The National Broadband Plan Needs To Be Visionary …
- like landing a man on the moon or creating an extremely functional highway system.
So what’s your idea on how to expand high-speed Internet access (broadband), across the United States? Here’s your chance to finally have a voice in affecting dramatic change coming for future United States Internet policy & usage.
[tip]The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was signed into law on February 17, 2009. The Broadband Initiatives funded in the Act are intended to accelerate broadband deployment across the United States. The Recovery Act authorizes the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to create the National Broadband Plan, that “shall seek to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal.”[/tip]
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, unlike the crafty ‘misinformation‘ offered by the large telecoms. Key constituents will include service providers, equipment providers, applications providers, community groups, and other groups that have a stake in the future of broadband.
A dog and pony show…
Telecom lobbyists are projecting an artificially inflated view of broadband competition, while lobbying lawmakers at the behest of major carriers. The Wall Street Journal raised many ethical questions in June 2008 about Connected Nation. Created solely to bamboozle the consumer public as another artificial consumer advocacy group to argue against your best interest as a consumer.
Connected Nation’s board of directors reads like a who’s who of lobbying for the nation’s largest carriers. The group, which could potentially gobble up the lion’s share of the $300 million in taxpayer money being assigned to broadband mapping, conveniently puts more transparent and less incumbent-tied mapping operations out of business in each state they function.
[note]
U.S. Broadband Growth Slowest in Eight Years
According to a new report by broadband, media and entertainment analyst firm Leichtman Research Group (LRG), the U.S. added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009 -the worst quarterly performance in the eight years that LRG has been tracking this statistic.[/note]
FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps stressed that there needs to be “maximum civic engagement.”
“We need people talking to us, we need us talking to people and we need people talking to people so that as a nation we can all buy in to an aggressive broadband plan based on a shared understanding of our critical BB is to our individual and [collective] futures,” Copps said.
Under the terms of the recent 2009 economic stimulus package, the Federal Communications Commission FCC must provide to Congress a comprehensive National Broadband Plan by February 17th 2010.
No related articles.
