FCC's National Broadband Map Powered by the OpenGeo Suite
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FCC's National Broadband Map Powered by the OpenGeo Suite

Five-year OpenGeo Enterprise contract supports US Federal Government's first fully open source web map.

New York, New York, March 28, 2011 — The Federal Communication Commission's recently released National Broadband Map allows the public to see where broadband coverage is available in the United States.  Users can explore and visualize a vast amount of data on high-speed internet availability, and developers can access a wide range of open data APIs to create their own applications.  The site is completely powered by open source software including PostGIS, GeoServer, OpenLayers, Wordpress, Linux and Apache.

The maps and geospatial APIs were built by Computech and backed by a five year Platform Level OpenGeo Suite Enterprise support contract.  In addition to user-facing maps, the FCC also built a number of open geospatial APIs that provide granular access to broadband and base layer data.  Chris Holmes, President of OpenGeo, commented, "The National Broadband Map is much more than an online map — it's a deep data analysis platform.  The FCC is leading the way by serving open geospatial APIs and data at a federal-level."

The National Broadband Map is fully based on open source software, and cuts costs, promotes sharing and collaboration, and hands developers they keys they need to build powerful products on top of government platforms.  The cost savings realized through the use of open source technologies enabled the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to complete the project under budget. The NTIA gave the remaining funds to states to expand their broadband capacity.

About OpenGeo

OpenGeo is a social enterprise working to build the best web-based geospatial technology. The company brings the best practices of open source software to geospatial organizations around the world by providing enterprises with supported, tested, and integrated open source solutions to build the Geospatial Web. OpenGeo also supports open source communities by employing key developers of  PostGISGeoServer, and  OpenLayers. Since 2002, the company has provided successful consulting services and products to clients like the World Bank, Google, the UK Ordnance Survey, Portland TriMet, MassGIS, Landgate, and the Federal Communications Commission. OpenGeo is the geospatial division of  OpenPlans, a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that informs and engages communities through journalism and open source software. All of OpenGeo's revenue has been and will continue to be re-invested into innovative and useful software in support of the OpenPlans mission.

Media Contact

Eddie Pickle
OpenGeo, a Division of OpenPlans
+1 917-388-9062
Email Contact



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