Broadband Stimulus Notes
Each state will play a different role in the doling out of $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus, depending on how well prepared they are to begin broadband deployment, Rich Wonder, Alcatel-Lucent’s vice president of strategic marketing, said Thursday on National League of Cities TV and BroadbandCensus.com webinar. “Some have their act together,” Wonder said. The ones that have done some mapping and already have broadband programs “will be active participants” in the process, he said. Others, though, “will not be given a role nearly as active,” he said. Alcatel recently started a “Broadband For All” program (CD May 13 p11) to help customers considering applying for federal broadband money. ----
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The U.S. is doing better on broadband than international rankings may lead some to believe, said David Gross, a former U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy. Now a lawyer at Wiley Rein, he spoke at a Free State Foundation event Friday. It’s not important that the U.S. “always be viewed as number one at the expense of the rest of the world,” and the country should concentrate on promoting deployment and adoption regardless of its ranking, he said. Rankings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are useful, but even that group admits they're “deeply flawed,” he said. The biggest problem, said Gross, is that the rankings imply, “like baseball standings,” that winners are ranked higher and losers are ranked lower in a “zero-sum game.” Even if every country doubled its broadband subscriptions, the rankings would imply that nothing had changed, he said. Later, Gross condemned a Free Press paper calling for more broadband competition. A recent report by the ITU showed the U.S. to have the lowest broadband prices relative to incomes, Gross said. And the EU recently concluded that there can be no market failure in places with more than one broadband provider, he said.