WASHINGTON, March 15, 2010 – The Federal Communications Commission will present its congressionally mandated plan to bring high-speed Internet access throughout the United States to lawmakers tomorrow, outlining six long-term goals and detailing its views on better ways to encourage broadband competition, free up available spectrum and modernize health care, among other things.

Washington, February 26, 2010 – The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission this week previewed his agency’s spectrum recommendations in the FCC’s upcoming national broadband plan to be presented to Congress next month.
In Julius Genachowski’s statement titled “America’s 2020 Vision for Mobile Broadband,” he established that “no area of the broadband ecosystem holds more promise [...]

WASHINGTON, February 22, 2010 – A meeting of regulatory commissioners last weekend included much discussion of major telecommunications issues such as the state of the nation’s broadband.

TAMPA, Fla., February 1, 2010 – Broadband is as important today as television and radio were in the last century, a senior policy advisor for the Federal Communications Commission said at an association annual meeting this week.

WASHINGTON, January 29, 2010 – The Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance is urging the FCC to adopt its price-cap plan so that its members, which are largely mid-size local exchange firms, can get better support from the Universal Service Fund.

LAKE FOREST, Ill., January 11, 2010 – Last July when the Round 1 of Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program was announced, Don Samuelson suggested that public housing authorities across the country ought to be applying to BTOP for financial assistance to promote the use of the Internet by their senior residents:

“Every public housing authority in the United States should apply for stimulus funding from the National Telecommunications and Information Agency to set up a program to promote the benefits and use of the Internet for its senior housing residents. The goal should be to make the case for the practical benefits of broadband and the Internet sufficiently compelling so that seniors would want a computer and Internet connection in their individual units. The use of the Internet should be as valuable as a TV or a phone. This is a ‘value proposition’ that remains to be made. ”

It appears that no one followed the suggestion. There were no sustainable adoption proposals in the first round of BTOP for senior housing. We’ve since updated our analysis and refined our thinking.

WASHINGTON, December 23, 2009 – Proponents of Broadband over Power Lines got a boost last week as Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced the Rural Broadband Initiative of 2009, to amend the Rural Electrification Act to include programs meant to bring broadband to areas where BPL might be most effective.

WASHINGTON, December 18, 2009 – An association representing locally owned and controlled telecommunications cooperatives and commercial companies in rural America sent a letter Friday to members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce urging lawmakers to oppose a recent request by a number of tech companies to ban state regulation of internet protocol-based services.

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2009 – The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday laid out a rough draft of its national broadband plan after weighing through 66,000 pages of written comments, 27 public notices, 100 items posted on its “blogband” web site, and 700 blog comment posted to the record.

But the agency says it is still difficult to answer key questions that must be addressed within two months time, or by February 17, 2010.

WASHINGTON, December 11, 2009 – In order to provide universal broadband, national policymakers will need to better understand and motivate under-indexed minority groups. That was the message at the Internet Innovation Alliance’s ‘Universal Broadband: Access for All Americans’ conference on Thursday.

“It’s a question of knowledge and accessibility just as much as it is affordability,” said Cornell Belcher, pollster and President of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies.