Broadband Usage in Households and Small Businesses Has Grown from 1.8 Million to 37.9 Million.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c35546) has announced the addition of Municipal Broadband: An Opportunity for Growth to their offering.

The 1st Edition of the Municipal Broadband: An Opportunity for Growth report is a comprehensive 90-page overview of Municipal Broadband. The report provides a look at the problems faced by municipalities in ensuring adequate broadband access for citizens, the forces driving development of municipal broadband networks, and the results of municipal broadband efforts to date.

Topics covered in the report include:

--An overview of broadband communications.

--A review of the history of municipal telecom projects.

--A discussion of current municipal efforts to implement broadband networks.

--An analysis of the key business factors that are driving increased interest in municipal broadband.

--An evaluation of the barriers that are hindering the implementation of municipal broadband.

--A comparison of broadband access technologies.

--A review of key business and economic factors impacting municipal broadband decisions.

--Profiles of key municipal broadband networks that have already been implemented.

Topics Covered

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

KEY BUSINESS DRIVERS

BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

THE TECHNOLOGY OF BROADBAND

THE BUSINESS OF MUNICIPAL BROADBAND

MUNICIPAL BROADBAND PROFILES

UTOPIA

APPENDIX

GLOSSARY

Summary

Broadband internet access (or just broadband) is a high data-transmission rate internet connection. In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or more is considered broadband Internet.

In 2000, the FCC defined an "advanced telecommunications service" as one that is at least 200 kbps in each direction. The speed and two-way requirement attempted to capture the intent expressed in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 - that the speeds of "advanced telecommunications services" should exceed the rates offered by the technologies available to residential customers at the time of the Act's passage.

At the time of the Act's passage, residential customers were generally limited to dial-up service of typically no more than 33.6 kbps. Hinting that a definition should also be driven by the requirements of user applications, the FCC observed that the 200 kbps threshold it selected was roughly the threshold above which the time it takes to load a Web page becomes comparable to the time it takes to turn the page of a book.

The International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector recommendation I.113 has defined broadband as a transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate ISDN, at 1.5 Mbps. The OECD has defined broadband as 256 kbit/s in at least one direction.

The growth of bandwidth-intensive applications is the key driver of broadband adoption.

Access to a broadband connection is merely a means of obtaining products and applications such as the Internet, video on demand, and telephony, among others. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), growth in broadband usage has grown from 1.8 million households and small businesses at the end of 1999 to 37.9 million by the end of 2004. Households are adopting high-speed Internet access as rapidly as they have adopted any telecommunications service in the recent past. For example, cellular telephone service, now available in most regions of the country, took six years to reach 7.5 million subscribers, a feat that the residential broadband market achieved in 3.5 years.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c35546