Yesterday, the Free State Foundation convened industry experts, government leaders, and academic scholars for an all day conference called “New Directions in Communications Policy.”

One of the biggest challenges raised was reaching unserved and underserved communities, but panelists agreed this was a priority as broadband increasingly is an economic necessity of the 21st century, as further recognized by the stimulus bill.

Reconciling the need for regulation and the need for the free markets to play out will require looking at the economics of broadband in a different way. Tom Tauke , EVP of Public Affairs for Verizon, suggests focusing on the management of resources in a state of abundance, rather than the state of scarcity we usually associate with management.

My personal favorite argument made against regulation? Tom Sugrue, VP of Government Affairs for T-Mobile suggesting “We don’t need the FCC, we have the blogs monitoring in real time!” Very true.

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