NextGenWeb recently attended the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) event, “Implications of Washington Telecom Policy on Jobs, Investment, and Economic Growth.” Michael Powell, Former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and currently Senior Advisor at Providence Equity Partners, gave the keynote address to kick start the discussion.

The event also brought together a panel to discuss Net neutrality and the effects it will have on jobs during this fragile time of economic recovery. The “view from Wall Street” panel approach, as it was called, sparked conversation on the importance of broadband and what regulation will mean for investments, job creation, and adoption. The panelists at the event included:

Rebecca Arbogast, Stifel Nicolaus
Craig Moffett, C. Bernstein, & Co., LLC
James Ratcliff, Barclays Capital
Jeff Silva, Medley Global Advisors, LLC

After the event, NextGenWeb was able to meet up with Rebecca Arbogast, Managing Director, Stifel Nicolaus. Watch the interview below to hear her thoughts on the impact of regulations on jobs and economic recovery.

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NextGenWeb recently sat down with George Gilder, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Editor in Chief of the Gilder Technology Report, and contributing editor to Forbes magazine (for a complete bio, click here). Gilder is a prominent American economist who has focused on the technology and telecommunications sectors for more than two decades. His book, “Life After Television,” was an incredibly accurate prophecy on the future of computers and telecommunications. Gilder has recently been writing and commenting on telecommunications policy, and how it effects economic growth and job creation.

Gilder’s overarching theme is investment, and how increased regulation, specifically the reclassification of broadband as a Title II “telecommunications service”, would harm private investment. In the interview below, Gilder discusses his vision for the future of the Internet, how new applications will require large amounts of bandwidth, and how private investment will be the primary driver to ensure that high-capacity broadband networks continue to be built out across the United States.

Click below to hear more of Gilder’s vision.

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This morning hundreds of people who follow technology policy convened at Union Station for Politico’s “What’s Next in Tech: How Washington Will Act on Key Policy Issues in 2011” event.  Driven by the Politico Morning Tech team  (Kim Hart, Tony Romm, and Jennifer Martinez), attendees heard a diverse array of government and industry representatives share their views and ideas on issues including broadband, innovation, and cybersecurity through the prism of recent midterm election results.

Kim Hart opened the event interviewing Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, who shared reflections on lessons learned, as well as priorities ahead.  Chopra will continue his work on open government initiatives and he predicts patent reform, privacy, and spectrum policy to be major initiatives in 2011.  Here is a link to read a comprehensive recap of Chopra’s talk on Gov20.GovFresh.

Next topic was the “View From the Hill” with Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Ensign (R-NV) and Congresswoman Eshoo (CA-14).  Although asked about personal favorite technologies (iPad, Blackberry), the Senators also addressed issues like immigration, cybersecurity, and even education relative to training the next generation of engineers and developers.  When it comes to looking ahead with net neutrality, Senator Ensign’s “modest proposal” was to “kill it.” Senator Warner acknowledged that the network providers have legitimate capacity concerns, which require light-touch regulation and industry involvement in addressing.   Rep. Eshoo predicts net neutrality won’t be taken up again. “I don’t think the votes were there in the House even before election.”

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A sizable audience gathered yesterday at the Brookings Institution for a one and a half hour discussion on the topic of Internet Governance and Regulation.  The pending question specifically was “what should be government’s role?” and the speakers, listed below, were able to draw consensus around past successes and politically sound next steps.

• David Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation
• Erik Garr, Partner of Diamond Management and Technology Consultants
• Gary Epstein, General Counsel, Aspen International Digital Economic Accords (IDEA) Project

The top overarching theme participants agreed upon was the need to settle on some sort of principles of net neutrality so that we can move on to foundational issues like deployment and adoption.   Cohen advocated strongly for the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) as a clear-cut solution, due to its efficiency and blend of self-governance and consensus building.  Garr agreed that the time it takes regulators to act complicates matters and raised the issue of impact on investment noting the reality that a majority of U.S. broadband investment is fueled by private industry.

Full audio of the program is available here.

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All eyes in the broadband policy community are on a new report titled “Digital Nation II” that was just released by Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).  The report offers some new insights on the state of broadband adoption that are moving the “digital divide” dialogue forward.  Although low-income and some minority groups remain behind in broadband adoption, many of the gaps in broadband cannot be explained by income and education levels alone, leaving race as a notable factor.  Consider these findings:

• African American households with the same income and education level as white households are still less likely to have broadband access.
• Internet non-users reported lack of need or interest as their primary reason for not having broadband at home.
• The Department of Commerce’s findings validate the findings of the FCC’s “Broadband Adoption and Use in America” report which found that 96 percent of Americans have access to broadband, only 65 percent have adopted the technology.

So what does this mean for broadband policy?  It means we need to focus on the directives of the National Broadband Plan and on growing broadband adoption and usage in general.  Conversely, it means we need to set aside disruptive and complex issues like net neutrality to concentrate resources accordingly. Ken Eisner, Managing Director of One Economy was quoted in today’s Morning Tech saying “With all of that swirling around on net neutrality, which is definitely an important issue, I think what the report is saying … is that we need to be focusing on adoption, and not let it just be sucked into a hole as people are focusing on net neutrality.”

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When voters across the country went to the polls on Tuesday, job creation and the economy were major factors in their decisions. Now that the polls are closed and only a few undecided races are left to call, what should the 112th Congress do with Net neutrality?

NextGenWeb had the opportunity to participate in a conference call where national economists discussed the recent election and the impact on possible broadband regulations and job creation. Everett Ehrlich, Ph.D, President at the ESC Company, and Hal Singer, Ph.D, Managing Director and Principal at Navigant Economics led the call. The two discussed the plausibility for the 112th Congress to reach a consensus on Net neutrality.

Both economist made strong arguments as to why the FCC should halt proceedings to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. They agreed that such regulations would severely undermine job growth and even slow investments in this digital economy. Singer even called the plan a “poison pill” in an economy that is desperately in search of job creation.

To listen to the audio from this conference, click here.

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Link Hoewing, VP of Internet & Technology Policy for Verizon Communications, joined a panel at New America Foundation today to respond to the question “Is the Internet Having a Mid-Life Crisis?”  Hoewing believes that competition and rapidly changing business models are not only keeping the Internet from reaching a mid-life crisis, but also tremendously benefiting consumers.  “Consumers have choices and companies are offering different ways to get content and services in response to consumer demand,” Hoewing explained using examples like streaming movie and smartphone options.

Hoewing noted that the investments network providers are making also respond to consumer demand.  Speeds and prices of broadband are only going to get better, he pointed out, sharing that Verizon is currently testing 1 gig over FiOS for their next gen of fiber.

He also addressed ways in which the market is reacting to policy, clarifying that the Verizon/Google agreement was not a business agreement, it was a policy framework to promote innovation with government oversight.

Watch the video below for Hoewing’s comments immediately following the event:

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Consumers turned out to be the break-out theme of yesterday’s IPI Communications Summit.  As Veronica Bloodworth, Vice President, Network Program Management for AT&T, said during her introductory keynote address “It’s the customer’s world, we’re just living in it!” Bloodworth went on to demonstrate how AT&T is working to aggressively advance products and services for today’s and tomorrow’s broadband world.

Following a panel of experts describing the latest in mobile health again driven by consumer use and demand, Bret Swanson took the stage to deliver a keynote titled “Dynamism vs. DC.”   Describing entropy economics, Swanson went on to show relationships between innovation and entrepreneurship in our current “bandwidth boom.”  The numbers are startling around consumer bandwidth consumption. YouTube alone streams 7 terabytes a minute, the equivalent of the entire Internet in 1992, and streaming video now accounts for 51% of all web traffic.

So what does this bandwidth boom mean?  Swanson applauds investments in broadband and fiber and hopes that policymakers realize the importance of managing quality and bottlenecks to best serve the voice and video demands of consumers.  As we begin to transport higher volumes of traffic at higher rates, delay and quality of service will be extremely important.

Watch the video below for more from Swanson or check out some of the resources that he cited in his presentation:

• University of San Diego study – How Much Information?
• Digital Society – Basics of Network Bandwidth, Latency, and Jitter
• Phoenix Center – Jobs, Jobs, Jobs:  Communications Policy and Employment Effects in the Information Sector

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Last week, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) hosted a panel of experts to discuss the provision of enhanced and differentiated services on the broadband networks.  Panelists shared their unique perspectives on how they see both managed services and related policies evolving, and what impact that will have on innovation in the future.

ITIF Senior Fellow Richard Bennett kicked off the event with a few examples of differentiated services on the networks, beginning with ARPANET through the commercialization of the web.   Bennett warns that the “all packets are equal” concept might work in theory, but not in practice.  He sees the role of managed services on the networks, which are vehicles for application delivery, is to balance resources, decrease delay, and increase reliability.  Watch my interview with Bennett below.

University of Pennsylvania Professor of Computer and Information Sciences (formerly with UPenn’s Law School) Christopher Yoo believes that the current net neutrality debate is ignoring simple engineering concepts.  He believes that since users don’t have information to manage congestion, it is the networks that can make the most efficient use of services.  He even applauds that our network infrastructure is trying to meet our society’s different needs, explaining that this is the natural evolution of how we use the network.

Additional voices to the discussion included University of California, Irvine, Professor of Computer Science Scott Jordan, George Washington University Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering Charles Jackson, AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist, and National Journal’s Eliza Krigman.

You can watch the event in its entirety below.

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Earlier this week, Broadband Breakfast hosted their September installment of their event series, with this month’s topic being, “Title I, Title II: What Direction for Broadband Reclassification.” The event featured key industry voices from the private sector and academia. Included on the panel were Link Howeing of Verizon, John Mayo form the Georgetown Center for Business & Pubic Policy, Cathy Sloan of CCIA, Larry Spiwak from the Phoenix Center, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge, and Gerald Duffy of the Western Telecommunications Alliance. The panel was moderated by Politico’s very own Kim Hart.

The premise of the discussion was the recent D.C. Court of Appeals decision in Comcast vs. FCC that brought into question the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband, and has subsequently sparked debate throughout Washington concerning the proper regulatory structure for broadband services. Among the key questions posed to the panelists – Are Title I safeguards sufficient for consumers and government? Who has the authority to develop a regulatory structure for broadband, Congress or the FCC? What does Representative Waxman’s proposed bill say about the way the debate has shifted?

Professor John Mayo was quick to point out that the modern Internet economy looks much different than the public utility world, and regulations need to reflect that difference. He warned that shifting broadband to under a Title II regulatory structure would lead to market uncertainty, potentially harming the constant revenue stream of private investment into infrastructure deployment.

Click below to watch an interview with Jon Mayo following the event.

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