The House Subcommittee Hearing: Broadband in Rural America met on Tuesday. I have been looking for information on the meeting – and have come up with the following.

 The testimony from Mark Lloyd, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an affiliated professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

I liked Lloyd’s testimony. There weren’t any big surprises – but he brought up some great points. First he started by recognizing that broadband is not a technology issue – it’s a policy issue and the policy makers need to get in to make a difference.

Later gets into the policy specifics:

A bi-partisan bill led by Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is an important first step. In its current form, “The Broadband Census of America Act,”would require the FCC to report on deployment information detailing a wide range of data-rate speeds with at least the detail of nine-digit zip codes. And Senator Inouye has introduced S.B. 1492: The Broadband Data Improvement Act. Section 3 of that act would “establish a new definition of second generation broadband to reflect a data rate that is not less than the data rate required to reliably transmit full-motion, high-definition video.” These are both improvements over the current state, but I admit a preference for Senator Inouye’s approach, with one caveat. I would add two terms: real-time and interactive.
He points out that one issue is that customers often think they’re getting broadband – but they aren’t really. The connections are better than dialup – but they aren’t broadband. And we need to go beyond the current providers to set standards and provide policy. It’s their job to look after their business concerns, a goal that may conflict with getting the country up to broadband status of our international counterparts.

Also Lloyd mentioned reinstating the Technology Opportunity Program (TOP) – a great program that funded some wonderful programs (OK in fairness I worked on a TOP program but still the program was good).

Lloyd support universal service and again brings up the need to have good data – in this case to know which rural areas are in need of universal service support and which communities are already served.

Also the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association ran an article on Charlie Davenport’s testimony.

Charles Davenport is the General Manager of Topsham Telephone. Topsham was apparently the recipient of funding from the RUS/REA yet Davenport has some concerns on the current program. Davenport testified that among his concerns with the RUS broadband loan program is the fact that the loans are sometimes issued to entities whose technology is not appropriate to the situation or whose business plan does not include a universal commitment to the area, noting that “these scarce resources should not be used to blindly fund technology not suited for that terrain,” he said.