Dark Fiber

Weather.com today features a map of snow cover in the United States. Incredibly, there is snow cover on the ground in 49 of the 50 U.S. states. Well, here's another coverage map you can look at -- not snow, but broadband Internet access.

The national broadband map, created in response to the 2009 economic stimulus bill, went live yesterday. The goal was to create a tool that would guide federal government officials and more local policymakers as well as researchers, public interest groups and telecommunications companies as they seek to bridge the digital divide in even the most remote reaches of the U.S. They also hope the map will serve as a valuable tool for consumers who just want to find out what local broadband options are available where they live, according to the Associated Press (News - Alert).

According to studies launched to meet stimulus bill mandate, as many as one in 10 Americans can't get Internet connections that are fast enough for the things we all like to do online: view videos, download music or video clips, teleconferencing or even look at content- and graphics-heavy Web pages. A whopping two-thirds of schools in the U.S. have broadband connections that are too slow to meet their educational needs.

Those are some of the conclusions from the Commerce Department as it unveiled a detailed, interactive online map showing what types of high-speed Internet connections are available -- or missing -- in all parts of the country. According to a survey of 54,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau in October, 68 percent of U.S. households subscribe to broadband. In many cases, broadband options may not be available for many of these households still operating on dial-up.

Consumers can type an address into the map and pull up a list of the local broadband providers, along with details about the types of high-speed connections they offer -- such as cable modem service, fiber-optic links or wireless access -- and just how fast those connections are. The map also includes crowd-sourcing features that ask consumers to contribute their own knowledge to the database. They can, for instance, confirm that they are getting the Internet speeds the map says they should be getting or let the map know if a local broadband provider is missing from the neighborhood list.

In addition, the map allows users to run all sorts of comparisons — ranking counties across a state by the fastest broadband speeds or allowing consumers to look up where their own county ranks nationally, for instance. And it can produce snapshots of an entire community that could be useful for local economic developers or real estate agents — showing what percent of a county has access to particular types of broadband technologies or how many schools and hospitals in a community have ultra-fast links. It also allows users to compare broadband data with local demographics such as income and poverty levels.

The map comes too late to help guide Commerce Department and Agriculture Department officials who have awarded more than $7 billion in stimulus money to pay for high-speed Internet networks and other broadband projects across the country over the past two years. But the data will help set priorities for huge federal programs such as the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service and the Universal Service Fund, which spend billions annually to subsidize telecom services. The FCC (News - Alert) is in the process of overhauling the Universal Service Fund, which currently pays for telephone service in rural and poor communities, to subsidize broadband.