As Tom noted yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit released a decision on Friday upholding the FCC’s authority to open up markets in video services by instructing cable franchising authorities to reduce barriers to entry for telecom companies. We sat down yesterday with USTelecom’s Senior VP for Law and Policy Jon Banks to discuss the court decision and the original FCC order that the decision upheld.
Broadband is bringing consumers a whole new world of choices in entertainment opportunities, from instant downloading of movies to a set-top box to streaming SNL highlights over Hulu on your laptop. Whether you’re checking show times and buying tickets on Fandango, checking out on-demand features from your couch, or streaming your favorite episodes of Buffy from the beach with Netflix’s new “Watch Instantly” option, this new episode of Broadband Now will fill you in on how to beat the summer heat with broadband.
What do intellectual property and copyright have to do with broadband and telecom? We sat down with USTelecom’s Kevin Rupy, director of policy development, to find out.
School may be out for summer, but students and teachers alike can keep the learning process going with the wide variety of educational opportunities available on the Internet. For more on how staying connected with broadband can help combat the summer learning loss, keep parents and educators in touch, and help teachers with continuing education, check out this newest edition of Broadband Now.
Did you know that 61% of travelers receive text updates on their mobile devices for flight arrival or departure status? And more than 60% of Americans will use the Internet to book travel in 2008? So what does broadband have to do with your summer vacation plans? Find out in the latest installment of our broadband news update, Broadband Now.
As you may have noticed, we recently began promoting USTelecom’s webinars here on our blog. To give you a better idea of what those are all about, I sat down this morning with Tom Soroka, USTelecom’s vice president for engineering and technology, to talk about what webinars are, what kinds of topics USTelecom webinars cover, and what we’re planning for the near future.
Be sure to check our events page regularly to see a listing of our upcoming webinars and to visit the archives of our previous webinars, available to you on demand.
Following last Wednesday’s passage in the House by a margin of 318-106, the full Senate voted on Thursday to approve the Farm Bill. The bill will reauthorize the Rural Utilities Service’s broadband loan program, and it contains language recommended by USTelecom to strengthen the program by better targeting unserved areas and opening up the program to more borrowers. USTelecom President and CEO Walter B. McCormick Jr. hailed the bill’s passage, noting that “broadband creates countless new opportunities in rural America through e-health programs, distance learning, and energy conservation and this bill will help ensure that all consumers enjoy the same benefits from high-speed Internet services, regardless of where they live. We strongly urge the Senate to pass the bill quickly to get it to the President’s desk.”
President Bush has pledged to veto the bill due to its $300 billion price tag over five years and the inclusion of multiple earmarks and agricultural subsidies–objections that are unrelated to the RUS and the broadband loan program. However, given the overwhelming margins by which the bill passed in both chambers, a Congressional override of the president’s veto seems imminent.
Just after the Senate vote, we talked with Bill Deere, USTelecom’s vice president for government affairs, about the legislation.
With a recent Senate hearing and a new bill released by Sen. Ted Stevens (R - Alaska), the FCC may have a new incentive to act on the issue of phantom traffic. To talk about the issue and what the recent Congressional action might mean at the FCC, we sat down recently with USTelecom’s Glenn Reynolds, VP for policy, and Bill Deere, VP for Government Affairs.
