Blair Levin, former Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, and current fellow at the Aspen Institute, delivered a forward-thinking morning keynote at the Pennsylvania Broadband Summit. There was buzz surrounding the address, following a recent interview with Levin in Politico where he provided a sneak preview to some of the ideas that he would later discuss.

The core of Levin’s remarks were simple – there are widely accepted presuppositions about broadband policy that are actually hindering progress towards the goal of universal broadband service in the United States. He communicated these in the form of a list of “four bad ideas for broadband planning
,” and a corresponding “good idea.”

The first “bad idea” states that we should focus on a primary metric when generating policy recommendations. Levin stated that focusing on a primary metric does not reflect the reality of the broadband ecosystem, and that policies need to interact with the entire broadband ecosystem in order to drive innovation and investment.

Another “bad idea” dealt with the issue of broadband speeds. Levin stated that, while speed is important, it should be how people are utilizing broadband networks that is the ultimate driving factor for policy. This will help accelerate economic growth and the improvement in the delivery of essential public services.

Finally, and perhaps most contentiously, Levin took aim at rural broadband policy. While he affirmed the importance of bringing broadband to rural areas, he argued that focusing too much on rural deployment can lead to a disproportionate amount of resources going to one issue. He used statistics to verify his point, stating that deploying broadband to the last 250,000 homes in America would cost around $14billion, leading to an investment gap. The right idea? “Broadband policy should drive constant innovation and improvement throughout all geographic areas.”

Following his remarks, we caught up with Levin to further discuss a few of his points. Click below to watch the interview.

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