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By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2009 – The coordinator of the national broadband plan at the Federal Communications Commission, Blair Levin said Monday he is less optimistic about the broadband efforts than he was when he accepted the job. The Minority Media and Telecom Council today brought together both public and private broadband representatives, where Levin stated that after reading more than 8,000 pages of comments in the FCC’s broadband proceeding that the agency received from the public, he is “much less optimistic as when Chairman Copps asked me to come in.” Levin wasn’t quite jovial in his statements, either. He said that the comments – bar a few – have primarily criticized FCC policy and history, or asked for money. But few have offered a real plan to achieve ubiquitous broadband coverage. There is “very little in the 8,000-something pages that moves the ball forward…. The insight has to be tied to an exact government action,” he said. Levin himself said, “I don’t really know anything” when it comes to the current state of broadband in the United States, or what it may look like in the future. Levin pointed out the need for granular, sophisticated data in order to make educated...

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News

By Andrew Feinberg, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, February 7, 2009 – Funding for broadband deployment makes up approximately one percent of President Obama's approximately $820 billion economic stimulus package. But a hearty debate has unfolded over how, where, and to whom those funds should be distributed. After a late-Friday deal that keeps the momentum going on negotiations in the Senate, a vote to cut off debate on the broader package was expected on Monday, to be followed by a final Senate vote on Tuesday. As regards the Senate’s $9 billion proposed for broadband – a sum that CNN and The New York Times reported had been cut to $7 billion – the heart of the debate was over who would receive the billions of dollars in funding for broadband deployment. The House-passed bill split its $6 billion for broadband between $2.825 billion in grants to be made from the Commerce Department and $2.825 billion in loans to be made by the Agriculture Department. An additional $350 million would go to administering the new grants at Commerce. By contrast, the Senate bill would put the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration in charge of channeling almost all of the $9 billion in...

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