Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Christina Kirchner, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 5, 2009 - Panelists at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on Friday agreed that price and digital literacy have created a barrier to broadband demand that can affect more than just broadband adoption.
The event was based off of a report written by Robert Atkinson, president of ITIF, “Policies to Increase Broadband Adoption at Home.” The report said that of the 92 to 94 percent of Americans have the opportunity to subscribe to broadband, only 65 percent have chosen to do so. The broadband penetration number comes from the widely-regarded random-digit-dial surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
James Prieger, associate professor of public policy at Pepperdine University’s school of public policy, cited another barrier to adoption: the price of broadband service is just too high.
Creating subsidization programs for broadband, or lowering taxes that pertain to broadbandmight be additional possibilities, he said. Prieger said that Canada had used tax credits to subsidize broadband, which could be a possibility for the United States, too.
But Prieger cautioned, “Just because you have a plan, doesn’t mean that it is going to work.”
According to panelists, another problem for broadband adoption is that consumers may not recognize that...
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Monday, October 26th, 2009
By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, October 26, 2009 - Absent from the notice of proposed rulemaking released by the Federal Communications Commission Thursday is the charged term of “network neutrality” that has been discussed over the years. Instead, the paper is focused on the need to preserve an “open internet” through government intervention.
The problem is that neither the principle of network neutrality – which deals with how broadband providers may charge differential rates for preferred business customers – or the need to preserve an “open internet” are precise words. Defining either for the purpose of government rules is not an easy task.
The focus on “open internet” versus “network neutrality” in the FCC’s proposed rules and the statement released by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski makes sense given that it is easier to find supporters of the former than the latter. Still, President Obama
used the term “network neutrality” during his campaign.
Regardless of the language used, the discussion of whether the government should become more involved to support network neutrality principles has gone on for years.
“Three years ago we were having a very different discussion; we didn’t have the kinds of applications on the Internet that we have today,” said Rob...
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
By Christina Kirchner, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, October 20, 2009 – The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation released their newest book, “Wired for Innovation: How information technology is reshaping the economy,” by Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Sanders. With innovation a key ingredient in the information technology revolution, the book explores topics such as, what are the business practices that enhance productivity and organizational capital?
Of the practices that businesses could adopt, according to Brynjolfsson, having any form of technology that creates intangible benefits would be the best investment that a company could make in this day of age.
One example Brynjolfsson provides regards what Michael Dell, owner of Dell Computers, did with a Dell factory. Brynjolfsson visited this factory and looked around the floor. He noticed that around 40 percent of the floor was not in use.
Thinking that it was because Dell couldn’t afford using that space, Brynjolfsson mentioned his observation to Michael Dell. He discovered the open space wasn’t due to lack of affordability, but rather because they were using a new form of technology that was cutting their space requirements. They didn’t need the space. Dell contacted Brynjolfsson six months later and said that they had doubled production since the last time...
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Monday, October 19th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based group calling itself a "non-partisan public policy think tank committed to articulating and advancing a pro-productivity, pro-innovation and pro-technology public policy agenda," has released a "WebMemo" asking "Are We Ready to Act on New Neutrality?: 10 Key Question that Need Answers."
The ITIF's memo notes that the FCC is preparing to vote this week on undertaking net neutrality rule making and that regardless of how the votes goes, the right decisions will depend on careful analysis of the implications of such rule making. The ITIF proposes 10 critical questions that require answers before any rule making begins.
A sampling of those questions includes:
- Does any favoring of some packets over others by ISPs without individual consumer choice represent a per se violation, or is there some discrimination (blocking, degrading, charging for usage and network management) that is pro-competitive and pro-consumer.
- Is differential pricing by ISPs of different users and/or different content and applications inherently bad, or can differential pricing be pro-consumer and pro-competition, and if so, what are the situations in which it is and is not?
- Does quick discovery of potential ISP transgressions lead to correction in the marketplace...
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
By Mercy Gakii, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, October 6, 2009 – The United States is lagging in technology innovation, thanks to a federal policy that has not kept up to pace with the speed of innovation changes, panelists said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event on Tuesday.
Unlike in the days when federal funding was used to fund research projects, innovation changed over the past 30 years. According to Howard Wial of Brookings Institution, large firms which were making initially investing in research have been doing less risky business investments, leaving innovation less funded.
“The service industry, which includes technology, is now more important to our lives than it years back, but the government has not changed in how they view this industry,” Wial said.
There needs to be a national innovation foundation which can advocate for funding which will be used for directing innovation ventures, he said. Such a foundation would also give grants to research, funding for economic based developments and support technology diffusion. It would also fund actors in technology-based institutions in order to provide trainings for the public.
“We also need an early warning system that understands connections in industries, assess the impact of technology on production. Innovation needs a...
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The United States is losing ground in innovation sweepstakes to Japan, Denmark and other nations, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. This is mainly because these and other nations have designed and funded federal policies to spur innovation, while America has not, says the think thank.
At an event scheduled for October 6, Kevin Huffman, executive vice president of Teach for America, will be presenting his article "Education: Bringing Innovation to Scale," and Howard Wial of the Brookings Institution will be presenting his article "Strategy: A National Innovation Foundation,” in a symposium titled “Race to Innovate.”
The Fall 2009 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas features a symposium on “The Race to Innovate,” and examines policies in areas including finance, manufacturing, education, and creating new institutions. Among the other speakers include Andrei Cherny, founder of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Stephen Ezell, senior analyst at...
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The Federal Communication Commission's proposed net neutrality rules could hamper innovation on the Web, said David Farber, as guest on a panel held Friday at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Farber is a professor of computer science and policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a former chief technology officer for the FCC.
Farber said that Internet networks have always prioritized certain traffic and that the new rules proposed by the Commission to try to stop discrimination on cable, DSL and wireless networks could constrain operators and tech companies from properly managing their networks. “There are too many lawyers talking about net neutrality and not enough engineers,” he said.
Other computer experts on the panel also warned against the potential constraints that net neutrality rules would have on network engineering, emphasizing the need for an environment where innovation is possible. "The marketplace determines what is acceptable or not, and so far that has gotten us a long way,” asserted Farber.
Such concerns are expected to be part of the FCC's review of network management practices, Colin Crowell, a senior adviser at the FCC, has said. When FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski introduces the new proposal on Oct. 22, a process...
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Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Editor’s Note: This is the one of a series of panelist summary articles that BroadbandCensus.com will be reporting from the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 25-27, at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.
By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, Broadband-Census.com
ARLINGTON, Va., September 25, 2009 - In a panel about the socio-economic impacts of broadband, panelists all agreed that the overwhelming limiting factor in proving the benefits to broadband was the lack of solid broadband data.
James McConnaughey, chief economist at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said that “Having good data leads to good policy making,” but currently that policy-makers currently lack the necessary data to allow for effective cost-benefit analysis or even general societal implication analysis.
McConnaughey also said that broadband data collected must come from reliable and neutral sources. The Census Bureau has recently reinvigorated its efforts in this field, but it cannot be the only source.
Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, called for a National Broadband Data Warehouse.” Such a warehouse would house all the data on availability and usage which was collected by the government, and any organization which is getting federal funding to aid in broadband expansion or mapping. The data warehouse was...
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