The Podium
Blog posts tagged with 'Iia In The News'
Friday, June 19
By IIA
Minnesota Farm Guide edition:
Broadband access can offer job opportunities, economic development and improved quality of life.
One group helping to lead efforts for universal broadband is the U.S. Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).
Based in Washington, D.C., IIA is a non-profit organization guided by the principle that any family or business without broadband access is at a disadvantage to those who do have broadband.
“There is going to be a lot of talk about broadband in the next one or two years. An integral part of that discussion is what’s happening in rural America - how do we get up to the speed they need to lead a broadband life?” said Larry Irving, co-chair of the U.S. Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).
Check out the full interview.
Thursday, June 18
By IIA
Two items to report. First up is an op-ed from IIA Co-Chairmen Bruce Mehlman and Larry Irving on Roll Call. It’s titled “Making Broadband Dollars Count: Maximizing Our Return on the Feds’ High-Speed Internet Investments,” and here’s a taste:
An effective national broadband strategy will enable the government to partner with the private sector to extend broadband service to every corner of the country, while at the same time raising awareness of its benefits. A national broadband strategy should also evolve as technologies improve and as we learn more from broadband mapping and from the return on initial stimulus investments. The best strategy will start by examining where we stand today and then identify policies to get us where we want to be.
Read the whole thing.
Elsewhere, Bruce Mehlman was interviewed by the Las Cruces Sun-News about the federal broadband stimulus:
“The stimulus money will be doled out in the form of competitive grants and loans. The overseeing agencies are expected to release application guidelines by the end of June.
“I think you’ll see applications by private competitors, by public interest nonprofits, and by government agencies at the state and local level,” said Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance.
The alliance, an organization that advocates the expansion of broadband connections, believes the majority of the money should go toward unserved areas rather than underserved.
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“It’s more of a triage than a like of one and dislike of the other. If you have limited stimulus dollars, someone with no connection at all has a clear problem, and an understandable solution,” Mehlman said.
Fixing issues in unserved regions is simpler than defining and troubleshooting problems in underserved regions, the alliance asserts.
“What’s underserved is subject to a debate that hasn’t yet happened,” Mehlman said.
Again, read the whole thing.
Monday, June 01
By IIA
The Dominion Post (via TMC.net) has a great read on how broadband access can change lives. Quoted in the article is IIA Co-Chairman Larry Irving, along with Brian Mefford, CEO of Connected Nation and IIA Broadband Ambassador.
Tuesday, April 28
By IIA
Congress Daily reports on how the major telecoms are reacting to the $7.2 billion marked for broadband in the federal stimulus. Quoted in the article are IIA Co-Chairmen Bruce Mehlman and Larry Irving:
[E]xperts acknowledge there’s a real possibility key players could sit the program out, or not participate as heavily as expected.
“If regulation is onerous, then yes, it will slow down investment,” warned Bruce Melhman, who ran the NTIA during President George W. Bush’s first term. He now wears several hats, including co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, which represents companies and public-interest groups that support wider broadband deployment.
But co-chairman Larry Irving, who ran NTIA during the Clinton administration, noted that the agency’s previous grants have usually gone to municipalities, nonprofits and states that often partnered with companies. “There’s no real reason for me to believe that this would be markedly different,” said Irving, adding that the RUS historically has favored the private sector with its federal assistance.
Check out Congress Daily’s full report.
Thursday, April 16
By IIA
InternetNews has a rundown of the current debate over the federal broadband stimulus. Quoted in the piece are IIA co-chairmen Larry Irving and Bruce Mehlman.
From the article:
Larry Irving, a former assistant Commerce Secretary under the Clinton administration and co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, said the agencies are unlikely to take the stimulus process as an opportunity to rewrite the existing regulatory regime for the Internet.
“My sense is what’s likely to happen is something along the lines that there are existing regulatory models that can be bootstrapped for the purposes of these grants,” Irving said.
Irving, recently returned from a stint with the Obama transition team, joined fellow IIA co-chair Bruce Mehlman, himself a former assistant Commerce Secretary under the George W. Bush administration, on a conference call with reporters discussing the decision-making process the agencies
The grants, Mehlman said, “offer a nice chance to jumpstart progress toward national broadband.” Nevertheless, he cautioned that the federal money is only a small fraction of what ISPs invest each year toward expanding and maintaining their networks, suggesting that the ultimate goal of delivering broadband to more people would be best-served by a relaxed regulatory approach.
“After the 7 billion is spent, we’re going to need ongoing private investment,” Mehlman said. “If regulations are onerous, then yes, it will slow down investment.”
Check out the full InternetNews article.
Wednesday, April 15
By IIA
The Washington Business Journal has an article today on IIA, a national broadband plan, and deploying broadband to “under-served” and “unserved” areas. IIA co-chairman Bruce Mehlman was interviewed for the piece:
The Internet Innovation Alliance’s co-chairman Bruce Mehlman, who served as assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy from 2001 to 2003, says his group is hoping that as many worthy groups and projects are submitted for funding as possible to get the best results.
“At the end of the day this is about economic recovery and job creation,” he said. But when it comes to the forthcoming national broadband plan, finding sustainable solutions also will be key. To do so, Mehlman said the agencies need to “tap local knowledge and expertise… [and] avoid connecting today those who will need subsidies to stay connected.” Broadband stimulus funds should be spent in the best interest of tax payers, Mehlman added. “These funds aren’t intended to keep [private companies’] balance sheets healthy, but their knowledge ought to be considered… don’t discourage investment by those who will maintain these networks.”
Check out the full story.
Thursday, April 09
By Brad
With the FCC calling for input on a national broadband plan, and the federal broadband stimulus still waiting to be distributed, Telephony Online asked IIA co-chairman Larry Irving for his thoughts on both. From the resulting article:
“There are two different things going on here, that are all of a piece,” Irving said in an interview this morning. “The stimulus is a timely, targeted and temporary effort to stimulate the American economy, and this administration has always realized that broadband is a part of that.”
At the same time, every agency of the federal government is exploring ways to “use technology to make the lives of the American people better, and part of that is the national broadband policy,” Irving said. “The FCC has a big job ahead of it.”
Check out the full interview.
Wednesday, April 08
By Brad
Today’s Washington Post has a report on the agency’s project, and how the process may be a bit pokey for the flurry of broadband action spurred by stimulus funds:
[B]y the time the FCC creates its plan for broadband, it is likely that Internet service providers will have claimed much of the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds set aside to build high-speed networks without major input from the agency. And that has some worried that the Obama administration’s call to wire the nation risks having taxpayer money going toward projects that are not needed and have been created without clear guidelines.
Later in the story, IIA co-founder Larry Irving is quoted on the need for the stimulus funds to be put into action quickly:
Ideally, the FCC’s plan would have been in place before stimulus funds were granted, say tech advisers who helped craft President Obama’s broadband strategy. But the urgency of the economic crisis called for quick ways to create jobs, including through broadband deployment, they said.
“We need the stimulus to create jobs that are timely, targeted and temporary,” said Larry Irving, a former head of the NTIA and an adviser to Obama’s transition team. “That was the first stage of a multistage effort to get our arms around national broadband strategy.”
Tuesday, March 10
By Brad
IIA co-founder Larry Irving has penned an op-ed for Roll Call on the broadband portion of the federal economic stimulus. Here’s an excerpt:
Virtually every analyst agrees that rural Americans are the least likely to have available access to broadband. Geography and economics conspire against investment in broadband in America. It is simply not easy to recoup broadband investment in states where cattle outnumber people and homes are dispersed widely. Fiber optic and other broadband technologies are expensive to deploy in these areas, and broadband wireless technologies are just now becoming fully viable for deployment.
Just as this nation brought electricity, telephones and Internet service to rural America, we must make broadband networks ubiquitously available, as well. Appropriately, the lion’s share of this funding will address broadband in unserved areas through programs at the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture. In addition, funding will be available for improving broadband networks at libraries, community colleges, community technology centers and other locations where low-income families and the working poor are most likely to go for broadband access. According to Morgan Stanley, the national residential broadband penetration rate is currently about 56 percent of all households. For those 40 million plus households who don’t have broadband at home, and for those tens of millions of Americans without basic Internet access who disproportionately are poor, recent immigrants, senior citizens or other minorities, these community investments will make broadband more available and more accessible.
Check out the full op-ed. And for more articles from IIA’s founders, visit the op-ed section of the IIA press room.
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