The Internet Innovation Alliance is a broad-based coalition of business and non-profit organizations that aim to ensure every American, regardless of race, income or geography, has access to the critical tool that is broadband Internet. The IIA seeks to promote public policies that support equal opportunity for universal broadband availability and adoption so that everyone, everywhere can seize the benefits of the Internet - from education to health care, employment to community building, civic engagement and beyond.
The leaders and supporters
of IIA
Rick Boucher
Honorary Chairman
Bruce P. Mehlman
Co-Chairman
Jamal Simmons
Co-Chairman
Tracey Sawicki
Executive Director
Browse IIA's reference center for the latest stats, facts and studies
Broadband Fact Book
Easy to find, byte-sized data
Start-Up Savings
Infographic
10 Benefits of Health IT
Infographic
How Broadband Helps Rural Communities
Infographic
10 Ways Being Online Saves You Money
Cost savings report
Achieving Universal Broadband
A state by state guide
The National Broadband Plan
A roadmap to America's future
The Digital Divide
Addressing the digital divide
Jobs and Investment
Broadband enables job creation
Learn about IIA's many outreach events
Read past and current stories about the IIA
IIA's constantly updated blog on all things broadband and technology
fcc (687)
mobile broadband (362)
broadband access (264)
net neutrality (240)
spectrum (239)
Blog posts tagged with 'History'
Tuesday, April 30
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web entering the public domain. To mark the occasion, CERN — the research group that made the web as we know it possible — has relaunched the world’s first website at its original URL. The image above is what the page looked like, but check it out in all its sparse glory on your own.
My how things have changed.
Friday, February 08
Friday, February 01
Here’s something interesting for your Friday. At GigaOm, Laura Hazard Owen writes about a research project aimed at predicting the future:
Researchers at Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict future disease outbreaks, riots and deaths — and hopefully prevent them.
The new research is the latest in a number of similar initiatives that seek to mine web data to predict all kinds of events. Recorded Future, for instance, analyzes news, blogs and social media to “help identify predictive signals” for a variety of industries, including financial services and defense. Researchers are also using Twitter and Google to track flu outbreaks.
We live in amazing times.
Monday, January 07
Over at the Verge, Laura June has assembled an amazing gallery of photos from the tech event over the years. The entire spread stretches way back to 1967, and is definitely worth digging into.
Friday, October 12
On Wednesday at the Brookings Institution event “Fostering Internet Competition” in DC, my friend and Harvard Professor Susan Crawford suggested that we look at the spread of electricity throughout rural America to guide a path for the deployment of broadband. While this feel-good analogy stirs American pride in the ingenuity that colors our nation’s history, it doesn’t hold water.
Electricity shocked the world in 1882, when Edison’s Pearl Street Power Station started up its generator in New York City. Within just a few years, Americans living in big cities would be able to choose from among 20 to 30 different providers, such as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York. But most Americans weren’t able to take advantage of electricity until half a century later, because there wasn’t a strong enough business-case for electricity providers to serve every town on the Oregon Trail. It was the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 that said “let there be light” (for all), providing federal loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve rural areas of the United States.
Over 75 years later, this commodity hasn’t changed all that much. The same type of electricity that powered the lamps of the 19th Century powers the light, appliances and devices of today. The Internet on the other hand is anything but static. It’s a rapidly-changing technology that has evolved many times in the past two decades alone, since the first commercial traffic crossed it in 1992. Thanks to a vibrant, competitive industry, relentless innovation and a rapacious consumer appetite, we’re seeing new “flavors” of broadband every year, including DSL, fiber-to-the-home, fixed wireless broadband, 3G, mobile LTE, and so on.
Much has changed since the government financed the spread of electricity across our nation. Unlike when taxpayers financed electrification, broadband is already widely available — more than 90% of consumers can choose among five or more providers, according to Federal Communication Commission data. Also unlike 1936, our national debt now exceeds $16,000,000,000,000, putting far greater pressure on how we spend our critical infrastructure dollars, especially as the FCC acknowledges that the cost of universal high-speed networks could reach $350 billion. Most importantly, we have private sector competitors eager to make those investments, to install, upgrade and maintain the broadband networks that make our economy so much more competitive. Rather than a Rural Electrification Act, we need a Regulatory Extraction Act, getting government out-of-the way of investment, starting with relinquishing more spectrum to commercial broadband usage.
So while Susan is right that extending next-generation broadband infrastructure to every corner of our country must be a priority, she and I differ on the means to that end. 2012 is not 1936, and modern broadband is not early electricity. Rural Electrification does not offer a viable roadmap.
Friday, August 31
This week, take a trip back to 1983 when a little movie about a computer whiz kid bringing America to the brink of nuclear annihilation took America by storm.
Friday, August 24
Friday, August 17
This week, take a look at what kids had to say about the Internet way back in 1995.
Friday, August 10
Friday, August 03
Check out these amazing cellphone models from Radio Shack circa 1987 — one for the low, low price of $1,399, the other for just $2,495!
Friday, July 27
Friday, July 13
Today, YouTube streams billions of hours of content each year. But it was just seven years ago — April 23, 2005, at 8:27 pm, to be exact — that the first video was posted. As you can see, it wasn’t very exciting.
Friday, July 06
Before there was mobile broadband, before there even was broadband altogether, there was the 56K modem and its funny — some would say annoying — sounds.
Friday, June 29
Given today’s five-year anniversary of the iPhone, it’s only fitting we look back at the TV spot that helped start it all.
Friday, June 08
This week, a Movietone News reel from 1946 debuting ENIAC, the world’s first computer, to the moviegoing public.
Friday, June 01
Friday, May 25
Speaking of space, this week let’s take a look back at one of the most historic moments in America’s history — a moment achieved before the Internet, mobile broadband, and even mobile phones.
Friday, May 18
This week, we travel all the way back to the year 1957 for a glimpse of what the home of the future would look like.
Yesterday, you may have heard a little something about social behemoth Facebook’s IPO. At The Hill, Brendan Sasso breaks down the numbers:
Facebook will raise $16 billion, trailing only Visa and General Motors as the largest IPO ever.
Under the symbol “FB,” Facebook stock opened at $38 per share. That price will value the company at about $104 billion, more than McDonald’s, Disney and Starbucks.
Taking a different look at Facebook numbers, tech writer Brian Solis notes:
Now the site has more than 800 million users and a new comparison that’s worthy of blog posts, tweets and conference presentations…Facebook now has as many users as the entire Internet did in 2004, which ironically is the year Facebook debuted.
Wow.
Monday, May 14
Via FOX News comes the tale of film company Kodak, an industrial facility in Rochester, NY, and the bizarre nuclear reactor in the building’s basement.
Featured Members
March Madness in Bytes
Sign the Petition
Internet Past & Future
Back to School Webinar
Telepsychiatry Webinar
IIA Broadband Symposium
IIA Internet Academy
Press Releases
Most Recent Posts