Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 17, 2011 at 12:30 pm
By Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T Vice President of Public Policy
Last week, the FCC officially launched the secret weapon in getting us to 100% broadband, its Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation (ICC) reform effort.
Coincidently, this week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released (on time and on budget) its National Broadband Map. The map shows us the geographic areas where wireline and wireless broadband services are available, at the census block level, zooming in to get a fairly detailed look at where broadband exists and where it doesn’t. Additionally, the NTIA map will be searchable by address and show the broadband providers offering service in the corresponding Census Block.
The bottom line is that NTIA is producing the most detailed map of broadband coverage the country has ever had.
Harold Feld over at Public Knowledge has summarized the who, what, when, where and how of the National Broadband Map, so I won’t cover the details of how we got here. Harold also offers some opinions and predictions about how the map will be criticized in some quarters, but ultimately he concludes that the map will be useful.
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Posted by: Bob Quinn on February 16, 2011 at 7:43 am
I was watching Almost Famous last week with my fifteen-year-old son, Matt. In one of the scenes, William Mitchell (the Cameron Crowe character) is furiously typing up his story for Rolling Stone magazine on an electric typewriter in his bedroom. Matt watched for a moment, turned to me and said, “What is THAT.” I laughed and explained to him the amusing story of life before personal computers.
It reminded me about all of the changes that technology has wrought and how my perspective of technology is different than my parents but also different than my kids’ perspectives. It is unfortunate that the same cannot be said for our regulatory system in the United States.
Where each successive generation of technology yields to its replacement, some approaches to regulation fail to yield to new realities and attempt to stop the clock sometime back in 1984, refusing to acknowledge that anything has changed since the breakup of the Bell System. This dichotomy was really brought home to me over the last couple of weeks.
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Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 10, 2011 at 4:13 pm
Congressman Peter T. King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Ranking Member Bennie G. Thompson have introduced legislation (H.R. 607) to make more spectrum available to public safety for a nationwide wireless broadband network. The following statement may be attributed to AT&T Executive Vice President of Federal Relations Tim McKone:
“Chairman King’s and Ranking Member Thompson’s strong commitment to and deep understanding of the public safety community are reflected in the Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011, which they introduced today. We commend their bipartisan leadership in putting forth legislation that clearly outlines how public safety will be able to build and maintain a nationwide interoperable network. Reallocating the D-block spectrum to public safety is the only option that will ensure that both first responders and consumers have state-of-the-art wireless broadband communications during times of need.”
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