About: Mytheos Holt recently graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Government and History, receiving high honors in Government. He served as a weekly columnist at the Wesleyan Argus, Wesleyan University's campus-wide newspaper, and founded the Wesleyan Witness political commentary magazine. He is originally from Big Sur, Calif., and currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Email: holt@broadbandcensus.com
Website: http://BroadbandBreakfast.com
WASHINGTON, August 4, 2010 –Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) attributed the aftermath of the Big Branch Explosion in West Virginia to “a troubling lack of communications facilities in our rural communities.” The cause of this void, Rockefeller argued, was the Federal Communications Commission’s model for reaching universal service.
WASHINGTON, August 3, 2010 – Federal agencies have not provided top-level leadership for the United States on cybersecurity issues, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. Additionally, the United States possesses no “clear vision” of how cybersecurity impacts national goals. Rather, the nation has engaged in an ad hoc selection of cybersecurity measures.
WASHINGTON, July 28, 2010 – This Monday, the architects of Vermont’s experimental rural fiber network, the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, announced that financing for the project was “well under way.”
WASHINGTON July 28, 2010 –Speaking at a conference on cybersecurity hosted by the Department of Commerce yesterday, one expert argued that when it comes to cybersecurity threats, “we don’t need a new strategy.” The speaker, Philip Reitinger of the Department for Homeland Security, made the observation in the introduction to his remarks on how combating cybersecurity might be accomplished in the current climate.
WASHINGTON, July 22, 2010 –Sprint has announced that it has successfully completed a technological overhaul that frees up 35 MegaHerz of spectrum for general usage. The overhaul was undertaken pursuant to the Federal Government’s goal of freeing up additional spectrum, given the general scarcity of the resource, a fact which Sprint spokespeople acknowledged.
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2010 – According to a report released by the Global System for Mobile communications Association (GSMA), the key to spurring broadband adoption on in previously under-covered areas is targeted tax relief. According to the group’s summary of the study, “The study indicates how a reduction in special taxes applied to the telecommunications sectors in countries with different taxation approaches like Brazil, Mexico, Bangladesh and South Africa will translate into higher Mobile Broadband service adoption and more wealth creation reflected in additional GDP growth.”
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2010 – A panel of experts convened on Monday to discuss the issue of how to expand broadband at the State level, with a focus on communications challenges. The panel included representatives of North Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington, and disseminated its ideas via a webcast moderated by Greg Laudeman of the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute.
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2010 – According to a study of general Internet and phone use released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “African-Americans and Latinos continue to outpace whites in their use of data applications on handheld devices.” Among other things, the study found that whereas 80% of non-Hispanic Whites own a cell phone, 87% of both Blacks and Hispanics do. The gap in the statistics widen in areas of data usage, with nearly twice as many blacks using phones to receive instant messages as whites, and more than twice as many Hispanics as whites doing so.
WASHINGTON, July 9, 2010 – Four economists argued in a letter to the FCC sent Wednesday that the question before the agency was “not whether to impose network neutrality, but whether to eliminate it.”
WASHINGTON, July 8, 2010 – A Phoenix Center economist said Thursday that no one “would really believe that [the FCC chairman’s] administration would go down in history as light touch regulators,” and that the Federal Communications Commission already had reneged on that promise.