Senator Gordon Smith Presents his Broadband for America Act of 2006
Senator Gordon Smith Presents his Broadband for America Act of 2006
Bill Aspires to Clear the Path for More Affordable Broadband Networks
Joscelin Cooper on April 27th, 2006
Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) addressed the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association’s Legislative and Policy Conference earlier this week, and took the opportunity to present his Broadband for America Act of 2006. The Act is a streamlined piece of legislation that seeks to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and offer a targeted address of four critical issues.
Senator Smith hopes that the brief and focused nature of the bill will allow it to pass quickly through the Senate in order “to promote the construction of new broadband networks in rural America.”
Senator Smith remarks on the objectives of the proposed act: “Leaving outdated laws on the books stalls job creation and inhibits the introduction of wireless technology that can be utilized in parts of America today’s technology will never reach. Today’s laws choke job creation with regulation and hold back innovation that proves time and time again to improve consumer’s options.”
The bill includes legislation that will affect wireline video regulations and ease provider's entrance to the market. This point is intended to relieve wireline video providers of having to negotiate franchise agreements with cities and towns. It also introduces new legislation for municipal broadband that will allow “municipalities to band together and offer affordable broadband service in areas where private companies cannot or will not provide service.
Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, And Why Corporate News Censored the StoryA BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.
The days are now numbered for surfing an uncensored, open-access Internet, using your favorite search engine to search a bottomless cyber-sea of information in the grandest democratic forum ever conceived by humankind. Instead you can look forward to Googling about on a walled-off, carefully selected corpus of government propaganda and sanitized information "safe" for public consumption. Indoctrinated and sealed off from the outer world, you will inhabit a matrix where every ounce of creative, independent thinking that challenges government policies and values will be squelched. Just a wild conspiracy theory, you say? No longer can this be rationally maintained.
