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In response to Google's recent Fiber for Communities project, a group of entrepreneurs in Philadelphia have decided to conduct their own broadband stimulus experiment.

The Philly Startup Leaders are offering a Gigabit Genius Grant, and they plan to award $10,000 to the person who submits the best idea for using super high-speed Internet to improve their community.

In 2005, the U.S. still ranked as the most networked country in the world according to the World Economic Forum's Global Information Technology Report. This report, which provides an extensive analysis of the economies and network infrastructures of 133 countries,

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission built upon its growing new media prowess with the launch of its own iPhone and Android applications.

The FCC's new apps allow users to test the speed of mobile broadband services and report deadzones where mobile broadband is not available. The FCC iPhone app is a free download from iTunes or the Android marketplace.

For obvious reasons, we care about what goes on in various parts of the world, particularly New Zealand and other areas that are underserved in terms of Internet access.

So, we were quite excited to learn this evening of a new proposal that would give New Zealanders - including a couple RWW staff members - a better broadband experience. According to NZ website Stuff, a halndful of well-known innovators and entrepreneurs are teaming up on a $900 million dollar project that would give Kiwis (and their Aussie neighbors) "virtually unlimited" broadband access via an international cable that would run across the Pacific Ocean. Just how much of a difference would this cable make compared to current Internet access?

Google just announced that it will beginning to build and test an ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of locations in the United States. The company wants to offer fiber-to-the-home connections that will reach 1 gigabit per second. For now, Google plans to first roll out these connections to around 50,000 people, with the potential to reach over 500,000 people at a later stage.

Looking at data from the third quarter of 2009, content delivery network Akamai just announced that the average broadband speed in the U.S. declined by 2.4% in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008. In the U.S., Delaware currently leads with 7.2 Mbps, though it remains far behind South Korea, where the average speed is almost 15 Mpbs. Currently, the U.S. is in 18th place, far behind Japan, Hong Kong, Romania and Sweden. The average U.S. broadband speed is currently 3.9 Mbps.

The Federal Communications Commission launched a Twitter account and Blogband - a blog that will chronicle the progress and development of the National Broadband Plan. Said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, "We want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan". Genachowski has until February 2010 to submit a plan for broadband deployment to Congress. Telecoms, net neutrality lobbyists, tech companies and regular citizens are tripping over themselves to weigh in.

Today, the UK government finally released its long-awaited Digital Britain report, which, among other things, confirms the government's intention to provide broadband access at 2Mbps to every household in the UK by 2012. According to the report, about 11% of all households in the UK cannot currently get broadband service at this speed. The British government plans to deliver this 'Universal Service Commitment' through a mix of existing technologies and expects to provide £200 million in public funding for this project.

A number of ISPs have lately started to clamp down on peer-to-peer networks and are actively restricting heavy usage of 'unlimited' connections. For users, however, there is very little transparency in this process and it can be very hard to figure out if an ISP is actually actively throttling a connection or preventing certain applications from working properly. In reaction to this, Google, together with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and the PlanetLab Consortium announced the Measurement Lab, an open platform for researchers and a set of tools for users that can be used to examine the state of your broadband connection.

Today, Comcast announced that it will amend its Acceptable Use Policy and add a clause to it that will establish a "monthly data use threshold" of 250 GB per month. This effectively puts a cap on the amount a Comcast user can download per month and codifies an informal policy Comcast was already enforcing. While 250GB is a large amount of data right now, it won't be once a large number users start watching HD streams which can easily take up numerous GB per hours.