NTIA Blog

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Jerome Watson is a self-described vagabond. The systems administrator in the Office of Policy Coordination and Management has managed to indulge his love of travel while maintaining a 28-year career with the federal government.

Watson’s interest in seeing the world began at the age of 12 when he and his family moved to Nuremberg, Germany for his Dad’s job as a civilian employee with the Army logistics and supply service. He says he fell in love with Europe. “It feels like home to me.”

Before joining NTIA in August 2012, Watson worked for the Defense Logistics Agency for two and half years in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He returned so his daughter could finish high school in the United States and he could be closer to his parents.

He had a previous stint in Germany when he worked for the Defense Information Systems Agency in Stuttgart and also lived in Geneva while working for the State Department.

Just as more Americans are finding broadband essential to life at work and home, most businesses also need high-speed Internet service to remain competitive.  The nation has made good headway in efforts to expand broadband access to work places, according to a new report from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and Economic and Statistics Administration (ESA).

The report, “Broadband Availability in the Workplace,” comes a week after Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker unveiled the department’s “Open for Business Agenda,” which prioritizes supporting the digital economy as a great engine of economic growth in the 21^st Century. The agenda also highlights the importance of data, such as this new report, to power the economy and help inform business decisions, enable start-ups, and fuel new companies.

Estados Unidos celebró recientemente el Mes de la Hispanidad. Mientras continuamos reflexionando sobre los muchos aportes de los estadounidenses de origen hispano a nuestro país, la Dirección Nacional de Telecomunicaciones e Información (National Telecommunications and Information Administration o NTIA) viene trabajando arduamente para asegurar que los hispanos y otros grupos minoritarios cuenten con los conocimientos que necesitan sobre computación para ser más competitivos en la economía internacional, que depende cada vez más de la tecnología.

Los más recientes datos, recopilados con la ayuda de la Oficina del Censo de Estados Unidos (U.S. Census Bureau) como parte de la serie “Digital Nation” de NTIA, indican que 63 por ciento de los hogares hispanos habían comenzado a usar banda ancha para octubre del 2012. Este es un aumento considerable con relación a los datos de julio del 2011, que indicaron que solo 56 por ciento de los hogares hispanos en Estados Unidos contaban con banda ancha. Los datos indican que aunque queda trabajo por hacer, el país está alcanzando logros con respecto a este importante asunto.

The United States recently celebrated Hispanic-American Heritage Month. And as we continue to reflect on the many contributions Hispanic Americans have made to our country, NTIA has been working hard to ensure Hispanics and other minorities are obtaining the digital skills they need to better compete in a global economy that is increasingly reliant on technology.

The latest data, compiled with the help of the U.S. Census Bureau as part of NTIA’s “Digital Nation” series, shows that 63 percent of Hispanic households adopted broadband in the home as of October 2012. This is a significant increase from July 2011 data, which showed that only 56 percent of U.S. Hispanic households had broadband in their homes. The data shows that, while work remains, the nation is making progress in addressing this important issue.

NTIA has been working to bring more Hispanics online through its broadband grant programs by funding numerous projects that have helped to promote digital literacy and broadband adoption in Hispanic communities across the country. Many of those who have yet to adopt broadband in the home may be unfamiliar with the benefits of going online. Digital literacy training programs provide users with an incentive to adopt broadband by demonstrating the benefits of the Internet and money-saving applications such as couponing, online banking and shopping.

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

For many students, an internship is a way to get a jumpstart on their career while still in college. For Sheila Williams that opportunity came much earlier than most.

A Washington, D.C., native, Williams got her first job at the Commerce Department as a summer intern while she was still a student at Cardozo Senior High School.

It wasn’t an easy gig for a 16-year-old. Williams left her house each day at 6 a.m. and had to take three buses to arrive for her internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Public Affairs in Rockville, Md. Her mother, who worked at the State Department, pushed Williams to get an early start on her career and to obtain marketable skills she could fall back on if needed. “My mother was the ring leader,” Williams says with a laugh.

Williams, an administrative specialist, is primarily assigned to helping Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling. This includes arranging his travel and helping to manage his busy schedule.

Meeting Americans’ increasing demand for broadband wireless technologies requires finding more spectrum. NTIA has been leading efforts to help meet President Obama’s goal of identifying 500 megahertz of spectrum for wireless broadband by 2020 while balancing the spectrum needs of federal agencies.

Finding spectrum bands, however, that can be shifted from their current applications to enable new broadband services is a difficult task. While clearing spectrum bands to make way for new wireless services has been a viable approach for many years, options for relocating incumbent operations are dwindling, getting more expensive, and taking longer to implement. Given this, NTIA has been working with the Federal Communications Commission, other federal agencies, and industry stakeholders to explore ways to share the spectrum without displacing existing systems in the same bands.

With the Internet on our phones, our tablets, at the office and in our homes, most Americans have come to expect that our government, too, will be online. Still, whether it’s due to a lack of resources or skepticism over the need, some local governments have yet to fully embrace the potential of e-Government.

As part of our efforts to expand broadband access and adoption, NTIA’s State Broadband Initiative (SBI) has been working with states to help them provide the tools for citizens to participate in government online. These efforts are providing real benefits for consumers in many states, including allowing residents to communicate with government officials, make online tax or fine payments, and access numerous government forms.

With NTIA’s state broadband grants, states have taken a variety of approaches to helping localities better utilize the Internet. In Arkansas, Connect Arkansas, a nonprofit corporation focused on increasing broadband adoption and access, has used an SBI grant to work with 17 counties to help them launch engaging, transactional, and informational websites or to enhance existing sites. Six Arkansas counties have launched or are expected to launch new e-Government websites by the end of the year. 

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Suzanne Radell, a senior policy adviser in NTIA’s Office of International Affairs, spent far more of her childhood abroad than she did in the United States. It’s one reason why she says she was drawn to work on international issues when she grew up.

Radell, whose father worked as a civilian Army employee after serving in World War II, was born in Istanbul, Turkey and has lived in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Lebanon.

She got her undergrad degree in political science from Schiller College in Paris but decided to return to the United States to obtain a Master’s Degree in political science from the State University of New York, at Binghamton. She is a dissertation short of obtaining her doctorate in international relations from George Washington University.

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, dissecting a frog in middle school biology was a messy and smelly experience. Technology has made that a much cleaner experience in today's middle school biology classes – while also saving thousands of innocent frogs.

During a recent visit to Southside K-8 School in McDowell County, W.Va., I witnessed how technology allows students to dissect not just frogs online, but starfish and other amphibians as well. As a web-based program, this requires real bandwidth.  Such activities would not have been possible last year when Southside was using two slower 3 Mbps-speed Internet connections for the whole school, which allowed for only a few students to work online at the same time.

With the help of a $126 million NTIA broadband grant, the school now has access to a fiber-based 100 Mbps connection that allows any Southside student to get online. NTIA’s grant has produced real results in this classroom in McDowell County and throughout West Virginia. It has helped bring a fiber broadband connection to all 750 public elementary and high schools in the state -- an important and proud milestone for West Virginia.

President Obama’s ConnectED proposal aims to bring next-generation broadband, with speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and high-speed wireless, to K-12 schools across the nation.

Nowhere is the need greater – or the challenge tougher – than in rural America. High-speed Internet connections can give students living in remote communities access to classes, teachers and instructional materials that those in urban regions may take for granted. But with so many rural areas still lacking advanced telecommunications infrastructure, schools in these places often remain cut off from the promise of broadband.

In Michigan, a non-profit broadband provider called Merit Network is tackling this challenge by connecting K-12 districts in some of the most far-flung reaches of the state.

Merit, which owns and operates a statewide research and education network, dates back to the early academic and government networks that evolved into today’s Internet. It was established in 1966 by the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University.