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 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 7, 2009 – Broadband should be the central focus of the next generation of the Universal Service Fund, OPASTCO said Monday in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission. TheOrganization for the Promotion and Aid of Small Telecommunications Companies’ comments highlight a plan to push affordable broadband to the rural areas those carriers serve.
October 31, 2009 – Finland made headlines earlier this month in declaring that broadband had become a legal right. While this startled some people, the Finns were not the first people to declare this – the Swiss were. Further, in 2003, at the World Summit on the Information Society, a declaration of principles was drafted and signed by a number of nations around the world, including the United States.
The universal service fund has been growing at an alarming rate over the past few years, and in order to curb its growth the Federal Communications Commission choose to cap the amount of support a competitive eligible telecommunications company could receive in 2008. The Rural Cellular Association filed a petition in the D.C. Circuit court of appeals to remove this cap. The court seemed to support the position of the FCC in capping the fund, according to a Monday research report by Stifel Nicholas.
As the new Federal Communications Commission takes up the task of changing the Universal Service Fund, the task will be all the more complex because of the intrusion of broadband policy objectives and proposed changes to the contribution methodology, panelists said Wednesday.
ARLINGTON, Va., June 18, 2009 — Properly measuring rural broadband access and availability with a broader set of definitions was necessary to reform the Universal Service Fund, a group of rural and tribal telecom executives said Thursday at the Pike and Fischer Broadband Policy Summit.
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2009 – The proposed increase in the consumer contributions to the the Universal Service Fund came under fire Tuesday from the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates.