Monday, July 27th, 2009
By Tina Nguyen, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 27, 2009 — The Obama administration’s broadband stimulus program “has not been marketed well,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said at the kick-off to a Monday morning event at which top federal and state officials were speaking on it.
Striking a politically moderate note at a time when national Republicans – and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell – have criticized the fiscal stimulus as wasteful, Warner said that “only Democrats” would characterize a program with “$300 billion in tax cuts as a spending program.”
He was speaking at the Virginia Summit on Broadband Access at the Piedmont Virginia Community College here.
In addition to one-third for tax cuts, another third of the stimulus funding is for state programs, and the final third is for new federal programs, such as the broadband stimulus program addressed by Monday’s summit.
In his remarks, Warner touted Virginia’s preparation for the stimulus funding, through public-private partnerships and fiber builds in rural regions of Virginia, and through its advanced work in broadband mapping.
“We’re certainly further along than other states,” Warner said in an interview with BroadbandCensus.com. Broadband mapping “gives communities a guide to know where there is or is not service available. It’s helpful,...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
News
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 28 – By combining better public information, market mechanisms and smarter systems of subsidization, the government can play a positive role in funding infrastructure investments in telecommunications, according to three reports released Friday by the Brookings Institution.
The papers, released on Friday at an event that also featured an address by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, are part of a Brookings Institution initiative promoting investments in infrastructure – both physical, transportation investments, as well as new ways to spur improvements in the telecommunications infrastructure.
“No economy improves with a declining infrastructure,” said Kaine, a Democrat. “Unless you make that high-tech investment easy by telecom access, you won't get” improvements in your state's economic condition, he said.
Brookings, a liberal-leaning think tank, released the reports as part of an initiative dubbed the “Hamilton Project.” The project seeks to put forward policy ideas that “embrac[e] a role for effective government in making needed public investments,” according to the think tank.
Friday's event featured the release of six reports: three on transportation, two on telecommunications, and an overview report with recommendations on both subjects.
“The rapid page of technological progress in telecommunications and the widespread dispersion of new products and services... may present...
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Transcript
Editor's Note: The following is my own audio transcript of the question I asked Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, at the Brookings Institution event on Friday.
-Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
Question:
My name is Drew Clark, and I've just started a Web service called BroadbandCensus.com, and we are about providing the public with free information about availability and also competition, speeds and prices of broadband.
With regard to broadband availability, and mapping broadband, you mentioned of course Virginia's interest in this, as many states have, and there seems to be different approaches emerging to this.
One approach is collecting information, but keeping it confidential, and not allowing information about who the carriers are that are providing broadband. The other approach, which actually Virginia Tech's eCorridors Program has pioneered, involves identifying the carriers so that consumers can know who is offering broadband, and who isn't offering broadband, and also see the prices and fees associated with those carriers.
I wanted to ask you whether Virginia has made a decision on which approach it wants to take as it pursues broadband mapping, and why would you, if you do, choose the confidential approach.
Gov. Kaine:
It is a work in progress. I am fortunate in that the chairman of my broadband...
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