Recipients of grants from the broadband stimulus program must “use them for networks that are non-discriminatory and which interconnect with other networks,” Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn said Monday.
Speaking at a roundtable discussion on the grant program hosted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), Sohn said that, “Anything less would give taxpayers an inadequate return on their investment.” Her statement is here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2036. She also called for strong interconnection requirements, including wireless roaming at reasonable rates.
While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put forward four principles of Internet non-discrimination, those principles are “insufficient to ensure non-discriminatory networks, because they do not address cases where a network provider prioritizes or favors certain content, applications and services over others,” Sohn said. Also at the roundtable, Public Knowledge Communications Director Art Brodsky was scheduled to call for a broadband mapping program that will be conducted on behalf of the public without conflicts of interest. Data submitted for the map should be transparent and verifiable, Brodsky said. His statement is here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2038.
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