WASHINGTON, May 3, 2010 – Chapter 8 of the National Broadband Plan deals with the fundamental issue of availability. The chapter sets out a very systematic and long-term set of policies intended to expand availability.

To see how broadband is transforming American life, walk down a busy street or pay a visit to any school, business or airport. Parents on business trips use their smartphones to check e-mail or watch short videos of their children playing soccer, hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. Americans work together in real time on complex documents from different desks in the same office, and workers in different offices around the world collaborate via videoconferencing technology. Sales and field maintenance personnel use mobile devices to access inventory information in their businesses, place orders and update records, increasing efficiency and productivity. Students draw on the richness of the Internet to research historical events or watch simulations of challenging math problems. People are using broadband in ways they could not imagine even a few years ago.

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2010 – The third chapter in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan focuses on the current state of the broadband ecosystem. It sets out to show that the actual state of the broadband network is not about availability and the physical network but also consumer choice and usage.