Penn State-led research team offers counsel for new administration

An ambitious research collaboration involving 16 scholars at 11 research universities across the United States, overseen by Penn State's Institute for Information Policy (IIP), has produced a telecommunications and media policy agenda for the new administration. Members of the group urge that immediate steps be taken by the new administration, including: 1) enacting a network neutrality policy; 2) capping universal service expenditures at sustainable levels while redesigning universal service policy so that it is broadband focused; and 3) conducting an inventory of federal spectrum to determine if it can be used more efficiently to promote social and economic benefits. The FACT Working Group recommendations are based on a consensus that all communications services will eventually be provided over broadband and that the national goal should be to make broadband ubiquitous, content-rich and nondiscriminatory. Broadband policy should become a core part of the national agenda for economic recovery, according to the group. Achieving that goal requires adopting a comprehensive, national information policy that is technology neutral, socially inclusive and strikes a balance between promoting public goods and consumer markets.