the ability to open a
book and crack that cover and be able to turn those pages is
something that was an incredibly important part of my childhood
and I hope that we maintain that for children for many
generations to come.
Let me ask you, Ms. Conroy. Has the Library Association--or
maybe some of the other witnesses might know. Has anyone
tracked how much online higher education has gone up in the
last 5 to 10 years? I noticed there was a consistency in the
testimony about online higher education and particularly in
these rural areas, particularly because of the costs of
commuting for our college education and the impracticability of
us moving campuses to many of these locations. Do you know
whether there has been any analysis of how much of this is
going on and how much of it is, in fact, taking over in terms
of classroom education?
Ms. Conroy. Yes, I do, at least for the state of Missouri.
I mentioned MOREnet which provides Internet connectivity to
higher education in Missouri. The demands of higher education
institutions for bandwidth has grown exponentially in that
sector, and I can provide you with those statistics when I get
back home.
I do know that local individuals are now able to go to
school from their rural communities where before, they would
not have left their communities. And they are doing that all
online. So I could also provide you some statistics for those
usages in the local public libraries. I am going to assume that
this is true for the rest of the United States. I know it is
true for Missouri.
Senator McCaskill. I think we need to really look at that
because I think we may need a marketing campaign to encourage
more young people to use online education, particularly if we
can get some follow-up studies as to how marketable those
degrees are as compared to the traditional degree that occurs
from someone sitting in a classroom on a campus somewhere.
How much money is the state of Missouri providing in
Missouri, Ms. Conroy, in this whole area of connectivity in
terms of telecommunication, online education, and telehealth?
Ms. Conroy. What I can answer is the MOREnet budget which
is about $22 million, and that covers all those sectors,
public, K-12 education, higher ed, libraries, telehealth, State
government services, and also some electronic data bases that
the State library is able to purchase with that State money.
Senator McCaskill. And Mr. Peltola--is that how you say
your name?
Senator Stevens. Gene Peltola.
Senator McCaskill. Gene Peltola? Thank you for being with
us. Many of us have learned more about Alaska in the last few
weeks.
And I wanted to ask you. Missouri has a paltry $22 million
that is going to this. What is the total in Alaska that is
being set aside not from the Federal Government, but rather
from Alaska which we now all know has surpluses? What kind of
money is being spent in Alaska by the State government?
Mr. Peltola. I am not aware of that, ma'am. The
infrastructure that we have developed out here in the Y-K Delta
has basically come from the private sector.
Senator McCaskill. OK. And some help from, I assume, the
Universal Service Fund?
Mr. Peltola. The Universal Service Fund pays the majority
of the service costs for utilization of our DeltaNet.
Senator McCaskill. OK, great.
Mr. Ramsey, from where you sit, do you see the conflict
between the FCC and the USDA as it relates to the universal
service provider and the funds that are supposed to be
available from USDA for connectivity in rural areas?
Mr. Ramsey. Yes. Senator McCaskill, I think it is a great
question. I would answer it in this way. I really concur with
what Mr. Cohen was saying earlier about the reform that is
needed in the Universal Service Fund, how it is being used, how
the money is being allocated. I think we need to do many more
things that direct the money in a digital way and not looking
at just sort of the dial-up phone system. We have got to
modernize the Universal Service Fund to do more of these types
of applications. It is really the only source that is
available.
But I would also say one of the successes, of course, has
been E-rate, but I also think we need to look at creating a way
to get to both rural individuals and more low-income
individuals. And I think one of the innovative ways of thinking
about the low-income population is looking at where they live,
and I think we have missed something in not looking at
affordable housing. We have launched initiatives around saying
we have got over 3,000 public housing authorities in the United
States, and yet we are not doing enough to say are we
networking those buildings. Are we making sure broadband is
there? And I think there is an opportunity to look at universal
service and also look at the E-rate to say let us go for the
poorest of the poor who are living in public housing in both
rural and urban areas. And I would urge that that be something
that we spend more time looking at.
Senator McCaskill. I think that is a great idea. I do not
think people realize how much low-income housing there is in
rural America. I am certainly aware of that.
Let me correct the record. I do not think $22 million is a
paltry amount of money. It is compared to the Missouri budget
of $20 billion. So $22 million is not enough out of a budget of
$20 billion to go toward this from the State level.
So thank you.
Senator Stevens. Will the Senator yield there, though?
Senator McCaskill. Yes.
Senator Stevens. Maybe we should ask witnesses about the
contributions to this fund. You know, the fund really started
on assessments to long distance, and the balance is still
coming from long distance which is a declining income.
Senator McCaskill. Right.
Senator Stevens. I wonder where do they suggest we should
get the income for this fund if we are going to expand the
demands on it.
Mr. Cohen. Yes. I mean, we think the whole Universal
Service Fund needs an overhaul, exactly the way you are
describing it. We need to look at how it is funded and then, as
we just said, how it is distributed. And we would say there
needs to be uniformity in terms of how it is collected across
communications services rather than just essentially a tax on
consumers of old services, as you have just said. I mean, we
should relook at how we collect it, but particularly then how
it is used.
Senator Stevens. Thank you very much. I think as we go
forward--and that is one of the things I think the Florida
Senator and I are talking about. How do we find some way to
sustain this fund if the assessment against long distance
continues to decline? And I do think we have to do just what
you have said, Mr. Cohen. I think we have to find some way to
say that telecommunications services per se--find some way to
support universal service.
The Chairman. Senator McCaskill, are you finished?
Senator McCaskill. I am. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Pryor?
STATEMENT OF HON. MARK PRYOR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ARKANSAS
Senator Pryor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Ramsey, let me start with you, if I may. There was an
editorial that was written in Arkansas last year that basically
makes the comparison between the rural electrification program
in the 1930s to deploying broadband today. And not to go too
much into this, but one quote is: ``According to one historical
account, although nearly 90 percent of urban dwellers had
electricity by the 1930s, only 10 percent of rural dwellers
did. Private utility companies who supplied electric power to
most of the Nation's consumers argued that it was too expensive
to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads.''
Anyway, they say most farmers were too poor to be able to
afford electricity.
To me, that sounds like a familiar argument that we hear
today when it comes to broadband deployment, and there is an
inequality about how broadband is being deployed today.
So I just wanted to ask you. We talked a little bit about
universal service. Do you think that that is the best way we
can get broadband deployed? Shall we do something like what the
REA set up, which is a very different model? But what do you
think we need to do in order to get broadband out to rural
America?
Mr. Ramsey. I think, Senator, it is a great analogy that
you are looking at, and I think the important part of the
analogy is that there was a goal that was set, that the Federal
Government played an important role and created a mechanism.
It is not only the funding mechanism. Again, I go back to
my earlier remarks. It is an issue of looking at this from a
standpoint of judging and saying is it affordable, is it
available, and if it is not available, how do you we make sure
that we create incentives or the right kind of investments
around availability. And then third, it is the issue of the
applications because in some cases, if we could create the
right kind of applications, whether it is telemedicine, whether
it is online education supporting our high schools, then you
would get more private involvement along with government. There
is a role for the private sector, a very important role for the
private sector.
And I think if we are working together--you know, when we
started One Economy 8 years ago and we called it One Economy,
our goal has always been to say how do you we get the private
sector, the NGO's, and government working together on this
issue. So in that analogy that you give, that was an important
investment that the Federal Government said had to occur, and I
think that is very important.
And I think when you look at how the United States has
fallen behind, particularly on issues of speed, I do not want
that issue to get lost either because I wholeheartedly endorse
what Mr. Cohen was saying earlier about speed. And I think we
have got to relook at all of that because we are falling
behind. We are not doing enough in applications and the supply
and demand side.
Senator Pryor. Mr. Cohen, did you have any comments on
that?
Mr. Cohen. Yes. I think it is three things. First is to
stimulate demand. A lot of good examples here about how you do
that.
Second, it is to do demonstrations, and I think there are
good examples for granting to nonprofits, again, lots of the
groups that spoke here today. They then demonstrate what is
possible, whether it is telemedicine or education, and then
that helps stimulate demand.
And finally, we have to look at the build-out of the
networks themselves in terms of our tax policy and what
incentives we give, not only tax policy but in terms of
regulation, that encourage high-speed Internet build-out by the
industry that is going to build it. I mean, it has to come from
somewhere, and we have to continue to look at how we work with
the industry, as Mr. Ramsey said initially, to stimulate them
to make that investment. They have choices and we have to make
this a key policy so that when they make a choice about cap ex,
it goes to high-speed Internet.
Senator Pryor. Mr. Linkous, I appreciated what you had to
say about telemedicine because especially in a rural state like
Alaska or Arkansas or many of the other states represented
around the table today, I think telemedicine is a real solution
for some of our health care needs. And it seems to me if you do
not have broadband out in rural America, it is very hard to
provide telemedicine services out in rural America.
Did you have any more thoughts along those lines about what
we need to do to make sure that rural America has access to
telemedicine?
Mr. Linkous. Thank you, Senator. Yes. I think there was a
great intent when the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act was
passed to put in some funds to support rural health care. The
utilization of that fund, particularly for health care, has
been extremely disappointing. It was originally envisioned that
it might be several hundred million dollars. I believe
somewhere where around $20 million a year is being sent in that
area. So I think it is really important for this Committee to
revisit the Congressional intent and what has actually been
done by the Administration in implementing that program. I
think we have great opportunities that are being lost.
And second, the provision of health care, not only in rural
areas but in urban areas, is very different than it was in
1996. As I had mentioned in my testimony, health care is now
going to the individual. The original intent of the Health Care
Reform Act was to link hospitals with major medical centers in
rural areas, but it is now actually into the homes. It is in
the individuals. So to really have people get access to health
care in rural areas like they do in urban, you have got to make
sure we have high-speed broadband to the individual as well.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
Mr. Peltola, let me ask you. You mentioned in your
testimony a few moments ago--and I may have misunderstood what
you said, but I think what you were talking about is the
professional licensure of doctors, et cetera that allows them
to practice telemedicine. And from that, I assume that what you
mean is that in some circumstances, you may actually want to
cross State lines in order to get the medical help people need
using telemedicine. Is that what you were talking about?
Mr. Peltola. Yes, I was.
Senator Pryor. But usually the licensure--that is a state
issue. Are the states not equipped to handle that? So, for
example, just hypothetically if Alaska wanted to do some sort
of consortium or some sort of agreement with, say, the state of
Washington or Oregon or California or something along those
lines, I would think that the states could work that out and
you probably do not need Federal assistance to do that. Am I
wrong on that?
Mr. Peltola. You are correct on that, yes.
Senator Pryor. Well, I do want to thank you for Alaska's
example and what you are doing there in your area because I
think there are a lot of lessons there for the rest of us in
how this can work and how important this can be.
So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for doing this hearing today.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Klobuchar?
STATEMENT OF HON. AMY KLOBUCHAR,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MINNESOTA
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Go ahead, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Linkous, did you want to say something?
Mr. Linkous. Yes, if I could just add a comment. You had
talked about medical licensure. In the early days of
telemedicine, it was an issue. It is a state issue and most
medical networks are within the state. But it is now a national
issue. And let me give you one example.
In the field of pathology, there are 60 subspecialties in
pathology. I know that Alaska does not have 60 subspecialists
in pathology. We need to have a national information network
for health care just like we do for other things, and we need
to have the ability for a physician who is a subspecialist in
California to be able to provide those services to the citizens
of Alaska. For people who are working in the Angels Network in
Arkansas, they can provide those services to the people in
Louisiana. So we do need a mechanism through which we can
provide these medical services across state boundaries. We are
not saying usurp the State authority, which is very important,
but the Federal Government to step in and encourage some kind
of a sharing relationship among the states.
Senator Pryor. But can the states not do that by some sort
of compact or some sort of agreement between the states?
Mr. Linkous. With very strong Federal encouragement, that
could happen.
Senator Pryor. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Klobuchar?
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you for holding this hearing, and thank you to our witnesses.
I have really two interests in this. The first is as a
mother of a tech-savvy 13-year-old, I see the future all too
closely. Her hardest moment in the last few years was when I
was asked on a college TV show what LOL meant, and I was
stumped that it is laugh out loud. And I came home and she said
that was the most embarrassing moment of the campaign.
[Laughter.]
Senator Klobuchar. The second interest I have is, of
course, something Mr. Cohen well knows, the jobs in rural
America, and I just see that some of these jobs that are going
to places like India and Pakistan could be going to
Worthington, Minnesota or Thief River Falls.
So I guess I would start with you, Mr. Cohen, and I am very
interested in the speed issues. From what I have heard, places
like Japan or Korea have speeds at rates that are sometimes 20
times as fast, and at one-half the price as what we get here.
And also we have the issue that even our neighbor to the
north, Canada, neighbor to Minnesota to the north, seems to
have done smart things. Could you talk a little bit about what
Canada has done and if we can learn any lessons?
Mr. Cohen. Sure. I think, first of all, the bill that this
Committee is supporting for the most part, S. 1492--I mean, we
do not even map out in our country where we stand on broadband.
In our Speed Matters campaign, there is a page on every State,
including the rural States. Here you see huge white spaces
where there is no broadband at all. Step one is we need to know
where we stand. In Canada, they have done that kind of mapping.
The equivalent there of the FCC is ahead of us in that regard.
So I think that is one.
Two, we need to set goals like the kind of goals Senator
Rockefeller has talked about in his resolution, very clear
goals. And then we must figure out, well, if our goals are, for
example, we would support 10 megabits a second by 2010, what
will it take to close the gap between where we are now. Once we
map out where we are, and how we get there and then how we fund
it.
So I think the key difference, you know, whether it is
Canada or Japan, is really to look at the demand side and the
supply side, meaning the network providers, and how government
can play the role of bringing them together, bringing demand
together with the network providers and obviously closing the
rural and urban divide. Right here in Washington, D.C., we do
not have high-speed Internet for most of the city. You do not
have to go a mile from here and you are going to fall off the
chart that is here, let alone go to rural Minnesota or Alaska.
Senator Klobuchar. Mr. Cohen, how about public-private
partnerships? We have had a few towns in Minnesota try to do
this on their own with mixed results, and they realize the best
way is public-private partnerships. Could you talk a little bit
about that?
Mr. Cohen. Yes, sure. I mean, the first thing is the level
of capital expenditure. To do what is done in Japan, that is
fiber to the premise, in our country in our dollar terms, we
are talking about at least, just to pass each house, $1,000 a
premise. And so a lot of the public-private partnerships that
we talk about here use this very low definition of broadband,
and so we get less than 1 megabit a second through a WiFi kind
of technology--better than nothing, for sure--as an example
that we talk about in many small towns in rural America. But it
is not going to provide the kind of services, whether it is
telemedicine, whether it is two-way video that we are talking
about on a global basis.
And so I think when we talk here about public-private
partnerships, we are also talking about getting the network
providers and saying to them, the market is not working, and
creating the combination of--I guess incentives is a nicer
word, but also regulation that pushes up what broadband means.
We cannot have people paying for broadband, as you said, at
very high rates and getting very low speeds. People do not even
know what the speeds are.
Senator Klobuchar. Mr. Peltola, I was interested in what
you have done in Alaska. Can you hear me up there, Mr. Peltola?
Mr. Peltola. Yes, ma'am. I can hear you real well.
Senator Klobuchar. Excellent.
You decided to increase the bandwidth to an impressive
amount. How were you able to accomplish the increase?
Mr. Peltola. We were able to accomplish the increase by
working with our private sector provider.
Senator Klobuchar. So that was a public-private partnership
with your tribes? Was it a partnership with the tribes and the
groups' clinics?
Mr. Peltola. It is far from the 100 megabits per second
that some other countries have in place right now.
Senator Klobuchar. One last question here I wanted to ask
of you, Mr. Ramsey, and that is about One Economy's public
interest channel. Of course, Minnesota is the home of Lake
Wobegon and a lot of work in the public radio and public TV.
Could you talk a little bit more about the online channel,
which is clearly the next step that should be taken with public
TV and public radio?
Mr. Ramsey. Thank you, Senator.
The roots of this public Internet channel started about 7
years ago when we launched the website called the Beehive,
which was dedicated to basically bringing information around
health, workforce development, education, and finance, helping
people who had basic literacy issues be able to go online, be
able to find information, and make it easy for them.
Over time as we have developed more applications, we
decided that we needed to cover more issues like emergency
preparedness, more online education, community news, civic
engagement. So on December 11 of this year, we will launch this
network made up of ourselves and many other partners called the
Public Internet Channel. And our goal is really to provide
information, engage people, and make it easy to take action. We
do not want it to just be static. Here is information. But we
want you to be able to go to a toolbox online and be able to
click a button and be able to get that children's health
insurance very easily, know what your eligibility is. We say we
want people to be online not in line.
And so we are excited by that. We have even recruited
people out of Hollywood to help us to make the content
engaging. Barbara Townsend, who is a director/producer, is
producing a program dedicated to single moms that will make it
compelling and help them to be able to access information. So
that network will start, Senator, late this year and then we
will, in future years, go from there. We are collaborating with
entities like PBS and other entities to bring that compelling
content. So we do not produce it all. We are aggregating it and
producing that content.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
Mr. Ramsey. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Thune?
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN THUNE,
U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding the
hearing on this very important subject and thanks to our
panelists for sharing your thoughts about what we can be doing,
steps we can be taking to increase the availability of
broadband and penetrate areas of the country that have not so
far had access to high-speed Internet.
I just want to make a couple of quick observations and then
ask really one question, which is a follow up to something that
has already been asked.
But I am really concerned about the deficiencies that we
have in rural areas. We have only got 31 percent of rural
Americans who have home broadband connections compared with 49
percent of suburban residents, and 52 percent of urban
Americans. And I really think this is a key when it comes to
job creation and economic development in states like mine of
South Dakota.
I have talked to people who have to our state to escape
some of the hassles of living in the big city, like the wide
open space, would like to be able to continue to work out of
their homes to telecommute, but this is a real impediment in
many parts of South Dakota.
I was talking to somebody who moved to our state from Texas
just recently and located in the area of South Dakota that is
very scenic and pretty but does not have high-speed Internet
access. And it is a real problem if you are trying to continue
to conduct business and commerce.
So I guess that is an observation, and I think it is
something that the statistics that were up previously point to
the need for steps on our part to correct.
I do want to home in on one point, though, that was made,
and that is this whole issue of telehealth. You know, we fight
every year for a few million dollars in appropriations for the
Office for the Advancement of Telehealth and to try and get
some demonstration programs funded actually that would yield
results to the Government because the grants only go out to
those entities that are then turning around and using those
dollars to demonstrate that they are gaining efficiencies and
actually making health care less expensive to the taxpayers
through the Medicare program. But so far, we have not done a
very good job.
And I know that question was already asked. But I guess I
am just curious maybe from any of you a comment about what are
the impediments in your mind to further expansion of telehealth
as a way of providing health care to people in rural areas of
this country and what steps might we take that would remove
some of those barriers.
Mr. Linkous. If I could respond to that. First of all,
Senator, thank you. You have been a tremendous champion for
telehealth in the Senate, and I want to thank you for that
publicly.
But our goal is to take telehealth, telemedicine, whatever
you want to call it out of just the demonstration stage of
having grants, which have been very, very important, but moving
into the mainstream of providing medical care. To do that, it
has to be, number one, fully reimbursed by Medicare. That is a
major barrier that we still have in the Federal Government
today. Telemedicine is considered only a program for certain
areas, for certain types of people, for certain types of
services, and it is really a real limiting factor for the folks
in your State as around the rest of the country.
So the one recommendation, if I had to make one single
recommendation, is to open up Medicare reimbursement for
telemedicine no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no
matter what services you receive. It should be just the same.
Senator Thune. Does anybody else have any thoughts on that
subject? Yes?
Mr. Cohen. Yes. I would just say that, obviously, the speed
issue matters in terms of telehealth, aside from the mapping in
general for this country, which we do not even do. I think we
could focus on bringing genuine high-speed Internet to clinics
and health care facilities in rural America. I mean, if you do
not have speed of at least 5 or 6 megabits a second, telehealth
is going to be at a very low level. It has got to be two-way
speed as well, not just downloading.
Mr. Ramsey. And Senator, I would just like to add one other
piece because, obviously, I concur with what was said. I think
one of the things that we are seeing--and it was mentioned
earlier that so much more is happening with disease management
in the home. When we think of telemedicine, it is not only the
important work that is done in clinics and facilities, but it
is how do we facilitate and create a comfort level of people
having these applications in the home. You look at diabetes.
You look at some of these chronic illnesses. So much of the
success of that patient is determined by what they do to manage
their own disease, and much can be done if you have the
technology in the home.
Dr. Mayor. And just from an AARP perspective, we know that
people want to age in their homes, and we recently did a
survey. 96 percent, I think is the number in my head, of the
respondents said that they would welcome the opportunity to
have that telemedicine access in their homes. So it just
reinforces the importance of having the broadband in the first
place.
Senator Thune. As Mr. Linkous mentioned, we have been
trying, through these demonstration projects, to use remote
monitoring technologies so that people can stay in their homes,
and even that seems to be a battle every year to get recognized
as an important thing to be funded and something that in the
long run, like I said, I think has the possibility of actually
saving tax dollars by making these programs more efficient and
allowing people to stay in a home setting as opposed to having
to go into an area where it would probably be much more
expensive to the taxpayer.
So I just think that there we have really sort of missed
the boat on that, and there is so much more than we can and
should be doing. And I think ultimately it does come back to
reimbursement. And we know that. And I know that in the initial
stages that probably tends to be--people look at it and say,
well it is going to be expensive. But I think in the long run,
it is going to save money.
So I appreciate your testimony. I have some other questions
I would like to ask, but I have got some places I need to get,
Mr. Chairman. But I thank you all very much for your input.
The Chairman. This discussion is an important one today,
and yet we have just two Senators here. I can see in my
lifetime a hearing of this nature held with no one here. I may
be officiating in my office and all the other Senators could be
in their offices and all the witnesses in their homes or their
offices just like the witness from Alaska.
However, there are two things that are in our way. One is a
national broadband policy. We have not made it a policy to make
this part of our communications system an important part. I
look upon this development as just as important as the printing
press, and it is a shame that we do not have this available to
Americans. When you consider that only 25 percent of the low-
income Americans have access to broadband and just slightly
over half of all Americans have access to broadband, something
is wrong.
So I would hope that with your organizations you can
provide us with information as to what the costs would be
because at this stage, we have no idea what the costs will be.
We know what the potential is. I was at a viewing of
surgery conducted in Bangkok and supervised in Tripler in
Hawaii. And it was fascinating to have a doctor or surgeon in
Hawaii tell the Army surgeon in Bangkok, go to the left or go
to the right or what have you, and successful.
But it is going to cost money and we have no idea how much
it costs. And if there is no American government policy
supporting this, then it becomes a political issue, an earmark.
Well, I am willing to put in an earmark, but I would like to
know how much we need and how can we justify that.
When you consider that most of our homes in the United
States have no computers, then something is wrong.
So you would be doing us a great favor and yourselves and
the people of the United States, if you would give us the
facts.
We have, for example, something that is going to happen in
a few months, February 17, 2009. We will change from analog to
high definition digital television. 21 million Americans rely
upon over-the-air television with rabbit ears. They are going
to be several thousand Americans waking up on the morning of
February 17 next year and find that the TV does not work.
I would hope that we can do better than that. After all, we
are the pioneers that discovered the computer, that came up
with broadband, and yet we find ourselves doing a little better
than Third World countries. I think we should do better than
that.
So you would be doing us and the country a great favor if
you could feed us--and I can assure you we are hungry for data.
We are hungry for facts. If you have any right now as to what
do you think it will cost and what sort of plan we should
have--these things are not in place yet--that is what I want to
know. Anything you can provide us at this moment? Mr. Cohen?
Mr. Cohen. Yes. We can bring in better data than I can give
you.
But again, it is a question of the cost to pass the house
and then creating the demand so people take it up. So you
actually do not need huge public expenditures if we can
stimulate demand and aggregate demand. So, again, to provide
essentially what I guess now would be about 15 megabits per
second, which still would leave us behind Korea and Canada--
that is probably on the average--again, it depends on where the
house is, but on the average in the U.S., it would cost $300 a
house to pass the house with that level of service. 100 megabit
service is three times that because you have to actually bring
fiber to the premise itself, whereas on the sort of 15
megabits, you can bring it to the neighborhood within five-
eighths of a mile. Now, again in rural areas, whether it is
Hawaii or Alaska, that is more of a challenge.
Fourth generation wireless, which is just being built, can
provide high-speed Internet as well, probably at least 5 or 6
megabits a second, probably at a lower price. But that is just
being built. So we are not sure sort of how that works. And
that would be with a cell site two or three miles potentially
from a house. So it could be very valuable.
Again, Japan--my colleague here, Mr. Morishima, could tell
you that in Japan the fourth generation wireless is already
built.
So I think a lot of the questions you raise are pretty deep
questions about, A, we have no mapping; B, we have no goals; C,
we do not have the right incentives to get ourselves the
cutting edge technology at the same speed that countries like
Korea and Japan do because the national broadband policy is
there, as well as in countries in Europe.
And we will bring you more information.
The Chairman. Mr. Ramsey? Anyone else who would like to
contribute something today?
Mr. Linkous. Senator, although we do not have specific
information on some of the costs of deployment, I think there
are increasing numbers of studies and research that have shown
some of the benefits in financial terms to the Federal
Government of deployment of broadband applications,
particularly in health care, and we will be glad to supply that
information to the Committee.
Mr. Ramsey. And Senator, we would do the same on the other
applications, particularly around education and workforce
development, the demand side applications that are important to
go along with the other infrastructure applications.
The Chairman. All of you have used the word ``demand.'' How
do we develop this demand?
Mr. Ramsey. I think, Senator, Mr. Chairman, the issue is to
look at a variety of subject matter areas in terms of
applications. So we spent a lot of time talking about a very
important one in terms of health, whether it is disease
management, telemedicine. That is an application sort of on the
demand side. But so is education. So is workforce development,
the kind of online content that needs to be available at an
assessable literacy level and in multiple languages. And so
when we talk about demand, it is when a person sees that
application and says, boy, I want to go and spend some money to
have broadband in my home because I want that application
myself. And so when we talk about demand, that is what we are
talking about.
That is why we have been working on creating this channel
online to bring together public purpose type information in
these areas, and that is the kind of support that we are
looking for and it is on the demand side.
Dr. Mayor. I would just add to that that I think another
thing that would help on the demand side is the easier systems
are to use, the more intuitive they are. I think the world
divides these days into two categories: people who think if
they hit the wrong button on the computer, it will explode; and
people who think that you just have to keep hitting until
something good happens.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Mayor. Those strategies are fine, but we need to be
sort of veering more to making it as easy as humanly possible,
as intuitive as humanly possible, to take away that sort of
technology phobia that at least some people still have. It is
not a problem for the very young, but for the rest of us.
Mr. Linkous. Mr. Chairman, I think the concept of needing
to create demand is a somewhat fleeting issue because I think
we are going to have tremendous demand very shortly. In the
field of health care alone, we were worried in telemedicine
that people would not accept it, but in fact, consumers not
only are accepting it in every case that I am aware of--in
every study that I have ever seen looking at demand, they have
not only accepted it, but they want more. I think if we see the
health care applications that are being built to the wireless
devices into the home, into the new games that people are using
throughout the country, that is only going to expand. So I
think if we have broadband available, there is no doubt in my
mind that the applications and the interest of Americans are
going to just explode.
The Chairman. I would like to thank all of you, especially
our friend from Alaska in Bethel, Alaska, Mr. Peltola. You have
just demonstrated that it works.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. And I think to further demonstrate this one
of these hearings--I think I will convene one without witnesses
present here or Senators present in the room to demonstrate
that it can work.
I thank all of you, and if you can provide with us
additional data, information, I would appreciate that very
much.
With that, adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Prepared Statement of Charles Townsend, President and CEO,
Atlantic Wireless L.P.
Mr. Chairman, I am Charles Townsend, and I am President and CEO of
Atlantic Wireless Limited Partners. Atlantic Wireless has purchased
over $100 million of Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) licenses and is
the 9th largest owner of AWS licenses in the U.S. From 2002-2008, I was
the President and CEO of Aloha Partners. Aloha Partners was the largest
owner of 700 MHz spectrum in the United States until the spring of 2008
when it sold all its licenses to AT&T. Aloha covered over 200 million
people with 12 MHz of spectrum on former UHF channels 54 and 59. I am
submitting this written testimony to further the discussion on the
importance of broadband to rural communities across America and the
contribution that auctioning ``white space'' can make to ensuring that
rural areas have access to high-speed connections.
United States Lagging
The public's airwaves are a vital national resource, and their use
should always be geared toward improving the broad public interest.
Sen. Inouye has said that ``Broadband communications have become the
great economic engine of our time'' and I do not believe that anyone
would disagree with him. The U.S. faces difficult challenges because
the rest of the world has embraced broadband as a crucial part of their
economic future. Various well-known studies have shown that the United
States trails Japan, South Korea, Canada, France, Finland, and a host
of other countries in Internet connectivity. One of the main reasons
that the U.S. is not at the top of this list is its abundance of rural
areas. It is estimated that between 15-20 percent of U.S. households
cannot receive broadband service. The majority of these households are
located in rural areas where it is too expensive to provide traditional
broadband service.
A recent study by the Communications Workers of America concludes
that ``all too many Americans encounter a significant digital divide.
Families in rural areas are much less likely to subscribe to broadband.
According to surveys, while 57 percent of urban households subscribe to
broadband, only 38 percent of rural households do.
The questions is then, how do we maximize broadband access and
specifically in rural areas. We need high-speed Internet for our homes,
schools, hospitals, and workplaces. Speed defines what is possible on
the Internet. It determines whether we will have the infrastructure
required to create the jobs of the future, develop our economy, and
support innovations in telemedicine, education, public safety, and
public services to improve our lives and communities. High-speed
Internet is even more crucial to underserved rural areas because it is
the best and most realistic solution to the rural/urban technology
divide. High-speed Internet offers the chance to revitalize rural
economies faced with the ever increasing shift to an urban, technology-
based economy. Wireless broadband offers a solution to the challenge
facing us. Wireless broadband has the potential to cover large
geographic areas at low cost.
``White Space'' Auction Offers Solution
The auctioning of ``white space'' would foster the development of
wireless broadband in rural areas because over 200 MHz of spectrum is
available in those areas. To put this amount of spectrum in
perspective, it is over 3 times the amount of spectrum as was auctioned
in the recent 700 MHz auction. In addition, the licensed spectrum
permits maximum power, and significantly reduces interference issues.
The amount of spectrum and the power available make the ``white space''
extremely valuable in rural areas, as it would allow a licensed owner
to provide service over a large geographic area at a low cost. Further,
an auction of licensed spectrum could provide the collateral needed to
finance wireless broadband build-outs in rural markets. Unlicensed
spectrum will not. An additional benefit is the potential windfall for
the Federal Government. A study done by the Brattle group states that
that the government could receive $12-24 billion by auctioning ``white
space.'' Certainly, given the current economic climate and the position
the government finds itself in, any significant source of additional
Federal revenue must be pursued.
Currently, very few wireless broadband networks operate in rural
America today. The type and amount of spectrum needed for these
wireless networks has not previously been available to rural wireless
carriers. Outside of a licensed ``white space'' auction rural areas are
unlikely to get broadband service because it is too expensive to build
fixed networks.
Engineers have estimated that a licensed signal can travel up to 30
miles in rural areas, while an unlicensed signal can travel only up to
4 miles. (This calculation is based on a typical power of 1kW for the
licensed spectrum compared to 1 W for the unlicensed spectrum.) This
difference results in more than a 50-to-1 coverage advantage for the
licensed spectrum. In other words, there would need to be roughly 50
unlicensed cell sites for every licensed cell site. The only way to
succeed in providing broadband to rural areas is on a licensed basis so
that power levels can be maximized and interference can be reduced.
The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA)
recently conducted a survey of its membership about wireless broadband
issues in rural areas. NTCA represents over 580 small and rural
telephone companies throughout the U.S. Seventy-three percent of NTCA's
members indicated that they would prefer access to additional licensed
spectrum over additional unlicensed spectrum.
Unlicensed Spectrum Wasteful
On the other side, opponents of licensing ``white space'' promote
in-home networking and improved WiFi as likely uses of the spectrum,
but using the spectrum for low-power, short-range services like these
fails to take full advantage the ``white space.'' The widely cited
Brattle group reply comments before the FCC state that the ``white
space'' is ``overqualified'' for such low-power, short-range services.
Using ``white space'' for this purpose would ``amount to using land in
downtown Tokyo to grow rice.''
Some spectrum utilization studies, including the NSF Spectrum
Occupancy Measurements Project Summary, suggest that there are many
licensed frequency bands that are underutilized. However, this initial
conclusion is deceptive. Most of these are frequencies in the 1240-1710
MHz bands. Much of the spectrum in the 1240-1710 MHz bands is licensed
to non-commercial operations. If you compare the unlicensed PCS band
(2390-2500 MHz) to the licensed PCS band (1850-1990 MHz), the studies
consistently come to the opposite conclusion. Licensed PCS frequencies
are utilized significantly more than the unlicensed frequencies. In
2004 and 2005 the National Science Foundation studied spectrum
utilization in seven different locations throughout the United States.
In six of those seven locations, licensed PCS spectrum is utilized
significantly more than unlicensed PCS spectrum.
Unlicensed Spectrum Finds Few Customers
A significant number of experiments with unlicensed WiFi in major
Metropolitan areas have not worked. In every instance, including in San
Francisco, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, these experiments have
failed. A lack of funding was not the problem: EarthLink spent more
than $50 million building unlicensed WiFi operations in these cities.
These experiments failed due to lack of demand. EarthLink expected over
100,000 customers in Philadelphia in the first year. In spite of
extensive marketing, EarthLink attracted only 5,942 subscribers.
The reason for these consistent failures was simple . . . no
customers. Even in Google's own backyard, no one has attracted enough
customers to make unlicensed WiFi viable. Since the unlicensed system
has failed in these urban centers, claims that unlicensed usage of
``white space'' will lead to greater rural broadband access must be
viewed with great skepticism.
In conclusion, it is imperative that we bring broadband to rural
America, and the only practical way to do that is through licensure of
``white space.''
______
Prepared Statement of the American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance
The American Homeowners Grassroots Alliance (AHGA) commends the
Senate Commerce Committee for holding this hearing on Why Broadband
Matters. AHGA is an independent national consumer advocacy organization
which focuses on policy issues that have a significant economic impact
on the nation's 75 million homeowners.
Broadband is having a dramatic and positive impact on the Nation's
75 million homeowners as well as other consumers. It is silently
helping to address some of the most serious immediate challenges facing
the U.S. For example, the recent drop in gasoline prices has been
attributed in large part to reduced gasoline demand as consumers made
conscious efforts to drive less. While some of that reduction is the
result of consumer decisions to forgo vacations, much of it is
undoubtedly a result of the increased use of Internet commerce and
teleworking. Broadband is essential, in many cases, for both. During
this crisis more consumers have been buying products and services
online rather than driving to the mall, and more employers are letting
their workers telecommute on a temporary basis to help them cope with
the high prices of gasoline. By providing an increasingly viable option
to hydrocarbon energy consumption in many endeavors, broadband has
revealed its ability to help the environment and stabilize energy costs
that will be enhanced as broadband penetration increases.
The impact of broadband will continue to grow as the variety and
sophistication of broadband applications expands, and as the number of
homes with broadband access, now over 50 percent, continues to
increase. The scope of broadband's impact on society is already
breathtaking:
For families. Broadband is changing the way families learn,
communicate, play and prepare for their future. Critically important
information about health care, scholarships, colleges, jobs, and
community life such as e-government or registering to vote is
increasingly on the Internet, and sometimes only on the Internet.
For consumers. Broadband has transformed commerce. Just about every
product or service can be purchased on the Internet, and consumers can
find products and services they would never have found in an offline
world. E-commerce growth rates continue to outstrip offline retail
sales. E-government is increasingly important to consumers and
businesses, saving both time and money. Already more than 14 million
Americans have placed a telephone call over the Internet.
For workers. The number of teleworkers is increasing rapidly. More
than 12.4 million Americans telecommute full-time. Thanks to incentives
created for Federal agencies, 7 percent of the Federal workforce now
telecommutes. Since they do not drive to work, home-based small
business owners and teleworkers are helping to reduce rush hour traffic
jams for other workers as well. A recent survey of members of the
American Institute of Architects revealed that home offices are the
most popular special function room of new home buyers for the third
year in a row.
For rural Americans. Nowhere is broadband opportunity as profound
as it is in rural America. In too many rural communities, because jobs
have migrated to urban areas, high school graduates often feel they
have only two choices--go away, or go nowhere. Broadband is the
connection to new markets, new jobs, and to distant family and friends.
For healthcare. Health IT technologies are dependant on the
proliferation of broadband. Those technologies will improve the
efficiency of healthcare and significantly reduce its costs. Health IT
legislation will enable privacy-protected complete personal medical
records to help doctors greatly improve diagnoses and treatments.
Broadband will enable effective remote face-to-face consultations
between healthcare providers and patients. A new generation of wearable
medical monitoring devices now under development will enable millions
of chronically ill to remain in their homes while their conditions are
remotely monitored 24/7. They will also help many of the 54 million
Americans with disabilities to remain in their homes and/or lead more
productive lives. Collectively, these technologies will save seniors
alone more than $800 billion by reducing health care costs.
For seniors. Our society continues to shift from the geocentric
extended families of our nation's early history. Older Americans today
are far more likely to live an extended physical distance from their
children, siblings, other family members, and the friends of their
youth. As AARP pointed out in its testimony to the Committee, ``High-
quality broadband networks have the potential to make the world more
accessible to persons over age 50, providing convenient pathways to the
economic and social activities that are not only vital for leading
comfortable and meaningful lives, but also for fostering and sustaining
livable communities. Creating livable communities is an important
policy goal for AARP. More than just a concept, livable communities
seek to combine diverse and affordable housing, adequate mobility
options, employment opportunities, entertainment and supportive
community services to allow persons of all ages to remain independent,
active and engaged.''
For homeowners. Today over 80 percent of home buyers use the
Internet in their search for new homes as well as home financing. This
saves them tremendous amounts of time. Home sellers can list their
homes in multiple listing services (MLS's), which will distribute the
listings to hundreds of real estate broker websites for as little as a
few hundred dollars. Websites like Craigslist are becoming more
important factors in real estate transactions, and home sellers or
agents can put listings there for free. Because sellers and buyers in
the broadband era need less support from real estate agents, broadband
is also helping to reduce real estate sales commission rates. According
to U.S. Census figures and IDC, a national research firm, at least 18
million of the approximately 36 million home office households in the
United States are home-based businesses. Many of them are Internet-
centric businesses which are heavily dependant on broadband, such as
the millions of eBay Power Sellers who derive all or much of their
income from Internet commerce, service businesses such as website
designers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and millions of other
home-based businesses.
For the environment. The shift to home-based teleworking is helping
reduce environmental pollution and global warming. By transforming
existing rooms in their homes into offices, telecommuters and home
based businesses reduce the need for the construction of new commercial
office space, which helps the environment. A study by TIAX LLC
determined that a full time telecommuter who lives 22 miles from his or
her workplace would save 320 gallons of gasoline and reduce
CO2 emissions by 4.5 to 6 tons per year. At $3.00+ per
gallon gasoline prices, they would also save teleworkers about $1,000
in cash annually, not including savings in automobile insurance,
maintenance costs and depreciation resulting from those trips. Home
based business owners avoiding commutes to a separate office the same
distance away would save the same amount.
For the economy. Ubiquitously available broadband could:
reduce the costs of Federal, state, and local physical
transportation infrastructure investments, both for expansion
and maintenance.
create an estimated $500 billion in economic growth.
create more than 1.2 million high-wage jobs.
strengthen America's global competitiveness.
boost business productivity--which is essential to raising
standards of living for all families in America.
allow small businesses to reach global markets.
For Homeland Security. In a study of the communications failures on
September 11, 2001, the National Academies of Science found that the
Internet held up better than other communications technologies. On 9/
11, 95 percent of cell phone calls at 11 a.m. failed to get through,
the central office for the phone system cutoff 300,000 landline phones,
television stations were knocked off the air, and police and fire
department radios failed. By contrast, only 2 percent of Internet
addresses remained off-line for an extended period. 9/11 demonstrated
the Internet's overall resilience to attacks through its flexibility,
and adaptability. But 7 years after 9/11, America has not done enough
to advance the broadband Internet technologies that can help avoid
future communications failures.
For public safety. Hurricane Katrina highlighted the fragility of
the emergency communications system in this country. During Katrina, 38
Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPS) failed, preventing 911 calls
from being answered. Connecting public safety answering points to
broadband, like we've connected schools and libraries, will strengthen
the emergency responder communications network.
For government. Universal broadband could also have important
advantages for the government itself, allowing government workers to
communicate in more geographically-dispersed locations in an emergency.
In the event of a major 9/11-type attack on Washington, offices could
be inaccessible but employees will still need to communicate. Federal
workers using broadband enabled phones could immediately work from home
or other broadband enabled location--improving continuity of
government. Many government agencies are already making the switch to
broadband enabled voice services, but without broadband at home,
workers can't connect.
For business. Broadband has greatly enhanced business productivity
and enabled small businesses, including home-based microbusinesses,
play on a much more level playing fields against larger competitors. A
small business today can create a website using user-friendly templates
and maintain their website for $20 a month or less. For products that
can be shipped electronically (movies, software, etc.), transportation
costs associated with physical products are eliminated, because the
customers' Internet service provides the transportation.
To help make the aforementioned benefits available to all in
society we must make broadband accessible to all. To achieve that
objective, AHGA recommends that Congress undertake the following
specific actions:
Promote a non-partisan broadband debate. The current
broadband debate has become very partisan, ideological, and
acrimonious. Yet the benefits of expanded broadband access are
not a matter of partisan differences. Legislators can
demonstrate their leadership and maturity by helping to bring a
more thoughtful tone to the debate in the future. Members of
Congress, and leaders of consumer and business organizations,
need to recognize that our progress is dependant on reaching
consensus among most or all of the key players. No segment of
the consumer, business, or political community can expect to
achieve all of their goals. Progress will have to come in
incremental steps, and compromises will be necessary even as we
move forward incrementally. It is far better to devote our
energies to finding areas of common ground that will move us
toward the ultimate goal than to expend energies trying to deny
any success to those who disagree with us.
Pass broadband mapping legislation. Broadband mapping will
collect accurate data that will reveal the extent and
distribution of current broadband deployment, enable us to
forecast trends, and identify areas where additional measures
are required. It will also help defuse differences of opinion
regarding the types and seriousness of the challenges to
further broadband deployment. The information that S. 1492, the
Broadband Data Improvement Act passed by this Committee, and
House-passed legislation H.R. 3919, the Broadband Census of
America of 2007, will help both the Federal Government and
local communities and states assess their broadband inventory.
That information is critical to intelligent planning and
resource allocation going forward.
Make smart government investments in this critical
infrastructure. The nation's resources are limited, and both
existing programs and any new resources brought to bear on the
challenge must be made to work with maximum efficiency.
Existing programs such as the universal service system are
still oriented to outdated consumer communications needs and
old communications technologies. The universal service system
needs to be modified to better support the goal of deployment
of high speed Internet for all. We also need to invest more
public funds in efforts to improve digital literacy, provide
broadband access and needed hardware are to low income
households, support public/private partnerships, and make low
interest business loans available to spur deployment of faster,
second-generation networks.
Create new economic incentives to spur the demand for
broadband services and/or reduce the cost of deploying
broadband services. Laws that have effectively expanded
telecommuting by Federal workers need to be complimented with
similar incentives in the private sector. A $2,000 tax credit
for technology equipment and broadband service expenses
required to establish home offices for workers and home-based
business owners would encourage more employers and workers to
shift to teleworking, just as the $2,000 hybrid vehicle tax
credit has encouraged more commuters to choose more fuel
efficient cars. Congress should enact a permanent, nationwide,
state and local sales tax holiday on goods and services that
are sold over the Internet. Exempting Internet sales from state
and local sales taxes was supported by 85 percent of the 3,125
survey respondents in a 2008 Parade Magazine readers survey.
Such an exemption would spur Internet commerce and the demand
for broadband services. State and local governments would
benefit from a reduced need for new transportation investments
and maintenance, and society would benefit from the many other
economic and environmental benefits of e-commerce. Tax credits
or other incentives tied to accelerating the build out of
networks and upgrading them to second-generation capability
should be provided to broadband and cellular service providers.
Support niche opportunities to take advantage of new
broadband applications. Much progress has been made in
narrowing differences in health IT legislation in this
Congress. It would be a great step forward if Congress could
pass health IT legislation this year. If time does not permit
action in this Congress, passage of health IT legislation
should be moved to the top of the priority list next year.
Congress should continue to seek similar niche opportunities to
take advantage of broadband technology in other areas in the
future.
Remove major barriers to broadband adoption. Privacy issues
are a serious threat to consumers. They slow both Internet use
and broadband adoption. Congress must take steps to address
threats to privacy, security and safety.
The most serious is identity theft, which has a very adverse effect
on consumers when it occurs, and is also discouraging many other
consumers from taking advantage of the benefits of Internet Commerce. A
recent University of Michigan study determined that up to 75 percent of
all bank websites have security flaws resulting from poor website
design that make them susceptible to hacking. Federal privacy
legislation should establish reasonable basic minimum security and
privacy for online activity. These standards should not be so rigorous
that they would impose undue burdens on home-based and other small
businesses which incorporate Internet commerce in their business
models.
A new and growing threat to consumer privacy, security and safety
are new technology applications that provide high quality, ground level
pictures of residential neighborhoods, which have been made available
on the Internet without the consumer's advance knowledge or permission
by companies such as Google (Street View), Mapjack, EveryScape Inc. and
Povo Inc. Ground level view technologies enable anyone with Internet
access to drive virtually, undetected, and very efficiently through
residential neighborhoods and peer into the windows of peoples' homes,
and view what they were doing inside their home or elsewhere on their
property. Personally embarrassing photographs from these services have
been widely republished on the Internet. The degree of invasion of
someone's privacy and potential risk of damage to someone's career
posed by these tools is many times greater than that posed by a
neighborhood busybody, and these tools create security threats to
consumers as well. The Pentagon has prohibited Google from publishing
its ``Street View'' content of U.S. military bases and the Department
of Homeland Security has reportedly asked Google not to release its
street views of the Washington, D.C. area out of concern that the
pictures may be used by international terrorists to plan attacks. These
new tools can just as easily be used by domestic criminals as they can
by international terrorists. They make it far easier and more efficient
for potentially violent burglars, car thieves, and other criminals to
plan their crimes. These companies should be required to get advance
opt-in permission from consumers before posting pictures of consumers'
homes on the Internet.
Another privacy issue involves tools companies use to track
consumers' online activities across the entire Internet in great
detail. The tracking done thus far using tools such as ``deep-packet
inspection'', and other advance technologies used by companies such as
Google and others to track consumers' activities across the Internet
has been done without consumers' advance knowledge or consent, and
outside the bounds of consumer expectation.
Companies that track consumer Internet activity in great detail
beyond their own company's website should be required to get advance
opt-in permission from consumers before tracking types of online
behavior that consumers have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
We thank the Senate Commerce Committee for this effort to help
understand the many benefits that broadband is delivering to society.
The Alliance also appreciates the opportunity to provide these
suggestions to help speed broadband adoption in the U.S. We look
forward to supporting this Committee's efforts to make broadband as
universal as telephone service is today and bring its benefits to all
Americans as soon as possible.
______
Prepared Statement of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers-United States of America (IEEE-USA)
IEEE-USA is delighted to submit this statement to the U.S. Senate
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. IEEE-USA advances the
public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of the
215,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals who are U.S.
members of the IEEE.
IEEE-USA congratulates Chairman Daniel Inouye and the Senate
Commerce Committee for supporting S. 1492, the ``Broadband Data
Improvement Act,'' and supports passage of this important legislation.
Universal access to high-speed broadband data services is as
imperative to our nation's economic prosperity in the 21st century as
universal access to electric power and telephone services was in the
20th century. Broadband services enable telecommuting, distance
learning, improved medical care, gateways to vast sources of
information, and a host of other economic and quality-of-life
opportunities. As with electricity and telephone service before it, new
Internet applications generate economic and social gains that far
exceed the investment in the enabling infrastructure.
The various members of U.S. consumer households of the near future
will be needing access to many broadband applications all at the same
time. The children do their homework, the breadwinner works part time
or full from home, the grandparents keep in touch with their doctors,
and some of them seek help from their governments on taxes, social
security, Medicare, business, energy, housing, and public safety. The
aggregation of these simultaneous applications in the home, together
with entertainment, will drive the future demand for broadband.
Although the United States can legitimately take credit for
development of the Internet, we cannot claim that our nation leads in
providing access to it. Many countries have recognized the benefits of
high-speed broadband data services and have dramatically expanded both
the availability and speed of their national networks. Such investments
provide competitive advantages that must not be ignored.
We must meet these challenges with new cooperative initiatives
between the U.S. Government and the U.S. communications industry. These
efforts will require strong national leadership focused on development
of new policy and regulatory frameworks to stimulate investment in the
enabling infrastructure for extending national access to the Internet;
its widespread use; and competition in its facilities, service
provision, and content.
IEEE-USA urges the U.S. Congress to create incentives for the
provision of universal and affordable high-speed broadband access to
new and demanding Internet applications. Such access will bring
consumer benefits to education, job opportunities, telemedicine, and
access to government resources. Beyond these benefits, such access will
stimulate innovation, spur economic activity, and contribute to
increased productivity for the Nation.
To achieve these benefits IEEE-USA recommends the following actions
covered at greater length below:
Designate universal and affordable access to high-speed
broadband networks as a national priority and establish a
series of bandwidth goals and target dates for deployment.
Provide economic incentives for broadband investments and
uses that qualify as furthering our national objectives.
Foster further competition in facilities, service provision,
and content through legislation and regulation.
The United States Faces Challenges for its Broadband Infrastructure.
Current levels of speed and access fall short of evolving demand.
The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) prior definition of
broadband speed was 200 kilobits per second (kb/s). Recently the FCC
replaced this definition with seven broadband tiers starting at 768 kb/
s and extending to speeds greater than 100 megabits per second (Mb/s).
Five principal technologies currently deliver broadband within these
tiers:
Cellular telephony
Digital Subscriber Line, offered by telephone companies
Cable modem, provided by cable companies
Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) networks
Optical fiber to the home or the neighborhood
Satellite.
Availability and data rates vary widely within each of these
technologies, so that tabulation of their capabilities here would
necessarily be incomplete and subject to change. However, typical data
rates currently increase from about 0.5 Mb/s for the newer cellular
telephony systems progressing to 20 Mb/s for optical fiber to the home.
Optical fiber so far is available only in limited service areas
compared with Japan, South Korea, and France.
As microprocessor and broadband capabilities expand, new computing
applications emerge. This is the story of technological progress in all
fields. Many studies cite examples, just a few of which follow:
Convergence of voice, data, and video into bit streams
carried on digital networks.
Widespread bidirectional video conferencing, useful in
education and business.
High resolution medical images and electronic medical
records transferred for diagnosis and consultation.
These new applications can be used on the Internet now, but can
experience delays in delivery where the Internet is not robust enough
to handle the additional traffic they induce, as well as impact the
user experience of any others sharing the same portion of the Internet.
The market is advancing U.S. broadband deployment, but at a pace
limited by each individual provider's perceived return on investment.
The result is twofold: we face inadequate provision for coming demand
and we lack parity among world-class networks. To encourage faster
progress, initiatives beyond ordinary market forces are needed.
Priority Action Will Return Rewarding Benefits to Consumers
All levels of education are using broadband. Images and videos
enrich the primary grades in science, music, art, and current events.
High school students research material for their arts and their
sciences assignments. Almost every higher educational institution makes
its entire curricula available on its websites, either for fee or for
free. For example, the University of Maryland University College
enrolls 90,000 students worldwide, mostly in distance learning courses
otherwise unavailable to working adults because of location, schedule,
and duties.
Telework and telecommuting enable people to join in the workforce
who would otherwise be excluded by reason of location, mobility, age,
or cost. However, these applications are most effective with ample
bandwidth for fast transfers of large files and interactive video.
Additionally, the very investment needed to expand the broadband
infrastructure will create skilled jobs in U.S. industry in rural areas
and across the U.S.
Broadband is improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of
health care delivery through rapid access to medical records, detailed
medical imagery, video patient diagnosis and monitoring, and even
telesurgery for patients unable to get to a qualified surgeon. These
applications use bandwidth beyond what is generally available now.
More extensive Federal and local government use of broadband
facilities and services could provide superior services to its citizens
in law enforcement, emergency management, health, housing, and
business.
Telemedicine
Increasing health care costs and an aging population are placing
significant strains upon the U.S. health care system. Small pilot
studies have shown that meeting seniors' needs for independence and
autonomy, coupled with expanded use of home health technologies,
mitigate against these circumstances and provide improved health
outcomes. Difficulty with reimbursement policies, governmental approval
processes, and absence of efficient deployment strategies have hampered
adopting such technologies.
These technologies can reduce or eliminate the need for personal
services in the home and can also improve treatment in hospitals and
nursing care facilities in rural areas and other environments. IEEE-USA
believes that using electronic technologies to assist and monitor
elderly, disabled, and chronically ill individuals in the home can
improve quality of life, improve health outcomes, and help control
health care costs.
IEEE-USA urges Congress and policy-makers, in both the public and
the private sector, to take the actions needed to expand uses for
electronic devices, assistive and monitoring software, and home health
communication technologies to provide home health care to those in
need. Further, we support developing guidelines for reimbursement of
these technologies--both for developers and users.
Universal Access Will Return Rewarding Results in Other Fields as Well
As networks connect larger numbers of people, disproportionately
positive economic and social benefits accrue to society because the
possible interactions grow faster than the number of subscribers.
Economically, broadband networks have been shown to spur growth
through productivity, new and augmented markets, expanded work force,
innovative products and services, and research. This occurs by speeding
the diffusion of ideas and procedures throughout individuals and
organizations, so that the direct benefits diffuse throughout the
society as a whole. In rural areas, facilities ownership by enterprises
and communities is providing expanded capability in sparsely populated
markets, thus enhancing local economic opportunity and richness of
life. Faster and more available wireless access can expand mobile
commerce and create new multimedia applications such as mobile video
telephony. The broadband infrastructure can enable energy efficiency as
well as substitute for other resources, such as use of the
transportation infrastructure, medical examination and advice, and
paper-based records.
National security and public safety can be enhanced by a robust
Internet. The Internet's fundamental design provides redundancy in case
of isolated failures; however, best practices for critical
infrastructure protection must be employed to ensure improved
robustness and survivability from both natural and man-made disasters.
Socially, such networks have been shown to enrich the quality of
life, and to diminish the disparity in access between rich and poor,
urban and rural, and ethnic groups.
Globally, high-performance networks will enable the United States
to match or exceed services and applications available to the citizens
or trading partners of other nations, with consequent competitive
advantages.
Government Has Options for Constructive Action
Designate deployment of high-speed broadband networks as a national
priority and establish a series of bandwidth goals and target dates for
deployment.
The President and Congress have a chance to provide vision
and leadership by giving priority status to high-speed
broadband deployment and access. Such leadership will close the
widely publicized gap in penetration, access, and price between
the United States and countries like Japan, South Korea, and
Europe.
Initially, we advocate the achievement of 20 Mb/s
bidirectional speed with 90 percent availability throughout the
Nation within 5 years. The wide penetration of such speeds will
achieve most of the expected benefits and accommodate numerous
simultaneous applications per household or small business. Of
course, greater speeds can be had by those with greater needs.
We further advocate the achievement of 100 Mb/s
bidirectional speed with availability to all businesses and
households within 10 years. The technology necessary to meet
this goal is scalable to almost any future need at inexpensive
upgrade costs.
Create a national annual census of broadband availability
and usage to monitor progress toward the goals, identify
competitive opportunities, and reveal underserved areas.
Provide economic and other incentives for broadband investment and
use.
The government should reaffirm and extend tax incentives to
private sector broadband investment. These include expensing of
certain investments, accelerated depreciation, R&D tax credit,
matching grants, and guaranteed loans for broadband deployment
in underserved areas including use of the Universal Service
Fund.
Other incentives would include deductions for certain
broadband subscriber expenses that further education and health
care.
Additionally, to stimulate use and demand, provide programs
to increase digital literacy.
Foster competition in facilities, services, and content.
Competition among providers and technologies can be relied
on to provide wider deployment, higher speeds, and lower prices
just as it has in other countries. The following actions will
foster such competition:
Rescind legislative and regulatory restrictions on
deployment of end-user owned wired and wireless networks by
municipalities and other communities wherever these provide
capability in the absence of adequate, cost-effective, or
timely commercial services.
Encourage negotiation between service providers and
facilities providers for access to the physical
infrastructure, so as to realize the benefits of
innovation, content diversity, end-user choice, and
competition.
Recommend network benchmark tests for broadband
performance and continually redefine them as usage and
technology evolve. Different broadband technologies have
more than raw speed differences. For the competitive
marketplace to work in selecting broadband alternatives
there must be information on the alternatives. Thus users
can select the performance best for their particular needs.
Additional initiatives will also encourage broadband investment and
use.
The FCC should designate ample licensed and unlicensed
spectrum bands, including unused portions of television bands,
for high-speed wireless networks, ultimately aiming at access
for all. This action will expand mobile and nomadic services
and augment access to the wired infrastructure.
Appropriate government agencies should step up their network
acquisitions to stimulate demand.
The National Science Foundation, other funding agencies, and
industry should assure research levels for hardware, software,
applications, and standards that are sufficient to spur
continuing technological development, as Japan and the European
Union are doing.
The above Considerations Support the Following Conclusions
The capabilities and benefits of widespread, advanced broadband
networks are achievable by visionary national policies and leadership,
enabling cooperative government and industry initiatives. Such networks
are necessary for attaining and sustaining U.S. technological and
competitive advantage in the global economy. Once in place, such
networks reduce bandwidth constraints, thus opening a new era of
innovation for knowledge-based goods and services.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John F. Kerry to
Larry Cohen
Question 1. If this hearing is to act as a jumping off point for
next Congress, and for the next Administration, can you each give a
policy recommendation for how to go about deploying broadband to every
American? What policy initiatives should be included in the President's
national broadband Strategy? What can be accomplished at the FCC? And
what initiatives should be taken by the Federal Government to increase
understanding and information in order to improve demand on the part of
the consumer?
Answer. There are a number of immediate steps that the next
Administration, Congress, and the FCC can take to achieve the goal of
affordable, high speed Internet for all Americans.
First, the President's broadband strategy should establish a
national broadband policy goal. A reasonable initial goal would be to
construct an infrastructure with enough capacity for 10 megabits per
second (mbps) downstream and 1 mbps upstream by 2010.
Second, Congress in partnership with the states should fund a
program to map broadband infrastructure. We still do not have detailed
national information about where broadband deployed and at what speeds.
The next Congress should make it a top priority to authorize and
appropriate funds to implement S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement
Act, (Public Law 110-385), which provides grants to states to conduct
broadband mapping and to create public-private partnerships to
aggregate demand.
Third, the FCC should reform the universal service program. Today,
universal service subsidies support voice telephony service. The FCC
should move forward immediately to reform the universal service program
to support build-out of broadband networks in rural high-cost areas and
subsidies for low-income households for Internet access and equipment.
Fourth, Congress should adopt tax incentives, low-interest loans,
and grants to stimulate build-out of high-speed broadband
infrastructure. Other countries such as Japan, South Korea, and Sweden
have spurred the deployment of faster networks through such programs.
Congress could adopt such incentives as part of an infrastructure
stimulus package designed to jump-start the economy, create jobs, while
investing in 21st century broadband infrastructure.
Fifth, Congress in cooperation with the states should fund programs
to stimulate demand for high-speed broadband networks, including
community-based digital literacy programs, grants for broadband
applications and services, and programs that provide free or low-cost
computers to low-income households. A Digital Ambassadors program could
be considered as part of a job-creating stimulus package.
Question 2. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick proposed and
passed with the cooperation of the legislature an initiative to fund
next generation communications infrastructure through state issued
bonds. Is this a strategy that makes sense in your mind? Is it an idea
that has merit at the Federal level?
Answer. There is merit in exploring a Federal program that would
support investment in next-generation communications infrastructure
through an infrastructure bond program. Such a program should be
structured to lower private sector capital costs for investments in
next-generation communications infrastructure. In addition, it is worth
exploring other programs that would lower private sector cost of
capital for investment in next-generation networks such as accelerated
expensing of investments in high-speed next-generation networks,
investment tax credits, and competitive matching grants.
Question 3. There has been talk about a second stimulus package,
and the value of including infrastructure improvements in such a
package. Could you speak to how public funds directed at infrastructure
improvements--whether they be roads, bridges, railroads or
communications networks--can build jobs and stimulate the economy?
Answer. Public funds directed at infrastructure improvements--
whether they be roads, bridges, schools, or communications networks--
can build jobs and jumpstart the economy in the short-term, while
investing in the 21st century infrastructure to assure long-run
economic growth. Moreover, advanced networks support innovations in
health care, education, public safety, energy, and public services that
will improve our lives and communities, while providing public services
in a more efficient manner.
In a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Commerce,
economists found that communities with broadband experienced a higher
rate of job growth and new business start-ups than communities without
high-speed networks. Another study of the central Appalachian region
found that firms in communities with broadband were 14 to 17 percent
more productive than those in communities without high-speed Internet
access. A Brookings Institution paper calculated that build-out of
broadband infrastructure to all households would add $500 billion to
gross domestic product and 1.2 million additional jobs. Another report
warned that the failure to improve broadband performance could reduce
U.S. productivity by 1 percentage point or more per year.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ William Lehr, Carlos A. Osorio, Sharon E. Gillett, and Marvin
Sirbu, ``Measuring Broadband's Economic Impact,'' U.S. Department of
Commerce, Economic Development Administration (Feb. 2006) (available at
http://www.eda.gov/ImageCache/EDAPublic/documents/pdfdocs2006/
mitcmubbimpactreport_2epdf/v1/mitcmubbimpactreport.pdf); Mark L. Burton
and Michael J. Hicks, ``The Residential and Commercial Benefits of
Rural Broadband: Evidence from Central Appalachia,'' June 2005, Paper
prepared for the West Virginia Development Office, Center for Business
and Economic Research, Marshall University; R. Crandall and C. Jackson,
``The $500 Billion Opportunity: The Potential Economic Benefit of
Widespread Diffusion of Broadband Internet Access,'' Criterion
Economics, 2001 (available at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/
broadband/comments/verizon/ExhibitA.pdf); C. Ferguson, ``The United
States Broadband Problem: Analysis and Recommendations,'' Brookings
Institution Working Paper, 2002 (available at http://www.brookings.edu/
views/papers/ferguson/working_paper
_20020531.pdf)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John F. Kerry to
Jonathan Linkous
Question 1. If this hearing is to act as a jumping off point for
next Congress, and for the next Administration, can you each give a
policy recommendation for how to go about deploying broadband to every
American? What policy initiatives should be included in the President's
national broadband Strategy? What can be accomplished at the FCC? And
what initiatives should be taken by the Federal Government to increase
understanding and information in order to improve demand on the part of
the consumer?
Answer. Using Federal funds to pay for the deployment of large
telecommunication pipes where there is no foreseeable need or where
consumer demand and the private sector will already meet the need,
would be imprudent. Similarly, deploying broadband over pathways
already filled with dark fiber or paying for outdated
telecommunications technology is equally foolish.
However, there are a growing number of health, educational, and
public sector services requiring broadband access where such access
might not otherwise be available. Also, there are certain geographic
areas that may present economic barriers to broadband deployment.
Finally, low income families may not be able to afford such access. In
these cases, there is a justifiable need for public support to gain
access to broadband. Historically, these are the same arguments that
justified the establishment of Universal Service.
The easiest and most cost-effective approach to ensure broadband
access to every American is to use the universal service mechanism.
Thus, the existing definition of ``Plain Old Telephone Service'' that
is offered through Universal Service policies should be revised to
reflect faster speeds, both to and from the consumer. Such a change in
public policy should originate from Congress and be implemented at the
FCC.
Question 2. Experts and legislators from both side of the aisle see
great promise in modernizing the health care system, particularly the
life saving and cost saving benefits of electronic prescribing and
electronic health records. To what extent do you see the lack of
broadband access and penetration as limiting the full adoption and
functionality of our progress in developing digital health care?
Answer. There are numerous barriers inhibiting the deployment of
many forms of health technology. Technical standardization, clinical
practice guidelines and reimbursement for remote health services are a
few of the needs. Telemedicine, the provision of health services over
distances, also needs affordable telecommunications services.
Traditionally connecting large hospitals to outlying clinics,
telemedicine is now being made available directly to the individual
through the Internet and cell phones. Continuous, personal health
monitoring and instant diagnosis and even treatment of an individual's
health problems via telemedicine are around the corner. Such
revolutionary applications are transforming how, why and when
healthcare is delivered, improving care and vastly reducing costs.
Universal access to these health services will soon become critical
in order to avoid yet one more set of haves and have-nots. In the near
future, the lack of personal access to telecommunications will be
tantamount to a lack of access to healthcare.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John F. Kerry to
Mara Mayor, Ph.D.
Question 1. If this hearing is to act as a jumping off point for
next Congress, and for the next Administration, can you each give a
policy recommendation for how to go about deploying broadband to every
American? What policy initiatives should be included in the President's
national broadband Strategy? What can be accomplished at the FCC? And
what initiatives should be taken by the Federal Government to increase
understanding and information in order to improve demand on the part of
the consumer?
Answer. Older Americans have the potential to reap significant
benefits from the widespread availability of affordable and high-
quality broadband services. Broadband services can create new
opportunities for older Americans to maintain their independence and
security, to receive improved medical supervision and care, and to
maintain their productivity in the work force. Broadband provides new
avenues for socialization and contact with the outside world for
individuals who may experience decreased mobility. Broadband also has
the potential to offer expanded support to family and friends who act
as unpaid caregivers for older Americans.
More generally, broadband can enable expanded innovation and
provide new opportunities for economic growth, both in economic sectors
associated with serving older persons, such as health and social care,
and in the overall economy. A growing body of research links broadband
deployment to increases in employment and economic growth.
Congress should make ubiquitous, affordable, and truly high-speed
broadband a national priority. It should create an aggressive national
broadband deployment strategy that establishes the U.S. as the world
leader in providing all of its citizens with access to the fastest and
most affordable broadband services. Specific targets in terms of
broadband penetration, coverage, and usage should be established to
spur progress toward meeting the statutory objectives of ``access to
broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate
and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video
telecommunications using any technology.'' Establishing the following
milestones would help reach that goal:
the provision of affordable broadband with symmetrical
speeds of at least 10 Mbps that is available to 100 percent of
U.S. households by the end of 2010;
the provision of affordable broadband with symmetrical
speeds of at least 100 Mbps available to 100 percent of U.S.
households by the end of 2015.
In addition, a new national broadband policy should encourage both
the demand and supply sides of the market for this technology and
incorporate the following key principles:
transparency and accountability--Indicators of market
performance are essential for achieving strategic goals.
promotion of open and standardized broadband platforms--open
and standardized broadband platforms will result in the
greatest opportunities for innovation and the fullest benefits
of competition.
greater promotion of broadband adoption especially among the
older and underserved populations--see response to question #2
below.
Question 1a. What can be accomplished at the FCC?
Answer. Contrary to the FCC's recent Report to Congress that
indicates that all Americans have access to affordable advanced
telecommunications services, broadband deployment in the United States
has substantial deficiencies. For example, evidence shows that there is
a significant difference between rural and urban broadband Internet
usage in the United States. There are substantial differences in
broadband adoption based on household income. Age is also a factor
limiting broadband adoption, with a scant 15 percent of households
headed by individuals over 65 having a broadband connection.
To implement meaningful reform, the following steps are appropriate
by the FCC:
The FCC must identify the supported companies that have
upgraded their networks to provide broadband.
The FCC must audit these firms to determine the extent and
quality of broadband coverage, this audit can contribute to
generating accurate maps that identify the characteristics of
broadband deployment.
The FCC must establish the cost basis for the joint
provision of voice and broadband services.
The FCC must acknowledge revenue streams arising from both
voice and broadband services, and,
The FCC must award support to these companies based on data
obtained from the review of costs and revenues.
To satisfy the statutory objectives, mapping must identify the
current status of all broadband deployments. The FCC must establish a
broadband speed benchmark that encourages the deployment of high
quality broadband. For any new broadband facilities supported by any
broadband expansion fund, priority be awarded to deployments that
provide symmetrical data speeds of 10 Mbps or greater.
Question 1b. What initiatives should be taken by the Federal
Government to increase understanding and information in order to
improve demand on the part of the consumer?
Answer. Affordability is a key factor in improving demand on the
part of the consumer. Given the inclusion of broadband services in the
universal service offering, the FCC must establish an affordability
standard. Affordability proceedings should be conducted with the
assistance of the state commissions, as regional and local factors have
a strong influence on the ability of households to afford broadband. In
addition, policymakers should establish and sufficiently fund broadband
assistance programs for low-income consumers to ensure that high-
quality broadband is within the reach of all U.S. households.
Question 2. In your testimony, you mention the fact that only 19
percent of people over age 65 have broadband service in their home. How
much of the problem is lack of education and understanding, and what
can be done to help this demographic learn more about the benefits of
broadband access?
Answer. Many older adults and many younger ones as well, could
benefit by knowing more about the benefits of broadband access that are
available today, and those that are on the horizon. In this regard,
education and incentives that encourage broadband consumption should be
implemented. The education efforts should be oriented toward ``lifelong
learning'' to ensure that all members of society have sufficient
knowledge to understand the benefits of information technologies,
including broadband. The promotion of broadband consumption should
leverage telework, telehealth, electronic commerce, electronic
government, and distance-education activities as key focus areas.
Special attention should be given to demonstrating the utility of
applications in these areas to meeting the independent living
assistance, employment, health, and education needs of older persons.
Specific provisions to promote broadband consumption could include:
programs that promote the refurbishment and distribution to
low-income households of discarded but serviceable computers,
to ensure the availability of computers in low income
households;
public service advertising;
expanded adult community education programs targeting
broadband and computer use; and
a national initiative to ensure a minimum level of
technology education in schools and other appropriate venues.
While limited awareness about the benefits of broadband access may
help explain the relatively low adoption rate of home broadband service
by older adults, it is not the only factor. Indeed, research suggests
that older consumers' concerns about the costs of broadband services
and capabilities and older consumers' perceptions of the relevance of
these services and capabilities are more important factors in
determining widespread adoption of broadband service.
For example, broadband can create opportunities to address the
complexities of serving an aging population by facilitating access to
health care services that are necessary to help older persons age
successfully. In this regard, recent AARP research suggests strong
support for telehealth. Three-fourths of older adults age 65+ say they
are willing to have a cardiologist diagnose or monitor a heart
condition by receiving information that is transmitted electronically
to them from their primary care doctor's office or their home.
Moreover, older adults identify safety, emotional peace of mind and
comfort as benefits associated with personal health monitoring devices
that are well supported by always-on broadband connections.
Nevertheless, cost concerns rise to the top of the older adults'
perceptions of these devices. Indeed, four out of five older adults
express concern about the costs to install and maintain these devices.
Similarly, other research finds that older adults perceive these
broadband-enabled services to be too expensive for individual consumers
unless they are extremely frail or the only other alternative to
nursing care or living with an adult child.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. John F. Kerry to
Margaret M. Conroy
Question 1. If this hearing is to act as a jumping off point for
the next Congress, and for the next Administration, can you each give a
policy recommendation for how to go about deploying broadband to every
American?
Answer. This is a time of great opportunity for the 111th Congress
to provide leadership and vision to establish universal broadband
services to all Americans. Like public libraries, public education and
the Universal Service Fund (USF), universal broadband must be a long
term and major priority so that legislation and funding will be passed
to see genuine build out of this essential new infrastructure--
especially in rural and remote communities.
Congressional leaders and pertinent Committees must make broadband
deployment and sustainability a top priority for the coming
congressional session. To make the proverbial ``level playing field''
in America a reality, broadband is essential. Congress should consider
integrating a broadband component into all programs addressing economic
and community development as well as library services, education and
healthcare.
Additionally, Congress must put the reform of the Universal Service
Fund (USF) as a first ``must do'' in its telecommunications agenda. USF
is a critical tool for broadband build out and for sustaining broadband
once it is constructed. As part of USF, the E-rate and rural
telemedicine programs must be maintained and be configured to allow for
more collaboration and aggregation of demand leading to broadband
access especially in rural communities. Since it will be some time
before there is ``big broadband'' to every home, we must make sure that
unreached communities have access through their public libraries and
rural healthcare providers for the interim and thereafter.
When the Senate considers a new nominee for chair of the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) priority must be on a candidate who is
not just visionary, but is genuinely willing to set broadband as the
top goal for 2009-2010--and be willing to state such in a confirmation
hearing.
Congress also has a role in revitalizing the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and expanding
the Rural Utilities Services program and related programs in the
Department of Agriculture. Emphasis on existing or new initiatives
should be on promoting aggregation of demand and the flexibility to
develop partnerships, especially in rural and remote areas.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration must make broadband deployment
one of the highest priorities to promote economic development,
education and community development. The Administration should develop
a clear vision statement to promote broadband policies and work closely
with Congress to actualize this vision.
We believe there is still a need for a strong public education
program conducted by both leaders in the Executive Branch and Congress
and through trusted intermediaries such as public libraries about why
broadband is so essential--especially in communities that do not have
broadband and have not experienced what it can do.
Question 2. What policy initiatives should be included in the
President's national broadband Strategy?
Answer. We encourage the President to appoint strong leaders and
effective administrators at the FCC and the NTIA to promote and
coordinate the Administration's broadband efforts. A public education
program should be established for both national leaders--but also for
local education programs to inform communities about the need for
broadband and the many essential services and opportunities for
economic development, education and telemedicine. If there is a ``chief
technology officer'' (CTO) the role should be as much about public
education and promoting applications as it is on ending up on the same
old corporate disputes between different carriers and technologies.
Question 3. What can be accomplished at the FCC?
Answer. The FCC must serve its role in the reform of USF and
promoting broadband construction. Its policies should be technology-
neutral and provide options for different technologies to be used in
different types of communities with different geographies and
economics. This means a more flexible USF especially in rural areas. By
all means, the FCC must assure that the E-rate and rural telemedicine
programs are stabilized and functioning effectively.
Question 4. And what initiatives should be taken by the Federal
Government to increase understanding and information in order to
improve demand on the part of the consumer?
Answer. There should be a greater emphasis on public education to
promote WHY our Nation needs broadband. At the end of the day, it is
the applications that broadband allows--from commercial and retail
enterprises to e-government services to distance learning and remote
telemedicine services and much more. Policies that impact the use of
the technology should not limit the potential for creative new uses of
broadband. The library community stands firmly in support of network
neutrality as one policy reform needed to assure an open Internet.
______
November 18, 2008
Hon. Claire McCaskill,
Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator McCaskill,
I am so appreciative of the opportunity to address the Senate
Commerce Committee on September 16 to share stories of how Missouri's
libraries (and indeed libraries across the nation) are dependent on
robust broadband Internet access to meet the needs of citizens.
You asked about the demand of higher education on Internet usage,
and I am attaching a chart showing actual and projected usage of
bandwidth from MOREnet for higher education circuits. MOREnet serves
the majority of public colleges and universities in the state.
You also asked about the State of Missouri's investment in public
Internet access. Here are the funds from the current state budget
dedicated to MOREnet:
For education: $12,829,612
For libraries: $3,109,000
State agencies currently expend a little under $1 million per year
for broadband and Internet services. This is the amount paid to
communication carriers (ca. $800,000) and for MOREnet membership fees,
and does not include equipment or personnel costs to handle
connectivity and security.
Finally, the amount MOREnet spends on e-rate eligible services
returns around $6,000,000 annually to the state in e-rate funds
($5,909,000 in FY08).
Thank you again for the opportunity to address the Senate Commerce
Committee and to provide you with information on how telecommunications
investments support libraries and education in Missouri.
Sincerely,
Margaret M. Conroy,
Missouri State Librarian.