Carrier pigeons to the rescue for America's broadband problem?

Broadband has been the center of a lot of talk in lately in Washington. After $7.2 billion in stimulus money was set aside to develop a national broadband plan, the FCC asked for input on how to define broadband. So, how fast do you think broadband should be?

The United States is definitely lagging in broadband speed compared to other countries. While different groups have come out with different figueres, the overall message is the same: the U.S. lags in broadband speed. According to Speedtest.net, Korea takes the top seat with a download speed of 21.42 Mb/s, while the U.S. lags behind at a turtle-ish (yes I made up that word) pace of 6.89 Mb/s in 28th place. For upload speeds, Lithuania takes the cake at 8.9 Mb/s and good ole USA comes in a distant 30th place at 1.54 Mb/s. Come on America! We've got the Aland Islands in the middle of the Baltic Sea beating our socks off in broadband speed. I just had to look it up because I've never even heard of the Aland Islands before.

SpeedMatters has slightly different numbers, ranking the average download speed nationwide as 5.1 Mb/s, up only slightly from last year's 4.2 Mb/s. The report by Communications Workers of America ranks the U.S. as 15th behind other industrialized nations.

Anyway, small baby steps have been taken to help disseminate broadband throughout the country. In fact, more than a dozen local companies in the Heartland have applied for federal stimulus money to help disperse broadband.

If funding is made available and the plans go through, it should help with the large discrepency in broadband speeds across the country. According to an article in USA Today, "Delaware, for example, averages 9.9 megabits per second. That's almost double the national average and triple the speed of Idaho (2.6 mbps), Arkansas (3.1) and Alaska (2.3). Data are based on feedback from more than 413,000 Internet users who took an online test between May 2008 and May 2009, CWA [Communications Workers of America] says."

The federal government is working on a national broadband map of who can get it and how fast it is. A rough estimate cited in an AP tech article states about 2/3rds of U.S. homes have access to broadband. Although, it probably won't be ready in time to influence the first round of stimulus money funding and possibly not even ready for when the FCC must put out it's national broadband plan by February 2010.

I'll try to stay updated in the national plan to deploy broadband.

In the meantime, if you are ever frustrated with your connection speed here's something that might perk you up....

A SOUTH African information technology company has proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using the country's leading internet service provider. Ironically, this article was forwarded on by one of our IT Specialists here at the station.

Jackson, MO to email monthly newsletter to residents

The city leaders of Jackson, Missouri are hoping a new, monthly digital newsletter will help the city better communicate with residents.

The Jackson Town Crier will be emailed to subscribers and will contain schedules and schedule changes for board meetings and other city services, city projects, conservation tips, and safety tips and PSA's from the police and fire departments, according to a press release sent by Joan Evans, the city's information techonology manager.

Anyone interested in receiving the new newsletter can email subscribe@jacksonmo.org with "NEWS" in the subject line.

Ameren goes mobile with outage info

It's a mobile day and age and electric company Ameren is getting in on the action. The company recently launched a new mobile site with outage information. It's pretty helpful, especially when you're out of electricity and can't get on the computer.

I checked it out on my Blackberry and I like the simple page. It's divided into outage pages for Missouri and Illinois like the main site. Now you can find out outage data by county or zip code. It even has a page to enter your information if you're out of power.

The mobile address is ameren.mobi.