Tag: INFRASTRUCTURE

Last June, the Obama administration outlined an auction plan that could help double the U.S. broadband spectrum. According to Reuters, the White House has finally revealed the specific financial details concerning that strategy. As part of the overall plan, Obama will propose an additional $5 billion investment to bring wireless Internet to rural areas of the country. But, the spectrum auction ...

Some bricklayers may soon give up their kneepads (if not their jobs) if a new machine comes into vogue. The Tiger-Stone enables two operators to lay the entire width of a brick or stone street at once, allowing two people to do in an afternoon what has taken days for many more. We hope, for bricklayers' sakes, that a new John Henry emerges -- one more successful than the last. ...

Over the past few months, many politicians and national security experts have grown increasingly worried about what might happen if the U.S. power grid were ever to fall prey to a terrorist attack. Concerns first arose last March, when a scientific study published in the journal Safety Science suggested that even an attack on a small corner of the electrical network could unleash a domino effect ...

Way back in December, China unveiled the world's fastest train, which topped out at around 235 miles per hour. Now, less than a year later, the People's Republic has broken its own record with a Shanghai bullet train that can reach speeds of up to 258.86 miles per hour. The new train, which made its record-breaking debut on Tuesday, will begin its regular run between Shanghai and Hangzhou next ...

In a unanimous vote, all five FCC Commissioners have approved rules opening up the so-called whitespace between television channels for use in what the commission has dubbed "super Wi-Fi." The newly available spectrum offers greater range and wall penetration than current Wi-Fi technology, and provides plenty of room for boosting speeds, as well. Rules will require that devices take advantage of ...

Believe it or not, power lines are not self-sustaining. They get damaged, get worn, and ultimately fail with spectacular consequences. It's actually somebody's job to get up on those poles and high-tension towers, and inspect those cables to make sure they're still in working order. Needless to say, maneuvering cables with tens-of-thousands of volts pumping past is not exactly the safest of ...

The Obama administration is making a major push to improve the state of broadband in the U.S., and to make large swaths of the wireless spectrum available for mobile data services. A full 500 Mhz of spectrum (nearly double what is available now) is expected to be freed up over the next ten years and be auctioned off primarily to broadband companies. The effort should create jobs, in both ...

As part of its push for the adoption of its National Broadband Plan, the FCC has continually argued that Internet access, in today's economy, has become a necessity for anyone seeking to climb the rungs of society. Now, a newly published study shows just how important it is for the poorest American populations, in particular. The report, based on the first large scale study of public library ...

We knew that, under the Obama administration, the FCC would be undertaking a massive overhaul of our nation's broadband policies and systems. We're in desperate need of it, too. Recent studies have shown that most of Europe and Asia have drastically faster connections than the U.S. Even Latvia averages more than twice the download speed of the typical American "broadband" connection. To make ...

Winter may be drawing to a painstakingly slow close, but the countless potholes it leaves in its wake can linger for much longer. Whereas most of us simply wait for the public works crew to get around to fixing the mini-craters in our streets, a new GPS-based Web site called SeeClickFix now gives citizens the ability to instantly alert municipal officials to problems worthy of their attention. ...