Wall Street Journal
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Today, the Federal Trade Commission’s Internet Access Task Force issued its report titled “Broadband Connectively Competition Policy. €? The report can be found in its entirety here.

The report is an exhaustive summary of the debate over whether we should regulate the Internet by an agency whose mission is protecting competition and maximizing consumer welfare. One major contribution of the report is that it brings economic analysis to bear on the debate.

There are a couple major points to the report. First, after two days of public hearings and countless pages of comments, there is still no evidence of “market failure or demonstrated harm €? to consumers. In the land of hypothetical harms, what need is there for real world rules?

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Concord Monitor (New Hampshire)
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NextGenWeb.org was onsite in Chicago today to continue its wall-to-wall coverage of this year’s NXTcomm conference in Chicago. One of the broadband panels today featured an interesting cross-section of industry experts. The “Broadband Mind Bender Session” included Tony Bates, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Technology Group at Cisco. Joining Mr. Bates on the panel was someone you may not immediately associate with the importance of broadband deployment. Dr. Henry Marcy, Vice President for Food Streaming Solutions at Whirlpool was there to explain why Moms and kids have as much to gain from broadband technology as anybody. Click below to see their interviews with NextGenWeb.

Tony Bates, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Service Provider Technology Group at Cisco

Dr. Henry Marcy, Vice President for Food Streaming Solutions at Whirlpool

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NextGenWeb.org continued its extensive coverage today during day 2 of this year’s NXTcomm conference in Chicago. Click this link to see what industry experts and providers are saying about new technologies and services and the importance broadband plays in their rollout and development.

Click Here for Complete Coverage

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Citizen Times (Ashville, NC)
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Stories that show how broadband applications can improve our quality of life are everywhere. Particularly amazing are the stories about how modern medicine is taking advantage of today’s new technology through telemedicine, remote surgery, computerized systems and health monitoring. The advances we have seen in the past 10 years are truly amazing.

So why are critical medical records are still on paper, shelved in doctor’s offices, and sometimes even in cities where the patient no longer lives?

Last week, a group of health providers, patients and industry groups launched the HealthITNow! Coalition. Its goal is to promote the rapid deployment of health information technology and thus provide instant access to a patient’s complete health history, test results and records.

The Rand Corporation estimates that Health IT could save consumers $81 billion annually in health care expenses. It would provide better support for medical decisions by making up-to-date medical records available at a moment’s notice — anywhere in the country. And most importantly, it could help reduce the tens of thousands of deaths that occur each year as a result of medical errors.

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Is the United States lagging behind other countries in broadband deployment? Are we making progress or losing ground in the effort to ensure every American has access to high-speed Internet?

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s conference tomorrow will focus on these questions during a discussion on world broadband rankings.

It’s hard to know whether the recent OECD or FCC rankings are reflective of the global broadband landscape. But what’s more important is that these statistics highlight a tremendous opportunity for us to make great progress in the next few years. And what matters most in this debate is what the United States is doing to speed the deployment of high-speed Internet to all Americans.

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Billions of dollars are being spent to make our highways “intelligent €?. Power companies seek to preserve energy by making the distribution and use of electric power more intelligent. Heck, even bowling alleys are more intelligent than they used to be — they keep score and show you how to knock down the pins remaining.

But proponents of net regulation seem intent on keeping the broadband network “dumb €?. In his statement accompanying release of the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry on Broadband Industry Practices, Commissioner Michael J. Copps says: “The original idea was to have neutral dumb networks with intelligence invested at the edges, with you and me and millions of other users. €?

Commissioner Copps seems to be evidencing nostalgia for a dumb broadband network. I find this strange when even net regulation proponents are now acknowledging the need for traffic prioritization which requires network intelligence. (more…)

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The Patriot News (Harrisburg, PA)
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