Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2009 – Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachwoski announced on Wednesday new senior staff appointments FCC's Office of Communications Business Opportunities and Office of General Counsel as well as Media, Enforcement, and Wireline Competition Bureaus.
The OCBO Director will be Thomas Reed, Of Counsel at K&L Gates LLP. Mr Reed's practice has specialized in regulatory issues affecting women and minority-owned businesses, and was also Legal Counsel to the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.
A second K&L Gates attorney, Carolyn Williams, will join Reed as Senior Deputy Directory of OCBO.
Leadership Council on Civil Rights vice president Mark Lloyd will join the commission as Chief Diversity Officer, and also will hold the title of Associate General Counsel.
William Lake, most recently in the spotlight as head of the FCC's DTV Task Force, will be Chief at the Media Bureau, assisted by Deputy Chiefs Robert Ratcliffe and Kris Monteith. Ratcliffe was previously Deputy Chief at the Enforcement Bureau, where he was head of media enforcement. Monteith previously served as Chief of the Enforcement Bureau and Deputy Bureau Chief for Outreach and Intergovernmental Affairs in the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.
Read More »
Sunday, July 19th, 2009
By Drew Clark, Editor and Executive Director, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 19, 2009 - Over at
O'Reilly's Radar, Carl Malamud discusses the need for a crowdsourced national communiations census, or a broadband census.
He writes:
My last tour of duty in DC was Chief Technology Officer at the Center for American Progress. One of the fun things I got to do was figure out what everybody else did, including my fellow Senior Fellows, the folks that generated most of the policy work, many of whom are now occupying senior posts in the new administration.
One of the most fascinating was Mark Lloyd. An experienced Emmy-winning television producer, communications lawyer, and community activist, Mark is the author of a well-regarded book aboutcommunications and democracy and numerous columns. He's currently at the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights.
The project Mark Lloyd was working on was a National Broadband Map to show our true communications capabilities. And, he wanted to crowd-source the map from community groups, supplementing that with census and other data from several different places to create a big mash-up. This was in 2005, around the same time Adrian Holovaty was thinking about chicagocrime.org.
Here's my reply on the O'Reilly...
Read More »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
By Tina Nguyen, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
ARLINGTON, Va., June 19, 2009 - Representatives of network operators, internet companies and consumer advocates said they are prepared for a network neutrality policy to emerge from the Obama administration, but during a panel at Pike and Fischer's Broadband Policy Summit they remained very much divided over the best approach to solving problems of network management while protecting consumers.
Convergence of content providers and network owners into "one overall internet ecosystem” raises questions that weren't present at the outset of previous network neutrality debates, said Phoenix Center President Lawrence Spiwak. While such arguments were once limited to whether backbone providers could charge popular website operators like Google or Amazon for preferential treatment, the debate has broadened to include network management, mobile handset exclusivity and mobile open access as "part of the net neutrality pie,” he said. But Spiwak cautioned that any policy should be designed with the primary goal of preventing anticompetitive behavior, regardless of scope.
AT&T Senior Vice President James Cicconi said the most pressing issue surrounding network neutrality is how business models can adapt to deal with spikes in internet use. Cicconi cited a Cisco study which predicts overall online traffic will grow from 9 to...
Read More »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
News
By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, March 26, 2009 - The transition to digital television since the passage of the DTV Delay Act has been a “major accomplishment,” Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said Thursday at a hearing on the state of the DTV transition.
Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Technology, Communications and the Internet, said that while he was pleased at seeing “clear results” and positive progress, “much remains to be done,” Boucher said.
Ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fal., agreed that "the glass is 95 percent full," on the country's readiness. But he lamented the amount of money set aside for coupons, and suggested significant savings could be had by confining the program to households without cable or satellite television.
“Shepherding the transition” has been “priority number 1” since taking over the FCC, Acting Chairman Michael Copps said.
Even before his elevation from the position of commissioner, Copps said he believed “it was clear the country was not ready…for the February 17 cutoff.” Besides “rampant consumer confusion,” Copps said a major problem had been a lack of coordination between public and private stakeholders .
Copps thanked Congress for the Delay Act, but was careful to warn members that “we are...
Read More »
Friday, March 20th, 2009
News | NTIA-RUS Forum | Day 4, Session 1
By Jesse Masai, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, March 20, 2009 – Experts and citizens split words at the NTIA/RUS Thursday morning public roundtable seeking to define broadband – an essential element to determine what projects receive federal funding under stimulus spending.
Thursday was the fourth of six days of public hearings by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service on how to spend $7.2 billion in broadband funds.
The discussion will continue in Washington on Monday and Tuesday.
Mark Lloyd, vice president of strategic initiatives at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said the definition of broadband should be centered around speeds and how broadband can serve as a means of communication. He said the debate has its source in the legal frameworks adopted by Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
"New definitions must focus on hard speeds,” said Lloyd. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We cannot manage what we cannot measure.”
Stagg Newman, principal of Piggah Communication Consulting, said definitions should center around understanding what the service is, acceptable network infrastructure, and a series of metrics by which to measure...
Read More »