BROADBAND….Over at TPMCafe, Yochai Benkler provides a nice little summary of the broadband provisions in the stimulus bill:
The Senate proposal is better along two dimensions. First, it stands at 9 billion dollars instead of 6 billion dollars….Second, it is all to be administered through the NTIA,
through a program that was set up during the Clinton Administration to support experimentation and deployment of public and non-profit efforts, and to study public networks.
….The House bill is, however, clearer on the access conditions imposed on those who receive funds. It requires grantees not only to adhere to the minimal net neutrality standards adopted by the FCC’s Statement of Principles, but also to run both wired and wireless broadband networks on an “open access basis.” The FCC is charged with defining what “open access” means within 45 days of the passage of the Act, but historically (that is, before the Bush-appointed FCC reversed course), open access was the loose term applied to the approach that typified the 1996 Telecommunications Act: that is, competition from new entrants would be the best check on incumbent abuses, and competition would be created by forcing the incumbents to let the new entrants use some pieces of the incumbents’ network as leverage to overcome the very high startup costs associated with offering any useful service at all to customers.
There’s more at the link, including this weird factlet about the House bill: it stipulates that half the broadband money would be under the control of the Secretary of Agriculture. Because, um, who else comes to mind when you think of high-speed telecommunications infrastructure policy?
Anyway, it would be nice if the final bill makes at least a start at reinstituting the principles of net neutrality as part of its language. I think this is a more complex issue than a lot of the blogosphere likes to admit, but it’s fundamentally the right direction to go. This is a good sign that Barack Obama agrees.
