National Broadband Plan Will Give the U.S. Government Complete Control Over Our Healthcare with a National Database of Electronic Health Records; It Will Also Give the Feds Control Over Our Electric Meters, 'Civic Participation' and 'Public Safety'

FCC Releases U.S. National Broadband Plan

March 20, 2010

Information Policy - ...The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released the executive summary for the long-awaited document, Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan, which lays out the regulator's goals in enhancing broadband availability, and the methods for achieving those goals.

The report cites benefits including improved healthcare, education and training, entrepreneurship, civic participation, and energy-efficient smart grids as driving the attempt to improve broadband access to reach the 100 million Americans without home internet services.

It also notes the still-existing need for a nationwide public safety mobile broadband network with funding of up to US$6.5 billion over the next 10 years.

The plan is positioned as being budgetary-neutral, with funds coming from spectrum auctions, improved government efficiencies, economic stimulus effects, and the reallocation of existing funds.

There are six long-term goals for the next decade, including connecting 100 million homes at 100 Mbps; 1-Gbps services to anchor institutions (schools, hospitals, government buildings), leading global mobile innovation with fast and extensive networks; access for all to affordable, robust broadband, and the means and skills to subscribe; a nationwide, interoperable public safety network; and tracking and management of real-time energy consumption...

FCC Preparing National Broadband Plan

April 8, 2009

Federal Computer Week - The Federal Communications Commission has launched a 13-month effort to develop a national broadband plan as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the commission announced in a news release today.

The FCC must deliver the plan to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010, a schedule that overlaps with the deadlines for distributing stimulus broadband grants. Congress directed that economic stimulus funding of $7.2 billion for national broadband expansion is to be allocated starting in the current fiscal year and completed by September 2010.

But at least one policy expert believes the timing should not be a major concern because the FCC has recently upgraded its data for assessing the current status of broadband deployment throughout the nation, a critical factor which will help target the broadband grant funding to where it is most needed and avoid haphazard planning.

“The new data is a dramatic improvement,” said Chris Riley, policy counsel for Free Press, a nonprofit organization advocating national broadband. “Now they have information on how many subscribers there are to each speed of broadband in each census tract.”

The new data will help the Agriculture and Commerce departments distributing the grants maintain up-to-date information and avoid waste and mistargeted funding, he said.

“They can be effective in distributing the broadband grants to the rural, undeserved areas,” Riley said.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service are preparing to make broadband grant applications available. They held a series of public meetings in March to collect opinions on how to structure the broadband grant programs.

2009 Economic Stimulus Package and Electronic Health Records (EHR)

The Obama administration’s signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), with its $19 billion in stimulus funds for healthcare IT, is the most expansive effort to date. It includes a menu of grants to states, Medicare and Medicaid incentives for hospitals and physician practices, and a timetable for imposing penalties for non-adopters of EHR after 2015. - Healthcare Electronic Records Technology and Government Funding: Improving Patient Care?, OmniMD

Stimulus Marketing - The Department of Health and Human Services has been given $19 billion in incentives to move the healthcare community toward full utilization of electronic health records. The goal for this stimulus funding is to help 90% of doctors and 70% of hospitals adopt EHR within 10 years.

When will the money be available?

In the early years, hospitals and physicians offices that are early adopters of the technology will receive annual bonuses through Medicaid. Beginning in 2015, providers who have not adopted the technology will see reduced Medicare payments. After 2015, the amount of reduced Medicare payments will increase annually. The same type of incentives will be available to Medicaid providers.

Funding will be determined by formula with each qualifying hospital getting a base amount of $2 million. Hospitals will have up to 4 years to become “meaningful” users of EHR.

This segment of funding also includes $2 billion to create a medical record database for the entire country. These funds will be provided to the states on a grant basis and can include training grants to hospitals, doctors and other providers, university health education programs, public health departments, community health centers, and any other entity that provides healthcare to underserved citizens.

Who will decide what to purchase?

Hospitals will likely have an EHR team comprised of the Chief Information Officer, IT Director, HIPAA Compliance Director, and Medical Records Director. The office manager is a key contact at physicians’ offices because they act as a hub for the exchange of information.

The $2 billion designated to create a national database will likely involve Public Health Directors and Primary Care Directors as decision makers

$4 Billion in Broadband Stimulus Grants Tied to Strict Net Neutrality Rules

July 1, 2009

Wired - Two federal agencies are now ready to hand out $4 billion in grants and loans to help bring broadband to the people and stimulate the economy, but applicants have to promise to play fairly with whatever devices, applications and services users want to use, vice president Joe Biden announced today.

Rural areas and inner-cities are likely to see the bulk of the benefits from the Broadband USA project, as the Department of Agriculture set aside $1.2 billion in infrastructure funds for rural ISPs and $800 million for so-called middle-mile projects that connect ISPs to the internet’s backbone. The Commerce Department separately set aside $1.2 billion for infrastructure, up to $50 million for public computer centers such as libraries and up to $150 million to convince people that broadband tastes good enough to subscribe to.

“Today’s announcement is a first step toward realizing President Obama’s vision of a nationwide 21st-century communications infrastructure – one that encourages economic growth, enhances America’s global competitiveness and helps address many of America’s most pressing challenges,” Biden said.

The $4 billion in grants and loans are supposed to go to projects that will be largely finished by September 2010. These are just the first round of broadband grants authorized under February’s stimulus bill, which set aside $7.2 billion to help close the digital divide. Even more funds and more ambitious projects are likely once the FCC submits a national broadband plan to Congress next February.

But the program’s strict rules on so-called Net Neutrality principles may keep some of the nation’s largest telecoms from applying for funds and low-interest loans. Companies like AT&T and Verizon warned that such restrictions were unnecessary. They also wanted the government to spend as much on encouraging broadband subscriptions as they are on giving out loans to wireless ISPs that want to expand in areas that the big telecoms deem too much trouble to provide coverage to.

For instance, all applicants have to agree to follow the FCC’s fair internet principles, which require ISPs to let users choose whatever devices and applications they like, without interference from the carrier. The nation’s wireless industry has resisted having those rules apply to them, since it would force them to tear down the walls around their networks. That means letting users bring their own devices to a mobile network, use competing video services on their phones, and use their mobile phones as modems for a laptop without an extra charge.

Since the broadband openness rules will apply in perpetuity to projects, it’s unlikely that any of the nation’s largest mobile carriers will apply for such funds. Projects that use network management techniques to speed up video, for instance, or to slow down file sharing traffic, will have to provide notice to customers about how that works. Networks will also have to interconnect with other networks fairly.

These are conditions that industry groups fought against, and their inclusion sends a strong message that such rules are likely to become more prominent in the Obama Administration than they were under the more industry-friendly telecom regulatory regime of the Bush years.

The detailed rules and definitions are outlined here (.pdf).