Towson University’s Outreach Blog

Steve

While the Internet is estimated to be roughly 30 years old, it’s only in the last decade that Internet connectivity has become part of everyday American life—at least for some. Despite a growing reliance on the Internet for activities like online bill pay, shopping, license renewing, dating, mapping, direction finding, and communication, some citizens find themselves either without Internet service or with service that does not meet today’s bandwidth demands. Whether these individuals are not provided service in their area, or cannot afford reliable service, they are missing out on high speed Internet connections, commonly referred to as broadband. Today’s access to broadband has been compared to the adoption of electricity at the turn of the 20th century. Whether you find broadband service essential to everyday life, it’s pretty clear its role is expanding and now touches most American lives.

The  State Broadband Data Development Grant Program, funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), was developed to ultimately improve broadband access to all Americans. Winners of the Broadband Data and Development grants must develop and maintain a publicly accessible, interactive broadband inventory map showing the geographic extent that broadband service capability is deployed and available from a commercial or public provider throughout each state. Maryland was awarded one of these grants in November of last year.

As part of the grant, directed by the Maryland Broadband Cooperative, Inc. (MdBC), the Maryland Broadband Mapping Initiative (MBBMI) was created. MBBMI consists of members from MdBC, Salisbury University, Towson University, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, and Maryland’s State Geographic Information Officer. Both the Center for GIS (CGIS) and Regional Economic Studies Institute are members of the Towson University team.

Coordination with broadband providers and other research has been taking place for some time. However, in the last two weeks, over a million emails have been sent out requesting citizen assistance, and two new websites were launched to help in the effort to bring broadband to all Maryland residents and businesses. At http://broadband.maryland.gov, readers are provided information regarding broadband coverage in the state and a set of historical maps with broadband coverage, average speeds by county and broadband adoption for 2009. At http://www.mdbroadbandmap.org, citizens can find additional information regarding the effort to bring broadband to all Marylanders and are asked to take a speed test to determine how fast their current Internet connection is. After taking the speed test, residents and businesses are also asked to take part in a short survey regarding broadband access and usage, and to report any areas of the state which are currently un-served.  The tests and surveys will be used to create an inventory of current broadband availability and help to determine un-served areas. By mid-summer both websites will provide information on the test and survey results and have an interactive map helping them locate broadband providers and services in their areas.

If you are a Maryland resident or business, I encourage you to get involved in the process. Help us determine what the Maryland broadband landscape looks like. Tell us if you have or do not have broadband service, and how fast it is. You can also let us know how important broadband access is to you by contacting us at mapinfo@mdbc.us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Community Outreach, Economic Analysis, Mapping, News, TU Faculty & Staff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.