Several states announced new broadband access plans last week. A national broadband expansion grants initiative was included in the federal stimulus package and a round of awards were given to states. Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon all announced awards in the tens of millions.

Iowa was awarded $90 million for a variety of projects designed to expand and improve broadband statewide. With that money the state will improve high-speed internet connections, fiber and fiber-to-the-premises networks and rural access. Nearly 500 jobs are expected to be created to facilitate the improvements and expansion.

Massachusetts received $45.5 million to expand broadband access in the Western and North-Central parts of the state. The grant award will be paired with state matched funds of $26.2 million, bringing the total investment in the project to $71.6 million. The state will create a new fiber network to connect areas currently without access.

New Hampshire received $44.5 million to implement their state broadband action plan designed to improve and expand the statewide fiber network. Ohio received $30 million to be administered through a public-private partnership, the Ohio Middle Mile Consortium (OMMC). The partnership plans to expand broadband access in western Ohio and create nearly 300 jobs in the process. Oregon was awarded $16 million for their expansion plans, these funds will also be partially matched with state funds.

The awards are the second round of the highly competitive Broadband Technology Opportunities Program managed through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Awards are decided through a competition that requires states to submit broadband action plans and compete against each other for the largest awards.

According to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, cities around the world are beginning to treat high-speed Internet access and related information technologies as an essential component of their economic development and citizen engagement strategies.

The 2,800 person survey was sponsored by Siemens and EIU findings were unveiled in Singapore during the World Cities Summit Tuesday. According to Klaus Heidinger, Head of Global Center of Competence for City Management at Siemans IT Solutions and Services, more cities are treating their IT and broadband networks as basic utilities and an essential component of their governance strategies.

“One of the most striking findings is the fact that ICT has become a basic utility, like water and electricity, for all cities,” Mr. Heidinger said in a statement. The EIU study also found, Mr. Heidinger suggested, that ICT initiatives like smart grid will allow greater citizen participation with government and private sector electricity providers to reduce energy and encourage use of renewable energy sources.

According to the survey, 77 percent of businesses believe improved broadband networks in their cities would have a significant impact on city competitiveness, making it the most important ICT technology for attracting private-sector investments. It also found that emerging cities are turning to IT to manage infrastructure in ways that are as important as building the infrastructure itself.

The study also cited several US cities’ use of IT tools to empower citizens to help government. Portland’s CivicApps and New York City’s recent BigApps competition were heralded as proof of “an increasing trend where citizens, armed with data from official sources, video and other information, are coming up with smart phone and other mobile applications to make city living easier and more enjoyable,” the study said.

In March, Portland developed the Open Data Initiative and started a contest called CivicApps. According to an interview with Rick Nixon, program manager with the City of Portalnd Bureau of Technology Services, Portland noticed that other cities, like Washington, DC were proving the benefit of opening government data and releasing it to the public.

Mr. Nixon said the city wanted to “push innovation to the citizenry and empower them to deal with their own issues.”

And with the release of the EIU study, it seems other cities around the world are doing the same.

Frontier Communications will work with the Communications Workers of America and the state of West Virgina on broadband deployment and other capital expenditures totaling $310 million over the next three years.  The company’s announcement comes on the heels of  a state approved sale of Verizon’s West Virgina wireline assets to Frontier. Frontier says it plans to work on service quality improvements for existing customers along with broadband deployment.

Frontier is expected to start activities in the state as early as July 1 when it completes its acquisition of Verizon’s assets.  Yearly expenditures will work out to be $30 million in 2010, $85 million in 2011, $73 million in 2012 and $74 million in 2013. In addition, Frontier will spend $48 million on broadband deployment by Dec. 31, 2013.  As part of the conditions of the Verizon sale, the company has guaranteed these expenditures through a combination financial resources that will ensure the company’s access to capital.  Frontier has also agreed to pre-fund a portion of this multi-year investment.

The Governor’s office intends to work with the Public Service Commission to oversee the investment and ensure that all $310 million will be spent inside West Virginia. The investment will be combined with funds from an order issued by the Public Service Commission to Verizon requiring the company to invest $72.4 million in service quality improvements in the state – an investment which Frontier will now manage. As well as $126 million in stimulus money that the state has received for communications and broadband.

“I have followed this sale closely over the past several months,” Governor Manchin said. “I have stayed in regular contact with Frontier, Verizon, the CWA, our citizens and other key stakeholders. Frontier’s guarantee far exceeds everyone’s expectations for the sale. With this investment, more people will have access to critical services – like broadband and high speed internet – than was previously anticipated. This is a great thing for West Virginia.”

Frontier is also required to honor all existing labor commitments with Verizon employees. Yesterday, the company came to an agreement with the Communications Workers of America, District 2 which settles all of the issues related to Frontier’s acquisition of Verizon’s wireline operations and promises to employ nearly 2,000 people in the state. The settlement with the CWA includes extending the Verizon union contract in West Virginia by two years and expanding job security to cover all Verizon union employees. The 2,000 jobs will be a combination of the existing union workforce, 150 new hires and onshoring 500 help desk jobs that were previously outsourced by Verizon.

Today, ESRI announced that four states – Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and South Carolina are using its mapping technology to provide the details of broadband coverage statewide. The maps are part of ESRI’s BroadbandStat service, which offers interactive broadband maps. Civsource spoke with Christopher Thomas, government industry solutions manager about ESRI and how state and local governments can leverage their geographic data effectively.

BroadbandStat is an application which utilizes state’s geographic information to show where coverage currently exists as well as where the gaps are, allowing states plan to improve service delivery. BroadbandStat is funded by grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration with the goal of providing a national broadband coverage map to the public by February 2011. ESRI also offers world community maps through their ArcGIS service, which allows users to contribute their geographic data or utilize already contributed data to better understand and visualize attributes of their communities.

When asked about how cities and states are realizing the value of this data Thomas pointed to the increased effectiveness of government when data can be visualized, “I’ve found that governments understand the value of integrating their authoritative data into our world base map. Governments really get it when they see the value of connecting the accessibility of the data to their mission and focus. The various government disciplines are driven to become part of a ArcGIS.com community and submit data as they learn that the community enhances their effectiveness.”

He offered public safety as an example of how GIS data can contribute to mission, “this community recognizes the value of using base maps when preparing to respond to a disaster. ArcGIS provides an off-site storage option that can be quickly accessed during emergencies for improved response and mobilization. It also provides an excellent foundation for others to build quality maps and apps. The data drawn from ArcGIS.com provides a common language that everyone can draw from.”

Beyond public safety and disaster response, Thomas highlighted other ways states are using their geographic data including projects like Maryland’s StateStat and a growing number of departments of transportation which are utilizing maps to plan and make service improvements. “We are witnessing the same type of reaction to geo-enabling a business process as we see in the acceptance of the ArcGIS.com community. The geo-enablement of the workflow can be applied to transparency and accountability both holistically and based on the mission of the government agency,” he said.

Thomas also noted several areas that are emerging as hubs for geospatial data including mobile platforms as seen in the growth of location focused applications and social media which continues to include more and more location based data. According to Thomas, by including this data people will be able to add more to their communication and also participate more at a local level. “This geographic context provides deeper understanding of issues. People will analyze situations in a map and weigh in—a great example of effectively improving citizen engagement. ”

Overall, according to Thomas adding a geographic context provides more awareness and understanding of issues as they happen. When governments and citizens effectively utilize this data, transparency and accountability are increased. Additionally, costs to implement are low, many states have already invested in GIS data allowing them to simply leverage existing assets or they can utilize the data already provided on ArcGIS. Thomas noted that ESRI will continue to make adjustments to its offerings as well to ensure that their solutions are both useful and cost effective.

“ESRI offers a community for networking and sharing. At the end of the day we realize that just making world class software is not enough. We must remain part of the community we service and adjust to their needs. We have data models, APIs, documentation – a wide variety of resources that ensure success for our users.”

In an announcement last Friday in New York City, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named Suwon, South Korea as the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year. ICF Co-Founder Louis Zacharilla said Suwon’s commitment to educational investments helped push the city past the other six in what could have been a “seven-way tie.”

Suwon is South Korea’s second largest city and home to one of Samsung Electronics’ main factories. The city has a population of just over 1 million and it is known as a major educational center with 14 university campuses. The city has laid much of the technological groundwork that ICF believes will lead successful communities in the broadband economy: investments in e-government and fiber optic networks in the city has created a ubiquitous online environment for connecting to law enforcement, fire prevention, traffic information, e-learning and citizen services. The city developed its own governmental network despite South Korea’s impressive broadband infrastructure, currently ranked number one in the world, allowing Suwon to boost connection speeds from 32 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

But in naming Suwon its Intelligent Community of the Year, ICF focused less on technology than on Suwon’s development of the “human software” within its highly-educated community. Suwon has invested hundreds of millions of dollars grooming their curriculum for a global economy and workforce, officials said, which spoke directly to ICF’s theme during this year’s Building the Broadband Economy Summit.

“The levels of educational investment in Suwon, sends a signal that, as we emerge from the global economic crisis, it is the investment made in people that produce the truly impressive financial return,” Mr. Zacharilla said during the presentation ceremony.

The award was the culmination of a year-long process where potential candidates were vetted by an independent team of judges. The process began in 2009 when a list of Smart21 cities was named and in January that list was whittled down to a Top Seven. Suwon’s mayor, Yong Seo Kim called education “one of the most sound and rational outlays of capital that a government can ever make.” But he was not alone in his assessment during the summit.

In a blog post from BBE, ICF co-founder Robert Bell argued today’s teaching environment demanded much more from teachers in terms of technology knowledge and usage.

Many summit-goers echoed the need for a restructured educational system that was integrated with a community’s economic development and long-term growth strategies. “We tend to teach the technology and think we’re done,” Bell wrote. “Instead, we should be harnessing these tools to teach young people how to learn. Today’s educators have to know how to teach students to learn, not just convey information to them.”

But he also said strong government policy was needed to enable such developments. “Community leaders need to be relentless about promoting educational achievement, and ensure that education does not stop at the school wall.”

“Educational outcomes improve when classrooms connect to local business and institutional expertise,” Mr. Bell continued, “which also tends to keep graduating students in the community, where their skills can contribute to local prosperity.”

Nevada released its broadband availability map yesterday, the map aims to promote technology development and increase high-speed internet availability throughout the state.  The map was funded through a grant provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and developed by the Connect Nevada initiative. The Connect Nevada initiative was supported by the Nevada Broadband Task Force which was created in 2009 to provide information on and development of broadband in state.

The broadband availability map will allow citizens to learn about the broadband resources available in their area, and will also highlight areas in the state where broadband is lacking.  According to Governor Jim Gibbons, these gaps are were the government will work to increase access through public-private partnerships.

Connect Nevada was awarded $1.4 million for the project and used it to gather data on availability, speed, location and type of broadband services available as well as adoption rates and whether or not community institutions offered broadband.  In total, the map contains data from 35 state providers which provide access for 97.29% of the households in the state to the minimum required levels of 768 kbps downstream, leaving a remaining 21,000 unserved. Of this 21,000, 14,541 are in rural areas.  Connect Nevada will provide semi-annual updates to the map over a two year period and support planning efforts driven by the data over the next five years.

“The map and the technology which will follow will create jobs to construct these critical networks, establish employment opportunities where they never existed before, bring a new level of economic competitiveness, allow e-government to be more fully deployed, will lower taxes by lowering the cost of government, allow healthcare providers and caregivers to deliver world class services in every corner of the state, and most importantly, bring educational opportunities through distance-learning models for our children where such opportunities did not exist,” Governor Gibbons said of the project.

Map data is available through Connect Nevada’s BroadbandStat interactive mapping tool and will also be incorporated into the national broadband map at the NTIA will create as part of its Recovery Act requirements. The NTIA map will be available to the public by February 17, 2001.

In this year’s annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit, the Intelligent Community Forum looks at how cities across the globe are tying educational requirements to workforce needs, as jobs ebb and flow to disparate parts of the world according to the availability of low-cost, high-speed communications technology.

The unemployment rate in the United States is 9.9 percent, according to the latest figures by the Department of Labor. And nearly 7 million of those jobless have gone more than twenty-seven weeks without work. Billions of dollars more are likely to be flushed through the economy over the coming months, through unemployment insurance or “jobs bills,” to help sections of the economy emerge from the Great Recession.

But according to Louis Zacharilla and the Intelligent Community Forum, a global think tank, the task of creating lasting jobs in an ever-changing world has to be more closely aligned with the educational system that produces the workforce. Mr. Zacharilla and his colleagues at ICF are gearing up for their annual Building the Broadband Economy Summit this week to announce the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year. This year’s theme is “The Education Last Mile: Closing the Gap between School and Work.”

“We are seeing a requirement for the education systems throughout the world to produce a type of person that was not required 20 years ago, as we came to the end of the industrial age,” Mr. Zacharilla said in an interview.

The concept of a knowledge worker has been around since the 1970’s when Peter Drucker coined the term, but only recently has the world seen his predictions come true. According to a white paper produced by ICF, the manufacturing sector of the world’s economy has lost a significant amount its job-generating power and that the skills gap between secondary and higher education is widening in terms of earning potential. “For citizens with a poor educational history and few skills, [the change to a knowledge-based workforce] has been devastating,” the report says. “In earlier decades, they would have found work in manufacturing and earned wages that would have put them solidly in the middle class.”

The new worker, according to Mr. Zacharilla, needs to not only have the skills to perform in the new knowledge workforce, but she needs to be able to achieve at significant levels of skill performance.

“It’s important that the workforce look to the educational systems of the world to help close the gap and produce people that are capable of thinking in ways that are consistent with the requirements of the modern community.”

For the past decade, as part of its annual awards process, ICF has been studying the modern community and identifying cities throughout the world that are setting the bar for innovation in the Broadband Economy. The Broadband Economy is how ICF explains the rapid expansion of low-cost, high-speed communications and information technology within a global context. Every year, communities are chosen from a group of Smart21 Communities for their integration of broadband, and related technologies, with community development and citizen outreach strategies.

This year’s Top Seven winners included two US-based communities – Arlington County, Virginia and Dublin, Ohio. They were joined by cities in Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea, Estonia and the UK. Mr. Zacharilla said the primary strength of this year’s Top Seven Communities has been their concerted efforts to increase innovation. He said that local government officials have been at the heart of successful efforts to bring once failing and old economies into the 21st century – and they are leveraging private partnerships to build upon enabling policies.

“What we’ve arrived at now, is a Top Seven that have enshrined innovation and are beginning to absorb it into the DNA of their cultures.”

One example comes from Ottawa, Ontario where a reported five new businesses are started every week. “People say ‘wow,’” Zacharilla explained, “But I say ‘why isn’t everyone else doing it?’ because that is going to be the requirement for every local economy going forward.”

“Jobs have to come from somewhere, so creating five businesses every seven days shouldn’t be something that gets an exclamation point behind it. It should be the standard.”

Moving forward, the global think tank is trying to understand education’s role in the Broadband Economy and identifying some of those cities that have laid a high-speed communications infrastructure, but are now fostering a workforce to maximize the use of that fiber backbone.

“Now we’re trying to understand weather the educational system can be disintermediated by knowledge.”

According to Mr. Zacharilla, some communities are reassessing their continuing education model and trying to understand if rather than be a supplemental to the tradition of secondary and higher education, it could be part of a “twenty-year educational package.”

With the understanding that most people will have five to seven new jobs over a lifetime, and each of those jobs requiring new levels of education and new forms of training, conversations are emerging in some communities about developing a model where parents can buy an educational product upfront, at a discount, and make it part of an ecosystem, Zacharilla said.

“People are working hard to solve the systemic problem of not looking at the workforce and tying it back into the educational requirements.”

ICF’s BBE Summit “The Education Last Mile: Closing the Gap between School and Work” begins Wednesday May 19 through May 21 where the 2010 Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced at the Polytechnic University at its Metrotech campus in Brooklyn, New York. For more information, click here.

It’s not a joke, the capital of Kansas is now Google, and it all started with a Facebook group. CivSource spoke with Jared Starkey, the man behind the name change, who says the change was a stunt, but one designed to reflect a movement. Starkey, who started the Facebook group, did so to call attention to a Google initiative that will bring the fastest high speed fiber optic network to one US city. The project, has cities clamoring for Google’s attention as well as its economic investment.

In Kansas, Starkey leads a scrappy group of passionate citizens and local businesses who want to revive the state’s capital with this project and establish the technology framework for a biomedical research corridor that includes several medical centers and universities in the surrounding metro area.

Starkey is the first to tell you, “its not about me.” Rather, the action sprang from a core group of passionate people with a mandate to follow through on their ideas. He noted that while the Facebook group has several thousand members, a fraction of that showed up to the first in-person meeting, but he recognized those who did were his go-to people, and so far they’ve delivered.

The group is working hard to find new ideas and new ways to get the attention of Google and make Topeka a better place in the process. However, they face stiff competition from other cities working just as hard to get noticed. Yesterday, Duluth, upped the ante by proclaiming each new child would be named Google and Googlette.

Aspen, Colo. is hoping that its Rural Broadband Cooperative’s current initiative to extend broadband access into the countryside will gain attention. Peoria, Ill. hopes its “Google Day” festivities will sway some votes. In this climate, the city of Madison, Wis. is revisiting its own application looking for ways to make it more creative.

Other cities are taking a more subdued angle – the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro are teaming up on their application with the hopes of bringing Google’s fiber into Tar Heel country. Tallahassee has also applied and is working to bring its student population on board as a way to gain favor.

The bigger question though, is what will the winning city do with the network once it has it? Starkey points to the creation of a biomedical corridor in Topeka, …er Google. As well as the creation of a completely redundant technology infrastructure in whatever city wins, a big asset to be sure. Regardless of what happens, its shaping up to be a creative battle.

Through a combination of state and federal grants, northern Illinois will receive $13 million in capital funds meant to improve broadband access, Governor Pat Quinn said last week. A project meant to develop high-speed, low-cost broadband infrastructure in the DeKalb region is poised to receive the bulk of the funds, where approximately 3,600 businesses and an estimated 34,000 households will have access to the network.

The $13 million funding includes $1.3 million in Illinois Jobs Now! funds for the DeKalb Advancement of Technology Authority (DATA), which will leverage another $11.9 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding, officials said.

The DATA is a public-private consortium dedicated to providing broadband access to schools, colleges, municipalities, medical facilities and other community agencies. Their main goal is a fiber-optic network that will cost nearly $15 million over the next two years, but will service almost 38,000 households and businesses, while employing upwards of 50 construction and technical maintenance jobs for the next two to three years.

“Access to affordable high-speed internet is critical in today’s economy. Unfortunately, too many people in Illinois are being left out of the broadband revolution,” Gov. Quinn said in a statement. “This important funding will expand broadband access to communities throughout northern Illinois and help ensure no one is left out.”

So far, the state has designated a total of $50 million in matching funds for exceptional projects that are awarded federal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program funding. The state also recently received $1.8 million for broadband data collection, mapping and planning activities.

Applications for round two of the stimulus broadband funding are due by March 15, 2010.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson announced the opening of eight community “gateways” to the state’s supercomputer, Encanto, to help develop New Mexico’s educational and high-tech business sector, he said. “We’re bringing the highest level of supercomputing to every corner of the state, giving New Mexicans the opportunity to tap in to its remarkable educational and economic possibilities,” Gov. Richardson said in a statement Tuesday.

According to the New Mexico Computing Applications Center, Encanto is the fastest public supercomputer in the world. The eight “gateway” sites will be able to tap into Encanto’s high performance computing for design and modeling purposes. The Supercomputer can be used for research, educational activities, training, and business modeling in a wide variety of areas including energy, environment, digital film, aerospace, and biotechnology, officials said.

All of New Mexico’s major universities will act as gateways, as well as Santa Fe Community College and the State Capitol. “The Supercomputer is a phenomenal high-tech tool,” said Barbara Couture, President of New Mexico State University. “Being able to provide supercomputing capabilities through a network of universities and businesses enhances research, education, and economic development capabilities across the state.”

Encanto is being housed at Intel in Rio Rancho, where it has reportedly achieved a capacity to perform 172 trillion calculations per second. As part of the “Connect New Mexico” initiative the eight new gateways will be joined by twenty-four other sites around the state, joined by a secure network into the main computer.

Director of Corporate Affairs at Intel for the Southwestern US, Jami Grindatto, joined others in saying the technology will transform the educational and high-tech opportunities around the state.

“This network of sites gives supercomputer access to all New Mexicans and will help create the high-tech workforce of the future.”