The goal of the workshops will be to promote an open dialogue between the FCC and key constituents on matters important to the National Broadband Plan. Key constituents will include service providers, equipment providers, applications providers, community groups, and other groups that have a stake in the future of broadband. Workshops will consist of meetings held at the FCC. The public will have the opportunity to suggest meeting topics and questions for the workshops. All meetings will be broadcast over the Internet when possible, and archived for viewing at a later time to ensure that everyone has access to the content.

The goal of this workshop will be to explore various metrics or benchmarks for evaluating the various dimensions of broadband across geographic areas and across time. The workshop will consider various metrics to measure such important variables as broadband deployment and adoption, the price and quality of broadband services, and the level of competition. Where appropriate, the workshop will also discuss formulas that compare these metrics for different broadband technologies or services offered under varying terms and conditions.

The workshop will also examine sector-specific metrics, such as how best to measure the deployment and adoption of health IT or smart grid technologies. These sector-specific benchmarks will build on prior workshops that focused on more specific issues, with the goal of identifying those metrics that will be most important and useful for tracking the implementation and impact of the National Broadband Plan.

The workshop’s goal is to identify those metrics that are most likely to be useful in assessing the broadband sector, tracking changes in the US broadband sector over time, and comparing US broadband performance against the performance of other countries.