Broadband & Community Broadband

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A resource crucial to the economic recovery of the United States is buried underground. Hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable, which enables the fast, robust communication that was so important to the economic success of the last decade, currently lies unused, the digital equivalent of fallow farmland.

America needs to put this asset to work. Broadband -- the generic term for high-speed, high-capacity, always-on data networks -- is integral to the improvement of the American economy. To… more

Fewer than one in ten American families have fast Internet access, and the slow deployment has badly damaged e-commerce companies. Congress is moving to try to fix the problem, but Jim Glassman believes it may instead establish a monopoly that will only make it worse.

Glassman maintains the broadband crisis has badly damaged the economy, and the only sensible alternative -- even for a fanatic free-market advocate like him -- is to break up the Bells.

Remarks to New America Foundation by James K. Glassman

Anyone who has tried to get a high-speed connection to the Internet knows that it can be an exercise in futility. And expensive. Only about 10 percent of Americans have fast, broadband access to the Internet and, as a result, many Web-based businesses that rely on widespread broadband -- in education, entertainment, retailing and more -- have either failed or have never gotten off the ground. The next stage… more

Last December Sen. John McCain described the 1996 “loan” of a second TV channel to broadcasters – for the stated purpose of facilitating the transition to digital and high-definition television – as “one of the great rip offs in American history. They used to rob trains in the Old West, now we rob spectrum.”

But even critics of the first Congressional giveaway could not have anticipated that within five years the FCC would allow broadcasters operating on channels 60 to… more

The rapid deployment of high-speed Internet access could prove critical to lasting economic recovery and to continuing the high levels of productivity growth achieved in recent years. Eric Benhamou - chairman and former CEO of 3Com - will provide an overview of the principles he and his industry colleagues are developing to address the need to accelerate business and residential access to both wireline and wireless broadband. He will discuss the need for rational long-range policy alternatives instead… more

Early last December, as the postelection fracas neared its end, the conservative Progress and Freedom Foundation hosted a one-day Washington conference on the future of communications. The event drew a Who's Who of telecom lobbyists, elite members of prestigious K Street firms that represent companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Viacom, The top draw was a keynote speech by Michael K. Powell, a member of the Federal Communications Commission who was widely expected to become the agency's next chairman.

The high-powered… more

On the last Friday in August, President Bush, fresh from his vacation in Texas, was asked by a reporter about his plans to address the frustration so many Americans currently face trying to get high-speed Internet access. The president didn't appear terribly worried. "The technologies are evolving," he said, with equanimity. His only concern was that "the economic slowdown will perhaps slow down some of the progress made, as far as high-speed access." The possibility that the telecom industry's collapse… more

ICANN is a technical coordination body for the Internet. Created in October 1998 by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities. ICANN assumes responsibility for a set of technical functions previously performed under U.S. government contract by IANA (Internet Assigned Names Authority) and other groups. Specifically, ICANN coordinates the assignment of the following identifiers that must be globally unique for the Internet to function: (1) Internet domain names; (2) IP address numbers; and (3)… more