Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 - The consulting firm Empiris LLC joined a host of cable and phone broadband network related entities on Tuesday when it slammed a recent study from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society on broadband policy.
In July the Federal Communications Commission commissioned the Berkman Center to review the existing literature and studies on broadband deployment and usage throughout the world to inform the FCC’s development of a National Broadband Plan. The FCC is sought
public comment on the study through November 16.
Empiris held a teleconference with bloggers Tuesday to discuss its problems with the report. Empiris argues that the study failed to provide an accurate summary of broadband policies in other countries and advances “conclusions that conflict with the evidence found in existing research.”
“The central question for developing broadband services and the infrastructure required to deliver them is how to provide the requisite incentives for carrier investment in such infrastructure,” noted Robert Crandall, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a senior expert for Empiris, in a statement. “The Berkman Study ignores this issue, focusing instead on a policy of intra-platform competition that has been thoroughly discredited in...
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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
Editor’s Note: The following is a BroadbandCensus.com summary and analysis of the recent report, “Next Generation Connectivity,” released by the Berkman Center, and commissioned by Federal Communications Commission.
WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 – The main purpose of the report by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission, was to examine global broadband policies and determine how the United States may adopt principles employed by the rest of the world as a means of expanding the current state of domestic broadband. Among nations, there seem to be two different overarching goals, ubiquity and capacity.
Many European nations seem to be reaching for a goal of ubiquity rather than capacity. While they do seek to obtain high-speed connections, their first goal has been to achieve mass adoption and availability of broadband. This ubiquity was a key portion of Japan’s early broadband planning, but now it has shifted toward higher-capacity connectivity.
The U.S., said the Berkman report, has never had a properly-organized and centralized plan to promote either ubiquity or capacity. However, with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and the Universal Service Fund, it seems like the choice is being made toward ubiquity.
Open access seems to be...
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