WASHINGTON, May 6, 2010 – FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick on Thursday outlined the legal framework behind the narrow and tailored approach to broadband communications services that agency Chairman Julius Genachowski introduced for public discussion. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, February 23, 2010 – Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday outlined goals for broadband supply and demand, and said that by 2020, 100 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband should be available to 100 million households. Speaking at the Brookings Institution at the unveiling of an FCC survey on broadband adoption and use in America, Genachowski also said that by 10 years from now, 90 percent of population should have adopted broadband, and that all high school graduates need to be digitally literate. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, February 18, 2010 – NBC-Universal Vice President Richard Cotton on Wednesday called upon internet service providers to be permitted to filter content over their pipes for copyright violations, and compared copyright filtering to filtering for computer viruses. Cotton’s statement was part of a briefing outlining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s top 2010 intellectual property priorities. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, February 18, 2010 – A coalition of public interest groups on Wednesday called on the Federal Communications Commission to include a set of ambitious benchmarks and policies in the agency’s upcoming national broadband plan. The agency will discuss aspects of the national broadband plan, now due on March 17, 2010, at the February monthly meeting being held on Wednesday. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, February 13, 2010 – The snowstorm that shut much of Washington down this past week will not change the due date for Round 2 broadband stimulus applications, nor will it delay the naming of Round 1 winners, federal officials said Friday. Speaking at a “Broadband Stimulus Town Hall Workshop Webcast,” National Telecommunications and Information Administration Senior Advisor Angela Simpson assured the panelists that the Commerce Department does not believe that the March 15 due date for Round 2 stimulus applications is in jeopardy. Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo said that the agency has dedicated $300 million in Round 1 awards, and is on target for its end-of-February deadline for making awards public. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, January 29, 2010 - In his keynote address to the Free State Foundation on Friday, Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell said that the agency’s number one goal in the national broadband plan should be to do no harm. He was concerned, he said, that the agency was considering classifying providers of broadband infrastructure as a common carrier under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. Re-regulating internet services in such a manner might lead to a parade of horribles, McDowell said – as well as vexing nuts-and-bolts questions since the deregulatory push of the past decade remade the structure of much of telecommunications law. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, October 14, 2009 – Net neutrality emerged as a major theme at the Future of Music Coalition conference last week at Georgetown University here, with speeches on the subject by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Senator Al Franken, D-Minn., who described the Internet as the modern town square. Keep Reading