David Sutphen has been co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance since October 2009. He has held significant leadership positions in Congress, the entertainment industry and trade associations.
Sutphen is currently a partner at Brunswick Group LLC, a strategic communications firm. Prior to joining Brunswick, David was the Senior Vice President of Government Relations at Viacom, the parent company of MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures. While at Viacom, he was a leading advisor to senior corporate and divisional executives on policy, political and CSR matters. He also served as co-chair of the Viacom Corporate Responsibility Council and as its representative on the Board of the Copyright Alliance. David joined Viacom from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), where he was Senior Vice President of Government and Industry Relations and represented the major record labels before Congress, regulatory agencies and in the media.
Before the RIAA, David spent six years on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he handled civil rights and telecom issues, and Chief of Staff to former Congressman Harold Ford. David began his career as an associate at Covington & Burling, following a clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and positions at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
David is a graduate of Michigan Law School—where he was a member of the Editorial Board of Law School—and an honors graduate of Amherst College. He serves on the Board of Directors of The U.S. Soccer Foundation and LAYC, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit serving more than 4,000 at-risk youth.
David's Blog
Friday, February 19
Broadband and Hispanics
By David
Portada points to a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce that shows for Hispanic Americans the digital divide is still in place, despite some recent gains:
43,08% of Hispanics use a broadband (39.74%) or dial up connection (2.98%) at home, while 49.31% uses the internet either at home or anywhere. The percentage of Hispanics who do not have Internet access lies at 50.69% in comparison with a 25.68% ratio for White Non Hispanic.
10 Reasons Why New Internet Regulations Impede Common Goals of Connecting All Americans and Closing Digital Divide
1. Considerable progress has been made in our first broadband decade – progress that has only been achieved because of the FCC’s longstanding, deregulatory approach to the Internet. In roughly ten years we have gone from practically zero broadband deployment to more than 95 percent availability and 63 percent adoption, according to the FCC and Pew.
2. The open Internet exists today. We have been living with ‘net neutrality’ since 2004, when it was established that companies cannot control the content and applications that people are able to access online.
3. The net neutrality debate, which only concerns those already online, is a distraction from creating an effective National Broadband Plan. The people who have the most to lose from this balancing act are the socially and economically disenfranchised – members of rural, low-income, urban, tribal, minority, non-English speaking, unserved and underserved populations.
4. The Commission’s recent request for an extension of time to deliver a National Broadband Plan underscores the need for the agency to devote more – not less – attention and resources to completing a national strategy.
5. Experts on the digital divide have not cited “lack of net neutrality regulations” as either a cause or a cure for race or income-based differences in broadband adoption. The current net neutrality war that has erupted in Washington, DC has very little to do with the interests of the unserved and underserved.
6. It is impossible to know for sure how new Internet regulations would impact private investment, and a decline in capital investments in broadband could have a harmful effect on jobs and the US economy. In fact, a reduction by five percent would reduce employment by 47,073 according to research from the ITIF or 78,455 according to former FCC commissioner and economist Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
7. Today’s open Internet is making possible huge innovation. We reduce the possibilities and raise barriers if we don’t give everyone access to smart networks.
8. Lack of net neutrality regulations cannot be reduced to “charging more fees and extracting more money from wealthier customers.” On the contrary, the FCC has laid out six principles of net neutrality, which have the potential to impact Americans at every level of income.
9. In a 2009 poll of 900 African Americans and Hispanics conducted by Brilliant Corners Research, led by Obama Presidential Campaign and Democratic Pollster Cornell Belcher, 43 percent of these minorities cited either not knowing how to use the Internet or not seeing the need for the Internet as the reason why they are not online; however, 44 percent of these same respondents said they would be more likely to subscribe to Internet services if they were provided free lessons on how to use the technology and 30 percent would be more likely to adopt if they had more information about how they could benefit from going online.
10. There are more significant policy challenges and opportunities demanding FCC attention and cooperation with industry, such as reforming the universal service fund, expanding spectrum availability for commercial use, and improving digital literacy.
While the FCC sifts through comments from a reported 200,000 + people in response to its proposed net neutrality regulations, minority groups continue to voice concerns about the effect those regulations will have on the digital divide. Yesterday, groups of minority legislators circulated letters around Capitol Hill warning of unintended consequences from new regulations. Reports Multichannel News:
The Jan. 22 letters came from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, National Foundation for Women Legislators, National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women, National Conference of Black Mayors and the National Association of Black County Officials.
The groups called closing the digital divide “one of the most pressing social and civil rights issue of our day.”
They asked President Obama to intercede to keep the FCC focused on a broadband plan that closes that divide and does not include any new rules they say could threaten that end.
The Hispanic Institute has released a new report on broadband adoption and minority communities. Multichannel News looks at some of the report’s findings:
[W]hile English-dominant Latinos subscribe to broadband services at a higher rate than non-Hispanic whites (68% of those surveyed having broadband services at home), Spanish-dominant Latinos lag well behind, with only 32% using the Internet in any form in 2006, compared to 78% of English-dominant Latinos and 76% of bilingual speakers.
The full Hispanic Institute report, Toward Access, Adoption & Inclusion: A Call for Digital Equality and Broadband Opportunity, is available online.
CNet reports on a new survey on Internet usage from the Pew Research Center (PDF), which finds that 74% of adult Americans are online. That’s the good news. The bad news is the digital divide remains very much in place, with 76% of white Americans online compared to 59% of African Americans and 55% of Hispanic Americans.
A new report from Pew has some encouraging news about Internet use in the Hispanic community:
From 2006 to 2008, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points, from 54% to 64%. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period.
Latinos still trail whites in Internet use, but the Pew report shows that the gap is diminishing. Unfortunately, when it comes to broadband adoption at home, the Hispanic community saw very little change — from 79% of Internet users in 2007, to 81% in 2008.
Today I officially join Bruce Mehlman as co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance. With our government currently working toward a national broadband plan, I couldn’t be joining this organization at a better time.
Broadband is the great equalizer. It has the ability to transform lives. Most importantly, it gives everyone — regardless of race, income, and geography — a chance to succeed in the economy of the future.
A true national broadband plan won’t leave anyone behind, which is why IIA will continue to encourage private investment — and smart policy — in order to bring vital broadband access to everyone. Only through the continuing partnership of industry and government can America achieve the goal of universal access.
Following in IIA co-founder and former co-chairman Larry Irving’s shoes will not be easy. But I’m positive that Bruce and I, along with all of IIA’s members and Broadband Ambassadors, will continue to work hard in order to help connect everyone in America to the power of broadband. This is an historic time for our country, and I’m honored to be a part of it.
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