We commend the FCC for responding to the recommendations of expert analysts, economists, civil rights organizations, industry groups and members of Congress by continuing to seek consensus rather than pursue burdensome and unnecessary regulations.

The Commission deserves credit for seeking additional input from interested parties, including actual market participants who are innovating, investing and deploying networks. As a bipartisan majority of Congress has urged, on such an important issue we should take the time necessary to get this right and to base policy on facts and reality rather than fear and political rhetoric.

— David Sutphen

Over the past decade, minimal regulation has led to extraordinary investment and adoption of broadband by more than two-thirds of American citizens. The shared goal of an open Internet is best served by a thoughtful, fact-based, targeted and bipartisan approach to new policy directions.

It is critical that processes to find consensus continue. With a well-planned strategy based on input from industry players across the spectrum, we can get every American online and build a world-class Internet ecosystem that makes our country a better, more prosperous and fairer society.

— Bruce Mehlman

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With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.

With 160 million iTunes users worldwide, Malik expects the new social sharing network to send music sales on iTunes soaring.

Here’s the FCC’s Public Notice about the need for more inquiry (PDF).

At the heart of the issue is whether the president already has the authority to intervene in private-sector networks in the event of such an emergency. [Sen. Susan] Collins and other supporters of the bill contend the president has had that authority for some time under a little-known provision of the Communications Act passed one month after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

“The president’s had that authority for a while,” said a senior Senate aide, who asked not to be identified. The aide said the “kill switch” is a misnomer because the infrastructure that supports the Internet in the U.S. makes it impossible to take down the entire network from one location. But the aide said the storyline has picked up steam because it’s very difficult for the public to conceptualize the severity of the cyber-threats facing the United States.

Information Technology Industry Council President and CEO Dean Garfield put out a progress report Tuesday on his group’s efforts to find some middle ground among the stakeholders battling over the issue of network neutrality, saying there has been “significant progress” while declining to provide any details.

Among ITI’s members are Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Internet providers.

In a recent study, the U.S. Commerce Department estimated that differences in income and education accounted for about half of the gap in Internet usage between whites and Hispanics and African-Americans.

— Shapiro, Robert and Kevin Hassett.  “A New Analysis of Broadband Adoption Rates by Minority Households.” Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.  Washington D.C.  June 22, 2010.

Learn more facts in our ever-expanding Broadband Fact Book.

For the past year, a chorus of voices from every corner of the American landscape have expressed to the FCC that onerous regulation of broadband and the reclassification of broadband as a telephone service can result in unintended consequences that limit benefits for consumers. Congress has introduced a resolution to decide if the FCC even has the authority to have jurisdiction over the regulation of broadband. Non-profit and consumer voices have come forward to support this resolution.

As an advocate for consumers on this matter, I have listened to the voices of minority organizations, labor unions, disability rights advocates, women’s groups, senior advocacy groups, rural and farming voices, suppliers, manufacturers, thought leaders on health care and others. They’re all saying the same thing: a quick-fix regulation of broadband services by the FCC isn’t the best approach. Let Congress handle it.

With Google TV set to launch later this fall, the search giant is reportedly trying to sign up some major content for a YouTube “on demand” TV and movie rental service.

This isn’t the first time Google has tried to take on the likes of iTunes and Amazon with YouTube, but as Light Reading reports, this time they’re expected to throw some major search engine weight behind it.

Impossible to miss, headlines highlighting the debate over so-called “net neutrality” have splashed across newspapers around the country for months. While ensuring “a free and open Internet” is a laudable and universally-shared goal, the degree to which it is at risk is very much in dispute. At some point it becomes necessary to weigh real-world problems against hypothetical possibilities, going with what is real and waiting to see if the theoretical threats materialize. From expert analysts to civil rights organizations to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, thoughtful voices across the spectrum have warned that excessive regulations could chill investment, hinder innovation by failing to anticipate technological development and ultimately kill jobs at a time when our economy needs all the investment, innovation and jobs it can get.

Read the whole thing at Fierce Telecom.

To prevent this divide from widening, we as a nation must take affirmative steps to promote investment and innovation in broadband infrastructure as well as encouraging greater digital literacy. Without investment in critical broadband infrastructure, traditionally vulnerable and underserved segments of society will not have adequate access to broadband and the healthcare services that it will deliver. This means that underserved persons with diabetes and heart disease will not benefit from digital monitoring and online telehealth applications designed to monitor and detect abnormalities, before they become harmful or fatal problems. It is important to note that chronic disease disproportionately affects communities of color, seniors and low-income persons who stand to benefit most from chronic disease management services delivered online.

Investment — in health and digital literacy, and broadband infrastructure — is the first step toward providing access to all Americans. Innovation naturally follows next, as innovators and small business owners eager to invent new services find their way into the healthcare IT business and begin offering newer and better solutions that improve the quality of life of those with broadband access. But universal health care without universal broadband access could unintentionally create a new generation of medically underserved Americans – a new social class of high speed internet “have nots” — who will be unwillingly segregated from the broadband health care services that their fellow citizens enjoy. 

The same obstacles that technology is designed to eliminate — weather, transportation, wait times — for the health care recipient who has to travel 10 miles to a library to use the Internet to access telehealth, the obstacles to change in name only; it’s as difficult to access broadband as it is to make a traditional doctors visit. Let’s avoid this tragedy by ensuring broadband access for all Americans by preserving the environment that has borne the thriving Internet we know today.

Marcia Thomas-Brown is an IIA Broadband Ambassador, Chief Operating Officer of the National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved, and Program Manager for Health Information Technology at the Summit Institute for Research and Education. 

The FCC stands poised to reclassify broadband service providers as content carriers, a category that would subject them to the same sort of regulation that telephone companies are saddled with, even giving the FCC the ability to set rates. The agency’s chairman says that the FCC won’t use this power—but this could change in another administration. Such a move would be a serious step backward.

A better route would be legislative enactment of something like the Google-Verizon plan, with an emphasis on transparency about decisions that providers are making. Giving the FCC the authority to nudge things in the right direction will be a good first step. As the Internet evolves, the nature of needed oversight will evolve as well. Establishing a clearly limited power to take action against anti-competitive violations, rather than encumbering this vital sector with detailed and prescriptive regulation, is the sensible approach.

With the net neutrality/Title II debate inspiring voices on both sides to declare the the future of the Internet is at risk, The Hill has a quote from former FCC official Blair Levin that needs to be highlighted:

“I think the biggest threat to the Internet ecosystem 10 years from now is a lack of spectrum to be put on the market five years from now.”

Exactly right. The future of the Internet is wireless, and given the amount of spectrum needed — and the time it takes to allocate and auction it — the U.S. is already dangerously behind. That’s what makes the distraction of the current regulation debate so frustrating.

Photo: Ryan Godfrey

Based on my observations there are a lot of similarities between the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Communications Commission when it comes to matters affecting rural America. The most prominent of these similarities is the overwhelming use of heavy-handed regulation by both the FDA and FCC when a light touch is really what would best serve the industries they regulate. Quite simply, heavy-handed regulation scares potential investors, especially those looking to invest or enter into public-private partnerships in rural Communities.

In the case of FCC regulation of broadband, the Commission is failing to take into account the need for regulatory certainty that investors in rural broadband infrastructure require. With all due respect to the FCC: heavy-handed regulation makes investors and business owners nervous. Conversely, conservative regulation creates the certainty required for investors to commit capital to multiyear broadband infrastructure projects serving communities in rural America. It should come as no surprise that building out broadband infrastructure in rural communities is more time and capital-intensive. This is why a period of regulatory stability would go a long way toward providers deploying broadband connections in rural areas.

Let me be clear: the fact of the matter is that investment and public-private partnerships involving broadband providers are critical to providing ranchers and farmers with the same business opportunities that businesses in urban communities enjoy. This type of investment will not occur if the FCC continues to advocate for measures that would leave ranchers to continue to live as second-class digital citizens.

We all want to be connected in Rural America:  to run our businesses, to improve quality of life and reap the benefits of resources such as education and health care online. And the FCC has a critical role when it comes to bringing broadband to cattlemen… and that’s to implement the National Broadband Plan.

— Jess Peterson is Executive Vice President for the United States Cattlemen’s Association and a 5th generation rancher. 

A recent study shows that employment levels within Internet companies are up 13 percent since the recession officially started in December 2007.

— Mandel, Michael, “The Coming Communications Boom?” Progressive Policy Institute, April 2010. Web. 28 Jul 2010.

Learn more facts in our ever-expanding Broadband Fact Book.

Unfortunately, too many African Americans are at a competitive disadvantage because they don’t have an important asset in today’s digitally driven society — a broadband Internet connection. At a time when the Internet has become our society’s economic, political and cultural glue, the lack of high-speed broadband access means you’re not competing on a level playing field.

Read David’s full piece at RollingOut.

The federal government should be doing everything possible to encourage private investment in network infrastructure and services. New regulations would create uncertainty, a surefire way to drive off investors and diminish progress toward universal broadband availability and the closing of the digital divide.  Broadband is a key to providing educational, entrepreneurial and employment opportunities that are so desperately needed today.

The demand for cutting edge broadband services is there. According to a recent Pew study, 56% of African Americans are broadband users, up from 46% a year ago. Instituting new regulations on the Internet now, as more and more Americans are adopting new technologies and reaping the benefits of joining the online community, would be a shortsighted policy decision that would diminish the quality of life and prolong the economic downturn for everyone in America

— Harry Alford, President of the National Black Chamber of Commerce