Begin forwarded message:
From: Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com>
Date: December 24, 2009 9:15:21 PM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Levin hints at Broadband Plan
For IP, if you wish.
Blair Levin pre-announces some details of the National Broadband Plan on The Communicators this weekend. Amy Schatz of the WSJ did some of the questioning, and reports:
Providing universal broadband access at 3 mbps would cost about $20 billion, the FCC estimates. The price tag for 50 mbps service across the U.S. would cost more than $50 billion.
Much of that investment would have to come from the private sector, Mr. Levin says, although the agency is considering changes to a $7 billion annual federal phone subsidy program to fund new Internet lines in rural areas.
Mr. Levin also dismissed criticisms last week from public interest groups unhappy the plan may not propose some ideas for encouraging competition, such as rules that would require Internet providers to share their lines with competitors.
“I find their criticism not very productive,” Mr. Levin said Monday.
FCC officials have been considering the ideas, some of which were laid out in a FCC-commissioned report by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
The WSJ piece is at:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/12/21/fcc-eyes-average-internet-speeds-for-rural-areas/
and you can see the video at C-Span's web site:
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/12/21/HP/R/27505/FCC+Gives+Status+on+Natl+Broadband+Plan.aspx
RB
-- Richard Bennett Research Fellow Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Washington, DC