Genachowski: Broadband is the ‘Platform’ for All Forms of Communication

WASHINGTON, November 23, 2009 – In an interview for C-SPAN’s “The Communicators” series, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke of the national broadband plan that is currently being put together, as well as the short term progress that has happened in relation to broadband.

Genachowski spoke of what should be done in order to help preserve the Internet for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

The broadband “platform,” according to Genachowski, is a platform that everyone takes part in; from communicating with friends and family, to communicating for working purpose. Even now, engaging with the government and its services is done on this platform.

“This is our platform for innovation,” he says.

When the America Reinvestment and Recovery Act was enacted in beginning of 2009, Congress identified that broadband was important to the “strategic priority for America,” meaning the importance of supplying broadband to every citizen of America and to supply even more successful broadband to national services including education, public safety and health care.

Genachowski said that last week the agency unanimously voted to speed up the process of “tower siting for mobile devices. This is “something that can somewhat contribute to the near creation of jobs,” saying that the creation of jobs needs to occur sooner rather than later.

Genachowski spoke about other problems besides job creation during the interview.

The Universal Service Fund, for example, was first started to help promote telephone services to those not connected to telecommunications services. Saying that the USF needed to be more focused on broadband, Genachowski said, “we need to find a way to reform universal services [so] that it rings out efficiencies, saves money, and doesn’t implement a burden on the consumers.”

According to Genachowski, the next generation entrepreneurs are the ones who will be source of new content, and it will be through the deployment and adoption of broadband that the flow of content will increase.

He also promoted the need for network neutrality. “Broadband is the platform for the free flow of information, platform for economic growth and the platform of innovation,” he said. There needs to be a way “to preserve a free and open internet,” letting everyone have access to this information.

With the knowledge that this is “such an important time, in respect for communications,” the FCC is gathering information relating to all topics and fields and hope to create a plan that is best for consumers.

“What we want to do is to develop a living, breathing plan that makes progress and sets milestones that has mechanisms built in to continually improve the plan,” Genachowski said in the interview. “As the technology changes, we can learn what does and doesn’t work.”