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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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
News
By Andrew Feinberg, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, February 11, 2009 - The economic stimulus legislation entered conference negotiations Tuesday afternoon after the Senate voted 63-37 to approve its version of the massive bill.
But as lawmakers from both the House and Senate met to reconcile differences between the two chambers bills, the broadband stimulus provisions were the subject of fierce criticism by a panel of economists at the American Enterprise Institute.
The broadband package that comes out of conference will probably undergo "lots of changes" before it reaches the President's desk, said the Brookings Institution’s Robert Crandall. And the provisions may not even be necessary, he said. Crandall cited a Pew study showing that while 55 percent of Americans have broadband service, the other 45 percent chooses not to subscribe to such services.
The technology that would be deployed by the stimulus funds, a combination of tax credits and grants, might be obsolete in a rapidly changing environment, Crandall said. In particular, Crandall was skeptical of the program's goal of expanding access to rural areas – a practice he compared to the longstanding policy of subsidizing rural telephone service.
There is "almost no economic analysis" on whether such universal service programs work, he said, citing a...
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Monday, November 3rd, 2008
Broadband Census District of Columbia
By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 3 - Despite protests outside, a hearing inside the John A. Wilson building, the seat of the District of Columbia government, showed positive signs that a franchise for Verizon Communication's fiber-optic service is imminent in the nation’s capital.
The D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs heard testimony from over fifty individuals on Friday, most of them urging the District government to approve a franchise for Verizon Communications to bring its fiber internet and cable TV technology to the capital.
The focus of the committee hearing was on the terms and conditions negotiated between the telecommunications firm and the District’s Office of Cable Television (OCT) and the committee seemed poised to approve them and send a bill to the full council for passage.
Among Verizon’s biggest cheerleaders within the hearing room was Committee Chairwoman Mary Cheh, D – Ward 3, who repeatedly stated her interest in welcoming a FiOS build-out in order to introduce more competition to the market and facilitate access for District resident’s to the state of the art fiber optic technology.
Verizon’s hand was further strengthened last week when it announced on the eve of the...
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