Will President Obama Be Good For Broadband?

That depends on who you ask. Consumer groups are no doubt going to flip for his proposed expansions of online privacy, pushing providers to offer true next-generation speeds and fighting bandwidth caps. ISPs, free market types and the MPAA/RIAA are no doubt going to call foul on some of these proposals. Obama is also proposing to open up big chunks of wireless spectrum including the already-opened white spaces. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of fiber or enabling better competitive choice in our telecommunications options.

As a rarity, I’m going to ask that you drop your two cents into the comments and leave my opinion out of the main post. Do you think Obama will fix broadband? Which policies do you want to see him adopt?

UPDATE: Oops. Almost forgot to link to an article from DailyTech that details some of the proposals.

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One Response to Will President Obama Be Good For Broadband?

  1. Mike Taylor says:

    I would like to see the Community Broadband Act of 2005 supported. But perhaps because John McCain was the sponsor of that bill in the Senate, Obama never signed on to it. Hopefully, though, he will support initiatives like this as president including good national broadband policy.

    The bill does not address the issue of not whether local governments are the best providers of broadband. In some cases they might be, while in others the private sector might be the best option. Rather, the issue is that no local government should be barred by arbitrary state laws from considering the option of providing broadband to its residents.

    Educause (http://www.educause.edu/) states that “This Lautenberg-McCain bill explicitly bars discrimination and thereby promotes healthy competition for broadband services among multiple providers. This legislation will help local communities serve the educational and economic needs of their citizens.”

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