The White House is about to give Americans a big Broadband boost.
President Obama will sign an Executive Order this week that will accelerate the deployment of broadband networks nationwide and create a new public-private partnership, called US Ignite, to develop applications that will run on those new networks.
The Executive Order, which was announced by the White House today, makes “broadband construction along Federal roadways and properties up to 90 percent cheaper and more efficient,” which will make it easier for broadband carriers to deploy networks on Federal properties and roads and speed the delivery of connectivity to “communities, businesses and schools.” US Ignite, which is comprised of nearly 100 cities, corporations and non-profit entities, focuses on developing applications for advanced manufacturing, medical monitoring, emergency preparedness and other services that will run on the broadband networks. So far, more than $60 million has been committed to the cause along with various other partners offering subsidies.
Both announcements validate the very reason Broadcom exists: to connect people to the content that matters most to them. Unfortunately, it is still challenging for many people in the U.S. to connect to broadband networks at home, work, or on the go; especially as bandwidth-hungry applications and multimedia continue increasing in use. While the U.S. population has reached 313 million people, it’s staggering that only 245 million of those people use the Internet.
YouTube’s streaming of the 2012 Summer Olympics illustrates the need for ubiquitous connectivity and high-speed services to match the growing broadband needs of content providers and explosive growth of high-speed content consumption by consumers.
The majority of the world’s infrastructure hardware runs on Broadcom technology. In fact, 99.98% of all internet traffic crosses a Broadcom chip at one point or another. That’s impressive. But what’s most important are the people who aren’t benefiting from Broadcom’s technology to learn, share, connect and advance the world we live in.
Those are the connections we must enable and we’re glad that President Obama agrees.
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