Australia's National Broadband Network - Worth the Watch

David Lassner, University of Hawaii's Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, shared this video on Australia's National Broadband Network with attendees at the recent Council of State Governments - WEST conference. His presentation was on what Hawaii has accomplished in the past few years on achieving access to broadband for Hawaii residents and businesses. Lassner served as Chair with Rep. Kyle Yamashita on the Hawaii Broadband Task Force. Yamashita chaired the CSG-WEST session on economic development.

This is a well done, informative and engaging piece on the benefits of broadband and how it will benefit your activities at home:

Broadband Task Force to Request More Funds

After a presentation by Connected Nation, the Broadband Task Force decided yesterday to propose an appropriation of state funds to conduct more detailed research and mapping efforts of broadband usage, availability and deployment in Hawaii communities.

Connected Nation is a national non-profit organization that has a three-state track record of increasing broadband availability and creating demand for new-age technology.

The organization uses grassroots and localized efforts to form a comprehensive broad band network.

The first step would be to measure the availability, use and need of broadband. One way that they accomplish this is by building coalitions with private sectors who agree to provide their deployment data. Because private sectors would be hesitant to provide data that could be shared with competing companies, Connected Nation is able to promise them a non-disclosure agreement that preserves the intent of their business plans.

In past initiatives, private sectors have provided 20 percent of funding while the state provided 80 percent.

Connected Nation's intelligent marketing services include maps, survey data, and grassroots demand aggregation that provide a detailed picture of where broadband service is needed. Once areas of need are determined, the next steps would be determining why households are not connected, influencing the community of its relevance and providing broadband to them.

The transformative technology of our generation...

That's what David Lassner, the Chief Information Officer at the University of Hawaii, called broadband service. Lassner chairs The Hawaii Broadband Task Force that has begun work to examine the current state and future potential of high-speed internet access in Hawaii.

Why do we need a task force? The problem is that the speed and affordability of broadband in the U.S., including Hawaii, has not kept pace with other developed countries worldwide.

"Among the top economies worldwide in 2005, the US ranked sixteenth in broadband penetration," said Rep. Kyle Yamashita, who introduced HB310 establishing the task force. "In Hawaii today, the fastest broadband connections available are between eleven and fifteen megabits per second. When you look at the country as a whole, that's great service. But when you compare it to Japan, where one hundred megabits per second is routine, it's not as impressive. And when you consider cost on a per megabit basis, customers in Japan pay far less than customers here."

In addition to Lassner, Yamashita, and Senator Carol Fukunaga, the other members of the task force are: Vice Chair Nam Vu from ShakaNet, Inc.; Gary Caulfield from First Hawaiian Bank; Joel Matsunaga from Hawaiian Telcom; Henk Rogers from BluePlanet Wireless; Nate Smite from Oceanic Time Warner Cable; Gordon Bruce from the City and County of Honolulu; Clyde Sonobe from the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs; Jennifer Goto Sabas from the office of Senator Daniel K. Inouye; Senator Will Espero; Senator David Ige; Rep. Marcus Oshiro; and Rep. Gene Ward.

The Office of the Auditor will provide research and organizational support services. The task force will prepare a preliminary report for submission to the 2008 Legislature and a final report for the 2009 Legislature. For more info, check out http://www.hbtf.org/.