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By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

November 11 – State telecommunications officials concerned about the universal deployment and use of high-speed internet services joined together at a San Jose conference on Thursday to compare notes, plot strategy and encourage programs and activities that will lead to better broadband nationwide. The states represented at the conference, the broadband summit of the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, were from Alaska, California, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee. The FCC-NARUC joint summit meeting was the first in three years – or the first since the last sputtering of the legal battles precipitated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Those fights concerned whether state regulators should have a say in setting competition rules for telephone services. By the end of 2004, federal courts had sided with Bell companies in urging federal regulation of telecommunications, cutting state regulators out of interstate communications. Internet services have generally also fallen in that category, often hamstringing the efforts of state regulators to act on broadband access within their states. This focus on federal telecommunications policy is one reason why it is the notion of a national broadband strategy that has been the talk of Washington policy circles in the...

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News

Editor’s Note: The following story was published in TR Daily on September 26, 2008, and is reprinted with the permission of Telecommunications Reports International, Inc. Notwithstanding the fact that content on the BroadbandCensus.com web site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, this article is and remains Copyright 2008 Telecommunications Reports International, Inc.

By Carrie DeLeon, Telecommunications Reports

A national broadband infrastructure fund should include the involvement of state regulators and focus not only on the extension of broadband service into unserved areas, but also on the adoption rate of broadband service by consumers, according to California Public Utilities Commissioner Rachelle Chong. During a keynote address this morning at the Broadband Census for America Conference in Washington, Commissioner Chong advocated for the implementation of a national broadband infrastructure fund, and suggested that the Universal Service Fund be reformed to shift the focus from traditional wireline to advanced services. “More assertive national leadership on broadband policy is not only necessary, but critical,” Commissioner Chong said. In addition, the former FCC regulator said that while some states, including California, have been successful in their efforts to map broadband data, a national mapping of broadband data could be helpful to states by enabling them to compare their...

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News

By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 7 – Congress last week passed legislation, the “Broadband Data Improvement Act,” that seeks better information about high-speed internet connections through enhanced data collection by five separate government agencies. But as passed by the Senate and the House, S. 1492 deleted all authorization of funds – an amount that had totaled $40 million for each of fiscal years 2008 through 2012 in the Senate Commerce Committee version of the legislation. Although S. 1492 was agreed to by the House, the bill undercut many of the key features of a companion House bill, the “Broadband Census of America Act,” H.R. 3919. H.R. 3919 passed the House in November 2007. It would have forced the disclosure of company-by-company broadband data. It also would have created a national broadband map under the aegis of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, with details on broadband coverage by every broadband provider at the nine-digit ZIP code level. Both features are absent in the final bill. The Senate finally passed S. 1492 on Friday, September 26 – the same day that many state officials and academics gathered in Washington at the “Broadband Census for America Conference” sponsored by BroadbandCensus.com, Carnegie Mellon...

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Key Academics, State Officials and Broadband Data Collectors to Speak

Embassy of Ireland to Give Luncheon Keynote Address on Publicly-Available Broadband Data

Coverage of the Broadband Census for America Conference

• Broadband Census for America Conference Web Site
• Tvol's Flickr photostream of the Broadband Census for America Conference
• "Propriety Data Cited as Challenge for Broadband Mapping," by Lynn Stanton, TR Reports
• "Regulators, Officials Debate Need for National Broadband Policy, Fund," by Carrie DeLeon, TR Reports
• "Service Providers Should Report Better Metrics, Panelists Say," by Scott Sleek, Broadband Advisory Services, Pike & Fischer
• "U.S. Copes with Broadband Statistics Void," IP Democracy
• "Guessing at data," Susan Crawford's blog
• "Experts call for broadband transparency,"by Maya Prabhu, ESchool News
• American Library Association District Dispatch

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON, September 8, 2008 – Many of the nation’s foremost broadband policy-makers and experts will analyze and discuss best practices for improving the collection and sharing of public data about high-speed internet access at the Broadband Census for America Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 26, 2008. Panelists at the half-day conference include Rachelle Chong, California Public Utility Commissioner; broadband data pioneer Professor Kenneth Flamm...

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