Involvement in Battle for Regulation of Unlicensed Bands Called Important
Every city needs its own broadband plan, said Blair Levin, of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, during the NATOA conference in San Diego Friday. He said the debate between private interests over how unlicensed bands should be regulated is “way…
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too important” not to involve cities. While some see the country’s communications system as a triumph of free-market forces, the telco, cable and wireless networks all required government actions to make the economics viable, providing access to rights of ways and poles, access to the programming created by others, construction permitting, access to spectrum, and much more, he said. Levin also said the most important “new commons” to develop in this era is broadband, with its networks, devices and applications. Making a broadband plan for each city should start from an analysis of where market forces are heading, he said. And in those plans, the communities must assess where they fit in the current market, Levin said. He said every plan he has seen is different but the vision remains the same: “Ubiquitous, affordable, abundant bandwidth, with everyone on and using the platform to improve public services.” To achieve that vision, the cities must drive fiber deeper, use spectrum more efficiently, get everyone on, and create applications and re-imagine government processes to use the platform to improve the delivery of public goods and services, he said. That same vision and those four strategies apply to cities, but the tactics for achieving that vision are diverse, he said. Levin also addressed the digital divide but mentioned one that “no one has noticed,” the digital divide between Starkville, Mississippi, and such cities as New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, and well-off suburbs like Beverly Hills, California, Scarsdale, New York, and Bethesda, Maryland. Starkville residents have not one but two options to purchase an affordable gigabit, which is two more options than the residents have in those large cities and wealthy suburbs, he said.