SF Mayor Urges New Vision for Lagging US Broadband - Apr 21, 2006 - Digital Communities

This vision of a kayak, rope and inter-tube, gives a good representation of America's broadband connections and infrastructure. A fix that only caters to those on downtown sidewalks is no fix at all. 

America is losing ground in technology and with broadband. Being behind the times is hurting our region and nation -- and our kids -- in many economic ways.

SF Mayor Urges New Vision for Lagging US Broadband - Apr 21, 2006 - Digital Communities SF Mayor Urges New Vision for Lagging US Broadband

Think that fiber bringing gigabit bandwidth to the home is somewhere out in the distant technological future? Think again. This is today's technology that Japan's NTT Communications Corp. is already installing in homes.

Last year, according to Larry Smarr, director of California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), NTT had 1.6 million fiber customers. This year it is 4.6 million and the company is investing billions a year to aggressively achieve the goal of fiber based Internet service to 30 million homes by the end of 2010.

Smarr was speaking at a recent Big Broadband Conference organized by optical networking advocacy group FirstMile.US. Presentations from the conference have just now been made available online in streaming video, http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=831.