We're covering the FCC's on-going series of public workshops as it works to draft a National Broadband Plan. An archive of that coverage can be found here. -- the editors

Small businesses “are the heart of the American economy.” They employ about half of all U.S. workers.

The Small Business Administration reports that small businesses “have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.”  Disadvantaged businesses (read: minority-owned) employ more than four million people.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. The jobless recovery, coupled with the changing demographics, make it imperative that small and disadvantaged businesses have affordable access to broadband and a fair chance to compete for federal contracts and funding opportunities.

High-speed Internet access is about more than bridging the digital divide. It’s also about access to a critical infrastructure. In short, broadband access matters to economic growth, job creation and civic participation...

We're covering the FCC's on-going series of public workshops as it works to draft a National Broadband Plan. An archive of that coverage can be found here. -- the editors

It has been widely reported that the U.S. has fallen from broadband leadership to fourth in 2002, to twelfth, or sixteenth or 24th today, depending on whose numbers are cited.

But if that's true, it was not obvious at the FCC's International Lessons workshop yesterday...

The enduring lesson from this morning's workshop on the Federal Communication Commission's National Broadband Plan? Americans need accessible, affordable broadband so that they can do things like participation in workshops where we create a national broadband plan.

We'll be covering many of the 22 upcoming FCC broadband workshops, with assists from a raft of regular contributors and guest bloggers. The sessions will run from today until September 9th, as the commission works to write a national broadband strategy that is due on the president's desk in February. Today's and future workshop are being streamed live online through WebEx's webinar software package available at Broadband.gov.

The unintended irony, of course, is that participating in policy-making around broadband is quite a bit easier if you've already got high-speed Internet...