A Car In Every Garage, Fast Internet On Every PC

A CAR IN EVERY GARAGE, FAST INTERNET ON EVERY PC
[SOURCE: WebProNews, AUTHOR: Jason Lee Miller]
At a hearing of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) called on the Bush administration to make a commitment to making high-speed Internet access more widely available to small businesses and all Americans. This involves, he said, changes in regulations to ensure universal broadband access and adequate competition in the marketplace. "To compete and win in the new global economy, we need a national broadband strategy that encourages competition and expands access," said Sen Kerry. "Previous generations put a toaster in every home and a car in every driveway as signs of economic progress-it's time we do the same with high speed Internet access." At the same hearing, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein echoed Sen. Kerry's call for opening up broadband competition. "Only rational competition policies can ensure that the U.S. broadband market does not devolve into a stagnant duopoly, which is a serious concern given that cable and DSL providers now control approximately 96 percent of the residential broadband market." FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was critical of the FCC still calling 200 kilobits per second 'broadband' and assuming that if one person in a ZIP code has broadband access, everyone else does as well. "This is 2007, not 1997. We need a more credible definition of speed and more granular measures of deployment, as well as to start gathering data on price and the experience of other nations," Commissioner Copps said.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/09/26/a-car-in-every-garage-fast-...

* Commissioner Copps before Senate Committee on Small Business
America's lack of a broadband strategy is imposing huge costs on small businesses all across the land. Our lackluster broadband performance is a huge barrier to, and tax upon, innovation and entrepreneurship. Businesses everywhere are increasingly reliant on broadband Internet access; it has become as essential as electricity, running water or phone service. Yet many small businesses in rural America cannot get an Internet connection at all. Even where they can, they typically pay too much for service that is too slow. The story isn't all that much better in the nation's metropolitan areas. Prices are high for service that is, by international standards, uncompetitive. The Internet should be the great equalizer-leveling the playing field between urban and rural; large and small; domestic and global businesses. The broadband system we have today makes a mockery of this great promise and instead creates competitive disparities. Part of our problem is reliance upon duopoly and oligopoly where we should be enjoying vigorous carrier and network competition. How do we turn things around? Let's start with a comprehensive national strategy. We need a strong statement, combined with serious commitment from the very top-not just a campaign promise-that broadband is a national priority. We need to make sure all the departments of government are cooperating to encourage broadband deployment, using financial tools such as matching grants and tax incentives. Second we need to start cataloging and benefiting from all the innovation and experimentation that's occurring outside of Washington D.C. Third, there is enormous room to improve our competitive telecommunications policies. Fourth, we need to commit to supporting broadband with the Universal Service Fund.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-276881A1.doc

* Commissioner Adelstein before Senate Committee on Small Business
For a long time, the U.S. was the undisputed world leader in communications technology. Yet, in recent years, we have tumbled from that historic position. Each year, we slip further down the regular rankings of broadband penetration. While some have questioned the international broadband penetration rankings, the fact is the U.S. has dropped year-after-year. This downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global competitors. There is no doubt about the evidence that citizens of other countries are getting a much greater broadband value in the form of more megabits for less money. A true broadband strategy should incorporate benchmarks, deployment timetables, and measurable thresholds to gauge our progress. We need to set ambitious goals and shoot for affordable, truly high-bandwidth broadband. We should start by updating our current anemic definition of high-speed of just 200 kbps in one direction to something more akin to what consumers receive in countries with which we compete, speeds that are magnitudes higher than our current definitions.
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-276886A1.pdf