The lack of correlation between the level of concentration in local wireless service markets and prices for those services “invalidates” any efforts by government officials to demand market-by-market divestitures as they review the proposed AT&T, Inc., acquisition of T-Mobile USA, Inc., according to Jeff Eisenach, managing director and principal at Navigant Economics.

Speaking during a panel discussion of competition in the Internet ecosystem sponsored by the American Consumer Institute, Mr. Eisenach argued that the FCC, as a regulator of communications, naturally but incorrectly views networks as being at the center of the Internet ecosystem. Instead, he said, the four elements of the “platform” - content, network, device, and applications - “are perfect complements,” with none occupying the center of the ecosystem.

In considering competition in the wireless network in its recent report on that subject (TRDaily, June 27), the FCC views devices as using the network, but “don’t mobile wireless services use devices, too?” Mr. Eisenach said.

Like Mr. Eisenach, two other panelists at today’s event, Hance Haney, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and Everett Ehrlich, former under secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration and current president of ESC Co., criticized the FCC report’s failure to find that the U.S. wireless services market is competitive.

Mr. Ehrlich said, “The iPhone competes with the networks that carry it, because ultimately you’re buying a combined experience” of service, device, and applications.

Mr. Haney suggested that it is unreasonable for the FCC, which could not achieve 100% penetration of wireline voice service after more than 70 years of regulation, to expect universal penetration by the wireless industry in far less time.

In response to a question about FCC interest in broadband adoption, Mr. Eisenach said, “I don’t see the basis for concluding that someone who makes the choice not to adopt broadband is somehow harming society.”

The fourth panelists, Nicol Turner-Lee, vice president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and director of its Media Technology Institute, argued that there are public policy goals - such as ensuring everyone has access to employment opportunities, health care, and education when information and application processes move online - that justify government interest in increasing broadband adoption, as well as deployment.

This article was previously available at Telecommunications Reports.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Program Director, Anne Neville, offered the keynote address Tuesday morning at the Broadband Breakfast Club’s June event, "The National Broadband Map: Policy, Consumer and Economic Development Implications.”

Neville, who oversees the development of the National Broadband Map, kicked off the event with an overview of the program, including how the NTIA obtained data, how the data have been used, and the future of the mapping efforts.

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Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President and Director of the Media and Technology Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, explained how her organization, which focuses on issues pertaining to African Americans and other people of color, used the data to help its research.  While the National Broadband Map was helpful to the think tank, she said, refinement of the data could push research even further.

Read more at BroadbandBreakfast.com.

The National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women (NOBEL-Women) will convene its 2011 Annual National Legislative Conference June 23-26, 2011, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center Hotel.

Nationally known guest speakers invited to this comprehensive three day-event include Gwen Ifill, moderator of Washington Week; Alabama Congresswoman Terri A. Sewell; Valarie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Obama; and others.

Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee of the Joint Center's Media and Technology Institute is scheduled to moderate a conference panel entitled Boosting the Economic Recovery through Broadband Internet Expansion on Friday, June 24th.

For more information, visit the NOBEL-Women website.

The Cable Show, hosted by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) from June 14 to June 16, 2011, is your three-day immersion into everything cable can do. The Cable Show brings together the full spectrum of the global cable industry, fostering fresh dialogues with leaders of the entertainment and high-tech sectors to encourage collaboration and business relationships. The Cable Show serves as an important forum for news announcements, product introductions and the unveiling of strategic decisions that will shape the industry agenda in the coming years.

Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee will be participating in a panel discussion entitled Ideas in Action: Partnerships That Drive Broadband Adoption in America on Wednesday, June 15, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

For registration and event information, visit the Cable Show website.

Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies held a panel on Wednesday on how the federal government should promote broadband adoption and access to underserved communities.  The panel served as an update the National Broadband Plan, which came out one year ago.

“The biggest mistake we made when working on the plan was using the current framework to solve tomorrow’s problems” said keynote speaker, Blair Levin, one of the authors of the National Broadband Plan. “We need to phase out the Lifeline and Link-Up programs and come up with something new.”

Read more at BroadbandBreakfast.com.

As the one-year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan looms near, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (Joint Center) hosted a forum on March 2 entitled, The National Broadband Plan and the Underserved – One Year Later.

A program of the Joint Center’s Media and Technology Institute (MTI), this event was geared toward discerning progress in implementing the Plan.  Specifically, participants were asked to reflect on the impact that the Plan has had on connecting members of underserved communities to broadband opportunities. Underserved, in this instance, was a catch-all category looking to address the needs of low-income, disabled, rural, elderly, native American and non-English speaking populations.  Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, Vice President of the Joint Center and Director of MIT, also challenged participants to ‘think outside the box’ so that “we’re not having the same discussions about the Plan a year from now.”

Read more at Politic365.

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.

Read more at PR Newswire.

The bipartisan technology policy group TechNet gathered government officials and leading broadband scholars Tuesday to present the first set of academic research using data from the national broadband map.

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Ying Li and Mikyung Baek from the Joint Center on Political and Economic Studies looked at the correlation between broadband availability, income and race in Los Angeles, Chicago and South Carolina. They found that the heavily African American areas of Los Angeles had a low level of broadband availability. In South Carolina, they found that in areas where the overall population has a low income race did not affect availability.

Read more at BroadbandBreakfast.com.

This paper presents three case studies in the state of South Carolina, and the cities of Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA, with in-depth analyses of wireline and wireless access in high minority, low-income communities. The findings of the study concluded that broadband service is becoming much more ubiquitous in high minority, low-income communities, yet levels of adoption still remain relatively low. The study also concluded that race is not a significant explanatory variable for disparate broadband deployment, and despite the availability of mobile broadband in low-income, high minority areas, wireless coverage is still inconsistent within regions.

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A supplemental appendix for this publication is also available here.

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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