Nearly a year after the issuance of the National Broadband Plan (NBP), the plan’s lead architect told a policy gathering on Wednesday that the Federal Communications Commission did not take the right approach to increasing broadband adoption among low-income households, and that it should be changed.

Blair Levin, who was Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC during the NBP’s formulation and now serves as Society Fellow at the Aspen Institute, said that the plan should not have counted on transitioning the Universal Service Fund (USF) as its core strategy for expanding broadband access in for poor and rural households in underserved areas.  The USF currently provides subsidies to support basic monthly telephone service and initial installation or activation fees through the Lifeline/Link-up programs.

As the first anniversary of the Federal Communication Commission’s National Broadband Plan approaches, 33 percent of Americans still do not have broadband access. While broadband is an indispensable component of President Obama’s innovation agenda, individuals who have not adopted broadband will be left out.  In his State of the Union Address, President Obama set his expectation for ensuring that 98 percent of Americans would have access to wireless broadband. The National Broadband Plan is the U.S. government’s first genuine articulation of broadband deployment best practices that will extend economic development and greater opportunities for democratic participation in every community.  One year later, we ask whether these goals are being accomplished.  Please join us as National Broadband Plan architect, Blair Levin, shares the progress of these efforts.

Keynote Remarks
Blair Levin, Esq.
Communications and Society Fellow
Aspen Institute

Edward Lazarus, Esq.
Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
Federal Communications Commission

Welcome:
Ralph B. Everett, Esq., President and CEO, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

Opening Remarks:
Joseph S. Miller, Esq., Deputy Director and Senior Policy Director, Media and Technology Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies

Panel:
Nicol Turner-Lee, Ph.D., Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (moderator)
Paul de Sa, Chief, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Federal Communications Commission
Dean Garfield, Esq., President and CEO, Information Technology Industry Council
Christopher Guttman-McCabe, Esq., Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, CTIA-The Wireless Association
Walter B. McCormick, Jr., CEO and President, USTelecom Association
Kimberly Marcus, Executive Director, Public Policy and Telecommunications Institute, Rainbow PUSH
Scott Wallsten, Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute
Brent Wilkes, President and CEO, LULAC
George C. Wu, Executive Director, OCA

Two scholars from the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies will release a white paper on Friday aimed at implementing the recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.   The paper, Government Transparency: Six Strategies for More Open and Participatory Government, outlines specific steps that community and elected officials need to take to enact the Knight Commission’s recommendation to expand government transparency, especially in local communities.  The paper is one of two that will be released and discussed at a forum, which is being sponsored by the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Rep. Bobby Rush, who is vying to become ranking member on the House Energy and Commerc Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee, went off-script Thursday to assert that the Democratic FCC chairman's plan to ensure Internet freedom does not help low-income communities as much proponents claim.

The Illinois Democrat was addressing a forum sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies when he delved into the ongoing discussion on "net neutrality," or how to keep Internet providers from engaging in anticompetitive practices.

Read more at The National Journal.

Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Dr. Turner-Lee for that warm introduction. I can’t tell you, Ralph how wonderful it is to see and to be with you and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies at today’s very timely event, Blackout: The Impact of the Digital Age on the Broadcast Media.

Although the title of today’s event cleverly alludes to African Americans, most of the issues that both panels are discussing today significantly affect black, brown, red, yellow, white ethnics, and non-ethnic whites and collectives of minority and ethnic groups, and communities, all just the same. Thanks, especially, to my supporters from the South Side of Chicago and in the Southwest Chicago suburbs as well as my kindred souls and friends around the country who want so desperately to see minorities and small businesses fare better than they are currently. They are the ones who are directly responsible for ensuring that I can stand in front of you today.

The Joint Center has been one of the nation’s pre-eminent think tanks and public research and policy organizations — not just with respect to societal, economic, and domestic issues that are of great concern to African-Americans. But, in reality, many of these same issues impact all Americans — those who are underserved in terms of broadband and healthcare delivery, those who have no, or little, political voice, those who are chronically under-employed in our tight labor market, and those who are worse off in terms of their personal net worth and future financial security as compared to their parents and, even, their grandparents only one to several generations ago.

Read more at The Hill.

In his statement to commend the National Broadband Plan developed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), President Obama hoped that a broadband-driven Internet would provide opportunities for economic growth and job creation. While the potential for the Internet to affect employment is vast, this article focuses on one specific aspect — the role of the Internet in helping Americans, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, find and obtain jobs.

Time Warner Cable announced that it has released five essays on the future of digital communications, policy and technical perspectives based on its Research Program on Digital Communications.

In a release, the company noted that posted on the Research Program's website, the essays will also be published in Volume 63 of the Federal Communications Law Journal later this year. The Research Program was launched in February to increase understanding of the benefits and challenges facing the future of digital technologies in the home, office, classroom and community.

Fernando Laguarda, director of the program and VP for External Affairs and Policy Counselor at Time Warner Cable, said "We are very pleased with the essays and are hopeful they will promote further dialogue and debate about important issues facing industry and policymakers."

Included in the two volumes of essays are the following contributions:

-Dale N. Hatfield, executive director, Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology and Entrepeneurship, University of Colorado, "The Challenge of Increasing Broadband Capacity."

-John G. Palfrey, Jr., Henry N., Ess III professor of Law, Harvard Law School, "The Challenge of Developing Effective Public Policy on the Use of Social Media by Youth."

-Nicole Turner-Lee, VP and director, Media and Technology Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, "The Challenge of Increasing Civic Engagement in the Digital Age."

-Scott J. Wallsten, VP for Research and Senior Fellow, Technology
Policy Institute, "The Future of Digital Communications Research and Policy."

-Christopher S. Yoo, professor of Law & Communciations, University of Pennsylvania Law School, "The Challenge of New Patterns in Internet Usage."

Read the Full Story at pr-inside.com.

This article was previously available at tradingmarkets.com, Yahoo! Finance, and Melodika.net.
 

A new study by the Pew Research Center found that that Blacks and Latinos are among the biggest users of mobile web technology, and that low-income communities are among its fastest adopters. It's nothing we haven't already heard, of course.

But what makes this week's news especially relevant is that it comes on the heels of heightened debates in the FCC and Congress and between telecom companies and activists around whether and how to regulate web service providers. People of color have been caught in the middle of that debate, as telecom argues that more regulation will force them to raise costs. The FCC has identified cost as the primary barrier to getting more people of color access to high speed service. Depending on your perspective, the rapidly growing number of mobile web users either signals that people of color are finding their way around the broadband divide or proves just how wide it is.

"The mobile population is becoming more diverse over time and more people are relying on their cellphones as their primary form of wireless connectivity," Aaron Smith, author of the Pew report, told the Washington Post.

But advocates warn the spike of mobile web users of color is a far cry from bridging the digital divide. Wireless technologies can only do so much, they say, and broadband Internet home connections remain too costly and inaccessible for many communities of color. A Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report released last spring found that while 92 percent of Blacks used the Internet to look for work, they usually had to go to libraries, schools, and community centers to get access.

Read more at colorlines.com.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies launched the Media and Technology Institute (MTI) at an event held on November 13, 2008. MTI was created to study the effects of the media industry and emerging communications technologies on African Americans and other people of color.

The numbers reported in this factsheet are based on the Joint Center's 1998 and 1999 National Opinion Polls. The 1998 responses are from telephone interviews with 1,606 adults, conducted in September 1998. The sample included a national general population sample of 850 and a national sample of 850 African Americans. The 1999 responses are based on telephone interviews with 1,678 adults, a national general population sample of 850 and a national sample of 900 African Americans. For both surveys, the statistical margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points. The 1998 numbers reported here vary somewhat from those reported by the Department of Commerce in the recently released report, Falling Through the Net, but the patterns of usage are the same. Differences in reported numbers are most likely related to differences in question wording, racial categories used (for example, the Commerce report excludes Hispanics from racial totals), and margins of error.

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