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The money behind opposition in Congress to reclassification of Internet access as Title II service

Letters from House Democrats and Senate Repbublicans Against the FCC — Sponsored by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Astroturfers?

It’s open season on the FCC’s Broadband plans, from a new proposed bill by Rep. Stearns (FL), or former politicians tied to astroturf groups — Are the phone and cable companies pulling the strings?

To protect the Public Interest, shouldn’t these Senators and Congressmen recuse themselves from voting on issues that directly help their contributors — AT&T, Verizon and Comcast?

The Net Neutrality – Open Access Debate

Austin Schlick, General Counsel of the FCC, will join BroadbandUS TV hosts Jim Baller and Marty Stern to discuss the FCC’s case for reclassification of broadband Internet access as a regulated telecommunications service. Julius Knapp, Chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, who’s heading up the FCC Technical Advisory Panel on the open Internet, will also join Jim and K&L Gates partner Marc Martin to discuss technical issues surrounding the open Internet debate.

European Commission: A Digital Agenda For Europe

The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) aims to reboot Europe’s economy and help Europe’s citizens and businesses to get the most out of digital technologies. It is the first of seven flagships initiatives under Europe 2020, the EU’s strategy to deliver smart sustainable and inclusive growth.

FCC: The Broadband Availability Gap

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act directed the Federal Communications Commission to include, as part of the National Broadband Plan, “an analysis of the most effective and efficient mechanisms for ensuring broadband access by all people of the United States.” As the NBP indicated the level of additional funding to extend broadband to those who do not have access today is $23.5 billion; more detail about the gap and results of this analysis are presented in Chapter 2. This document details the underlying analyses, assumptions and calculations that support the $23.5 billion funding gap.

Breaking the Broadband Monopoly: How Communities are Building the Networks They Need

Across the country, hundreds of local governments, public power utilities, non-profits, and cooperatives have built successful and
sometimes pioneering telecommunication networks that put community needs first.These communities are following in the footsteps of the publicly owned power networks put in place a century before. We watch history repeating itself as these new networks are built for the same reasons: Incumbents refusing to provide service or charging high rates for poor service.

Links to Other Useful Sites

International Perspectives on the US National Broadband Plan

Video detailing the Broadband Breakfast Club. The site hosting the video describes the event as including “key industry officials and was moderated by Lynn Stanton, Senior Editor, TR Reports.” Any relation of this event to the acclaimed John Hughes coming of age film is tenuous at best.

Price of the Pipe

From the New America Foundation

The speed and price of a broadband connection are two important details about a broadband service that vary greatly between different countries. In comparing prices and speeds of broadband services around the globe, we find that the United States is among the most expensive and slowest of the countries surveyed in this report. Price is one of the main barriers to adoption, and prices for broadband in the U.S. are on the rise. Major steps need to be taken to bridge the speed and price disparities separating the U.S. from other industrialized countries.

Fiber-to-the-X: the economics of last-mile fiber

Lately the word “fiber” has started to become ubiquitous in advertisements for broadband. It’s a synonym for the future, for speed and quality. Everybody tries to connect that synonym to their brand, regardless of their actual network design. In the trade press, acronyms like FttX (which stands for Fiber-to-the-X, where X is your favorite letter or word) are used as if all last mile network architectures with optical fiber are more or less equal.

Retransmission Consent: Time For a Complete Overhaul?

Every season, viewers and sports fans seem to be held hostage to disputes between broadcasters and cable and DBS providers over the terms of carriage of broadcast stations and affiliated programming. Is the must carry/retransmission consent model that underlies these disputes in need of a complete overhaul? This is an especially important question now, because thousands of carriage agreements will be up for renewal this year. This program will examine the real issues underlying retransmission consent disputes and the economics and politics driving these issues.