Hey, Telecoms? You are Cordially Invited to Blow Me.
Good news on the Net Neutrality front!
The Obama-Biden transition team on Friday named two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up its Federal Communications Commission Review team.
Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team’s review of the FCC.
Both are highly-regarded outside-the-Beltway experts in telecom policy, and they’ve both been pretty harsh critics of the Bush administration’s telecom policies in the past year.
How could you not be?
The choice of the duo strongly signals an entirely different approach to the incumbent-friendly telecom policymaking that’s characterized most of the past eight-years at the FCC.
This March at a telecom policy conference in Hollywood, for example, Crawford bluntly told Ambassador Richard Russell, the White House’ associate director on science and technology policy, that he lived in a fantasyland when he asserted that the United States’ roll-out of broadband is going well.
“I think it’s magical thinking to imagine that we’re somehow doing fine here, and I just want to make sure that we recognize that even the [International Telecommunications Union] says that between 1999 and 2006 we skipped form third to 20th place in penetration,” she noted acidly at the annual Tech Policy Summit, a gathering of top officials in the world of tech policy (of which Wired.com was a participant and sponsor.)
“We’re not doing at all well for reasons that mostly have to do with the fact that we failed to have a US industrial policy pushing forward high-speed internet access penetration, and there’s been completely inadequate competition in this country for high speed internet access,” she said.
Oooh, baby. Talk to me more about broadband penetration. Mmmmmmm, you’re making me feel all funny in the pants…
And in a final introductory statement during her talk (that’s likely to send shivers down the spines of telecom company executives) she said that she believes internet access is a “utility.”
“This is like water, electricity, sewage systems: Something that each and all Americans need to succeed in the modern era. We’re doing very badly, and we’re in a dismal state,” she said at the time.
The fact is that with regards to broadband and wireless, the United States has yet to catch up to where Japan was when I was there in 2001. And we have the corporate telecoms and their lobbyists to thank for that.
Damn. It hasn’t even been two weeks since the election and all this progress is making me dizzy.
11 Responses to “Hey, Telecoms? You are Cordially Invited to Blow Me.”
By Sharonlee on Nov 15, 2008 7:14 pm |
How refreshing to have competent, informed people approaching an issue.
And the video is great, TRex.
By Valley Girl on Nov 15, 2008 7:15 pm |
Thanks for this good news update, TRex.
I don’t know how this fits into the picture, but I happened to catch a Clark Howard show while driving around, talking about how as the access speed gets faster, the less people will have to rely on cable- and he noted the really high speed access in Korea, home of hulu.com
I don’t know what the prices are like in your area for cable TV, but in the Atlanta area I’d say way more expensive than merited by the service.
So, I’m thinking that the cable companies, to the extent that are different from the telecom companies, aren’t gonna be happy either. hahaha.
By Sharonlee on Nov 15, 2008 7:21 pm |
Basic cable in my area (and they keep switching popular channels to higher digital strata) plus internet access is around $77 per month.
And DSL lines are non-existent in my immediate community as the housing apparently is not dense enough and perhaps the income is lower.
I have the choice of dish or Time Warner. Homes association rules discourage dish and trees would interfere anyway.
By Saphira on Nov 16, 2008 12:28 am |
I live in central New Jersey, and basic cable plus internet is now just over $100. The cost is ridiculous for both, and now that most TV is available to stream online, I’m very seriously considering killing my cable TV, or at least scaling it back to the bare minimum so I can still keep the $10 discount off internet for having both.
Comcast is a massive rip-off artist.
By Brendan on Nov 16, 2008 3:47 am |
Great news! Thanks for passing it along, TRex.
Hope and change: no longer empty buzzwords.
By jo6pac on Nov 16, 2008 10:00 pm |
Thanks for the info and It’s good news so far but I want all of us to get the rights back that were stolen. This helps. Thanks T.
jo6pac
By MNPundit on Nov 17, 2008 5:15 am |
I would like to point out that we have a far bigger (both population and geography) and far more disparate population. Some people live in near developing world conditions and some don’t than countries where high-speed broadband is deeply penetrated.
There was also a survey on ARS Technica about the broadband penetration early, I can’t remember the details but I believe a major factor was that people felt their dial-up was fast enough, so we have potentially a lot of computer illiterate people around.
By Нимэль on Nov 17, 2008 9:07 am |
Огромное спасибо
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