US Initiative Will Examine How To Speed Deployment of Broadband Worldwide, FCC Official Says

“That’s a very ambitious goal,” Verveer said. “It’s one that is shared by other countries.” The U.S. contribution will be in trying to coordinate the Internet push, he said. The World Bank also will be involved, he said. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik, World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu and senior State Department officials are expected to be on hand for the announcement, Verveer said.

“It’s a serious effort to try to promote the idea that telecommunications investment … ought to enjoy a place and a priority of development that heretofore roads and electricity and water, things of that nature, have enjoyed,” said Verveer, who was a State Department official before working for Wheeler. One basic assumption is “we are better off as more and more people connect to the Internet,” Verveer said. “There are quite significant geopolitical benefits as well,” he said. “We benefit if there is order, if there is prosperity, if there is economic activity.”

To have development, a nation has to have the rule of law and has to address corruption, “which is endemic in much of the world,” Verveer said. “You’ve got to have licensing regimes that are sensible, you’ve got to have legal and regulatory arrangements that are favorable for investment,” he said. “Some of the elites in some countries show a remarkable resistance to that set of principles.” U.S. carriers, with the exception of AT&T’s investment in Mexico, have rarely been engaged in international markets, he said. “It would have been useful to have U.S. service providers operating around the world extensively over the last 20 years.”

Verveer also said comparing broadband in the U.S. with deployment in other nations is complicated. “One can be inspired by the experience of South Korea” with its very high rates of speed, he said. “But you also have to stop and consider both the ability of the government in South Korea to assist with that kind of an outcome and also the fact that in general the population in the major urban areas is vastly more dense than in most of the United States.”

“There is no right way” to expand broadband, said Glenn Reynolds, NTIA chief of staff. The lesson from the U.S. is “you need to answer the tough questions, you need to do a strong soul search of what your strengths are, what you need” before buildout starts, he said. “Every project is going to ultimately be different.” The U.S. economy to an increasing extent is driven by the Internet economy, Reynolds said. The U.S. has been the leader in the Internet economy “and other nations are doing everything that they can to try to catch up to us,” he said. It’s important to the U.S. economy that the U.S. remains a leader, he said.

The government of Myanmar looks at the U.S. as an example of how to expand broadband, said Kyaw Tin, Myanmar Integrated Networks general counsel. “We have many experts advising the government and many of them are U.S.-based.” Myanmar has looked at everything from a USF-type system for paying the cost of deployment to a regulatory model based on the FCC, he said.

"There is a clear mandate for American global leadership in telecom,” said Adonis Hoffman, chairman of Business in the Public Interest and former counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Our regulatory system is a model of transparency, independence, and fairness. Developing countries need the ethics and efficiency that comes from partnership with leading U.S. companies.” The challenge of any such initiative will be to survive ITU and General Assembly politics, which have skewed anti-American since the 1980s, he said.

“This is exactly what we should be talking about -- how to make it easier to bring the rest of the world online,” said Berin Szoka, president of Tech Freedom. But getting involved with the U.N. carries risks, Szoka said. “The organization has a long track record of mistaking ‘free as in speech’ with ‘free as in beer,’ of confusing enabling private activity with socialism. Here, the goal should be to create security for investment, the kind of friendly regulatory environment that the U.S. used to have, clearing barriers, making government assets like spectrum and land available, and, importantly, smarter infrastructure policy.”

As a rule, expanding access to broadband and to the Internet is good for a country's social and economic well-being and for the promotion of free speech and individual rights, said Randolph May, president of the Free State Foundation. “But we know there are some countries where the government will go to great lengths to censor and control the technology,” he said. “Alongside providing assistance with regard to the more pure technical and developmental aspects of doing what is needed to increase connectivity, it is important that the U.S. exercise a leadership role in promoting Internet freedom from government control.”

“We commend the U.N. for leading this effort to increase global Internet connectivity,” emailed Julie Kearney, CEA vice president-regulatory affairs. “Access to broadband has become a basic human right and making investment in telecom infrastructure a priority around the world is crucial to improving people’s lives.”

Doug Brake, telecom policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said the initiative is good news. “Study after study consistently show connecting the unconnected is a powerful tool to drive growth in developing nations,” Brake emailed. “Communications, access to basic information, mobile banking, etc., empower local populations and help government and business run more efficiently. There are certainly unique challenges to getting the next billion online, a coordinated approach should be welcomed.”