US plans own national broadband network

US communications regulators on Monday began unveiling details of a plan designed to vault the United States into the ranks of world leaders in high-speed Internet access over the next decade.

The "National Broadband Plan," scheduled to be presented to Congress on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission, sets a 10-year goal of connecting 100 million US households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second Internet service.

President Barack Obama has pledged to put broadband in every American home and his administration has already designated over seven billion dollars in economic stimulus money to expand broadband access in underserved communities.

The United States currently lags behind many other countries in terms of broadband penetration and average Internet connection speeds. The FCC plan proposes broadband speeds 25 times faster than the current national average.

US connection speeds average at less than 4.0 mbps - capable of moving four million bits of data per second - according to the latest report by Web analytics firm Akamai, placing the United States 18th in the global rankings behind leaders South Korea (14.6 mbps) and Japan (7.9 mbps).

The United States ranks 12th in terms of broadband connectivity, according to Akamai, with 24 per cent of the population enjoying average connection speeds of over 5.0 mbps compared with 74 per cent in South Korea and 60 per cent in Japan.

"The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens and engage in our democracy," FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

"It's an action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues."

According to the FCC, 93 million Americans - a third of the US population - currently lack home broadband service and 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband even if they want it.

Besides connecting 100 million households to 100 mbps service, the FCC plan calls for providing ultra high-speed broadband of at least one gigabit per second to schools, hospitals and military installation in every community.

It also calls for making 500 megahertz of spectrum available to handle the surge in data associated to the increasing use of smartphones.

That proposal is likely to meet with resistance from broadcast television stations that currently license that spectrum.

US telecom giants and cable television companies that are the main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States have also been wary of the broadband plan and what they see as too much government intervention.

Google, meanwhile, announced plans last month to build experimental ultra high-speed broadband networks that would deliver Internet speeds 100 times faster than those of today to up to half a million Americans.

The Web search and advertising giant said the envisioned one gigabit per second speeds would allow to stream 3-D medical imaging over the Web or download a high-definition, full-length movie in less than five minutes.

In another private sector announcement, Cisco Systems last week unveiled super-fast Internet hardware that the company said promises to move mountains of data at astounding speeds.

The networking equipment leader said its new router "triples the capacity" of its predecessor, and "enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second".

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