Broadband Stimulus Notes
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s broadband bill (S-1447) was introduced and referred to the Senate Finance Committee (CD July 14 p1). The bill would use $1 billion of the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds for investment tax credits and bonds to encourage more private sector spending.
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Free Press was phoned by the FCC Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis to talk about broadband issues that consumer advocates want taken up at one of the commission’s national broadband plan workshops, said a Free Press ex parte filing. They talked about topics for the 17th workshop, Sept. 3, on “Best Practices/Big Ideas,” Free Press said. In a call with the FCC’s Tamara Lipper-Smith, Free Press Research Director Derek Turner provided a list of potential topics, including broadband competition and affordability, an overhaul of the Universal Service Fund, middle-mile infrastructure issues and “opportunistic” spectrum sharing, the ex parte said.
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Google and the New America Foundation opened a forum to collect ideas for the FCC’s national broadband plan, the Internet company announced on its blog Thursday. Users can vote on others’ suggestions. In two weeks, Google plans to file “the most popular and most innovative ideas” in the FCC’s official record. At our deadline Thursday, 482 people had already submitted 128 ideas and cast 6,861 votes. The forum is at moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=a4977.