[FCC Chairman Julius] Genachowski said that rural, minority, low-income, seniors, the disabled and tribal communities have fallen behind in broadband, and the cost of digital exclusion is “high and growing higher every day.”

Other inclusion proposals include creating an “online skills” portal with free lessons and digital education, though of course that will require broadband availability.

The FCC will also recommend public funding for the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to support public-private partnerships for outreach and education and targeted support for senior citizens.

Now, Ars Technica reports, ICANN may be exploring the idea of .xxx again:

Two weeks ago, an independent panel from the International Center for Dispute Resolution said that ICANN goofed when it rejected .xxx. The decision was not a binding one, but ICANN clearly feels that the issue is worth reconsideration after all; the organization confirmed to the BBC that it would discuss the TLD again this week to decide whether it wants to move forward on it—again.

[I]f the government doesn’t clarify whether the grants are considered taxable income, onlookers fear recipients won’t use the money any time soon – defeating the purpose of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

When asked whether recipients would be taxed on the stimulus funds, the Treasury Department reportedly offered no concrete answer. Stay tuned…

In comments filed with the FCC in February, the San Francisco-based organization said the agency lacks the authority to issue neutrality regulations that would ban Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast from favoring some forms of Internet traffic over others.

“Congress has not deputized the FCC to be a free roving regulator of the Internet,” the group argued in a filing that came as a shock to net neutrality supporters such as the intensely pro-regulation “public advocacy” groups Free Press and Public Knowledge.

“So while EFF strongly endorses the goals of this commission ... a limitless notion of ancillary jurisdiction would stand as an open invitation to future commissions to promulgate ‘policy statements,’ issue regulations, and conduct adjudications detrimental to the Internet,” EFF wrote.

Read the full Heartland Institute report, which also quotes IIA Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman.

According to Christopher Guttman-McCabe, CTIA’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, the wireless industry directly employs 268,000 people with jobs that pay 50 percent higher than the national average of wages in similar categories. Carriers are on track to continue to invest this year and next with their average capital investments reaching $22.8 billion a year.

Cecilia Kang, “Wireless Lobbyists Step Up Defensive Against Net Neutrality,” Washington Post. September 28, 2009.

More facts about broadband.

Panelists like David Sutphen, co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance, asked that government focus on adoption first, especially among minorities and lower-income groups.  “The National Broadband Plan is most important,” said Sutphen. “If we could get everyone who has been worried about open Internet principles focused on the digital literacy and value proposition gap, we’d go a long way towards solving the problem.”

Read Capital Wire’s full re-cap. Video is also available of the event.

IIA Co-chairman Bruce Mehlman has an op-ed today on AOL News:

High-speed Internet connections are helping to change the meaning of a snow day—serving as a vital tool to keep Americans working, even when the roads, public transportation and airports are not. For those who could go online from home during the storms, it was largely business as usual.

But clearly not enough could. The “Snowmageddon” of 2010 forced federal offices to shut their doors for days, resulting in an astounding loss of money and productivity. It’s been estimated that closing the government for just one day costs taxpayers roughly $100 million. If you factor in the business shutdowns in the private sector, it is easy to see that these storms exacted a high cost on the nation as whole.

The problem is that currently about a third of the population doesn’t have a broadband connection, and one in five don’t have any Internet connection at all.

Read the full op-ed.

creative commons image from zrail

“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” Herlihy told a baffled audience, echoing comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centring on the cloud, computing and connectivity.

The U.S. National Broadband Plan set for release this month will not call for additional spending beyond the existing programs, a move likely to garner support from lawmakers, a Federal Communications Commission official said on Wednesday.

The highly anticipated blueprint will be “revenue neutral” overall because spectrum auctions will compensate for any needed spending, said the official, who was not authorized to speak before the public release of the plan.

Outside of the spectrum auction — which could bring in as much as $50 billion for the plan — the FCC is also set to recommend redirecting the universal service fund to connect four percent of Americans currently lacking broadband access.

If the FCC wants to create new Internet regulations, it should have the backing of Congress, Garre added. “It would be appropriate for the FCC to go to Congress,” he said. “This isn’t some minor regulatory issue we’re talking about. The FCC itself has described the Internet as something that ‘has transformed our nation’s economy, culture and democracy.’”