National Broadband Plan

The Federal Communications Commission has delivered to Congress a National Broadband Plan setting an ambitious agenda for connecting all corners of the nation while transforming the economy and society with the communications network of the future -- robust, affordable Internet.

Titled "Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan" the Plan found that while broadband access and use have increased over the past decade, the nation must do much more to connect all individuals and the economy to broadband's transformative benefits. Nearly 100 million Americans lack broadband at home today, and 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband even if they want it. Only 42 percent of people with disabilities use broadband at home, while as few as 5 percent of people living on Tribal lands have access. Meanwhile, the cost of digital exclusion for the student unable to access the Internet to complete a homework assignment, or for the unemployed worker who can't search for a job online, continues to grow.

Other gaps threaten America's global competitiveness. A looming shortage of wireless spectrum could impede U.S. innovation and leadership in popular wireless mobile broadband services. More useful applications, devices, and content are needed to create value for consumers. And the nation has failed to harness broadband's power to transform delivery of government services, health care, education, public safety, energy conservation, economic development, and other national priorities.

The news release provides additional background and summarizes the goals and recommendations contained in the plan.

Chapter 13 of the plan - Economic Opportunity - specifically addresses:

• Supporting Entrepreneurship and America's Small Businesses
  
• Job Training and Workforce Development
  
• Promoting Telework
  
• Local and Regional Economic Development

National Broadband plan

News release: "Titled Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan, the Plan found that while broadband access and use have increased over the past decade, the nation must do much more to connect all individuals and the economy to broadband’s transformative benefits. Nearly 100 million Americans lack broadband at home today, and 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband even if they want it. Only 42 percent of people with disabilities use broadband at home, while as few as 5 percent of people living on Tribal lands have access. Meanwhile, the cost of digital exclusion for the student unable to access the Internet to complete a homework assignment, or for the unemployed worker who can’t search for a job online, continues to grow." [News item from "Be Spacific" (sic]

PA Cyber Charter School Expo

[From Erie Blogs.com] The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School will hold a free Information Expo in Erie on March 30^th from 5-8 pm. The expo, to be hosted at the Ambassador Banquet Center, will explain how the schools work: the curriculum, materials, and technical and instructional support. Teachers, administrators, admissions counselors and technical support staff will be present to answer any questions. Interested families may register at www.pacyber.org.

Cloud Services grant

Cloud services represent a growing paradigm of on-demand access (as a service) to computing, data and software utilities, an abstraction of unlimited resources, and a usage-based billing model. Underlying these cloud (infrastructure, platform, data, software, etc.) services are consolidated and virtualized data centers that provide virtual machine (VM) containers hosting computation and applications from a large numbers of distributed users. It is anticipated that cloud platforms and services will increasingly play a critical role in academic, government and industry sectors, and will thus have widespread societal impact.NSF's goal is to provide the science and engineering communities with the opportunity to leverage highly-scalable cloud computing platforms to conduct research and education activities in cloud computing and data-intensive computing, and their applications.

This solicitation specifically focuses on the use of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform as a complement to the computational platforms that NSF has made available to the research community to date. While the main focus of the Computing in the Cloud (CiC) program is to stimulate basic and applied research in cloud computing through the Microsoft Azure platform, the potential to foster simultaneous advances in other fields of science and engineering is both recognized and encouraged.CiC proposals may be submitted in response to this solicitation, or as supplements to existing awards, or as EAGER proposals, as described later in this solicitation.

Small Business Technology Transfer Program

The small business programs stimulate technological innovation in the private sector by strengthening the role of small business concerns in meeting Federal research and development needs, increasing the commercial application of federally supported research results, and fostering and encouraging participation by socially and economically disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses.

The Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) requires researchers at universities and other research institutions to play a significant intellectual role in the conduct of each STTR project. These university-based researchers, by joining forces with a small company, can spin-off their commercially promising ideas while they remain primarily employed at the research institution.

Microsoft supports Veterans

Microsoft has announced that it will contribute $2 million in cash and up to $6 million in software over the next two years to support programs that help prepare veterans and their spouses for twenty-first century jobs.

Building on its Elevate America initiative, Microsoft will award cash, software, and other resources to eligible organizations working to provide technology skills training, job placement, career counseling, and other support services to active-duty service members as well as members of the National Guard and Reserves who are transitioning out of the military and into the civilian workforce. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is the first organization to join the coalition and will work with Microsoft over the next two years on the initiative.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 185,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are unemployed. While veterans often possess abundant leadership skills, many lack the formal education, training, and/or certifications needed to join the civilian work force. More than half of today's jobs require at least some technology skills, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the figure will reach 77 percent within a decade.

"Our servicemen and women are amazing leaders, but to be able to compete in the tough job market when they return from duty, many of them need access to technology training," said Pamela Passman, corporate vice president of Microsoft Global Corporate Affairs. "We are bringing together organizations and companies that can combine their competencies and resources with ours to make the greatest possible impact to help veterans and their spouses."

“Microsoft Announces Initiative to Help Prepare U.S. Veterans for Jobs.” Microsoft Press Release 3/08/10.

New Broadband in low-income communities report

Educational systems, employers, and government agencies at all levels have shifted services online—and are pushing rapidly to do more. Price remains only one factor shaping the fragile equilibrium of home broadband adoption, and library and community organizations fill the gap by providing critical training and support services while under severe economic pressures. Commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to analyze the factors shaping low rates of adoption of home broadband services in low-income and other marginalized communities, this SSRC study is one of the only large-scale qualitative investigations of barriers to adoption in the US and complements FCC survey research on adoption designed to inform the 2010 National Broadband Plan. The study draws on some 170 interviews of non-adopters, community access providers, and other intermediaries conducted across the US in late 2009 and early 2010 and identifies a range of factors that make broadband services hard to acquire and even harder to maintain in such communities.

Access the full report here.