Housing Boom October 12, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New?, Policy , add a commentWhen I noticed the Internet Innovation Alliance’s new broadband blog, I predicted IIA’s Internet heavyweights would “inform the debates in a major way.”
I think it’s happening.
Bruce Mehlman’s post yesterday on High Speed Housing is the kind of substantive analysis the alleged “experts” — that have no policy experience — simply don’t generate. Also, it’s the kind of consensus, commonsense approach to policy that the best tech wonks and regulators have long taken.
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Tech President? September 19, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, Trends, What's New?, Policy , add a commentAn article in this week’s BusinessWeek Online raises a question I hear more and more in meetings and conversations: Who will be the tech president? While most major candidates at least have tech and telecom platforms, there seems to be an opening for whichever candidates can enunciate a platform that sounds different, one that recognizes the growing importance of our sector to the U.S. economy.
What I find especially surprising is that while I’ve never really heard presidential-horse-race conversations going on in policy meetings, or in on-hours conversation between tech and telecom people, this time around it’s going on all over the place.
Who steps up and takes the tech throne? There’s probably a lot of support to be had.
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New Broadband Blog September 11, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, What's New?, Networking, Policy , 2 commentsThe Internet Innovation Alliance has launched Broadband Hub, a new blog for the discussion of national broadband issues by three of the sector’s heaviest hitters: Larry Irving, President of Irving Information Group, and former head of NTIA under President Clinton; Bruce Mehlman, co-founder of Mehlman & Vogel and Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy under President G.W. Bush; and Laura Spinning, a longtime industry workhorse with experience at Level 3, USTA, and the office of Senator, and then Vice-President, Gore.
This won’t be just another meaningless rumination on broadband policy. I expect these three, whose combined experience in the sector surpasses the life span of most tech companies, to inform the debates in a major way.
The money line, in an inaugural post about Internet traffic issues:
Internet users collectively create enough new digital information every 15 minutes to fill the Library of Congress.
Perhaps an early question for the new trio to address, courtesy of 463: Broadband rationing?
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Patent Reform September 10, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : What's New?, Policy , add a commentAs predicted by Andrew Noyes of Tech Daily (subscription only) last week in the featured interview for TIA Network, the House passed its patent reform bill only days after it left committee.
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New Media Anew
Posted by ianmartinez in : What's New?, Policy , add a commentSearching through some of the news from last week, my eye was caught by an FEC decision that blogs count as media and are therefore exempt from Commission oversight.
The ruling centered around two cases, one involving the left-leaning blog Daily Kos, would seem to reaffirm what most of us already suspected — that the FEC shouldn’t be steering what an increasingly important and increasingly democratic (small-d) blogosphere has to say about political culture.
A question for everyone out there, though: What does this mean for blogs with commercial interests, like my own (which are fairly indirect, via TIA’s member companies) or PR blogs? Are they “media” in the electoral-regulatory sense? Why or why not? If yes, is that good or bad?
Real food for thought.
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Trading Up September 6, 2007
Posted by Grant Seiffert in : General, Trends, Policy , add a commentEditor’s Note: TIA President Grant Seiffert writes a weekly President’s Message to members in the Network, TIA’s newsletter. The following is from the September 2nd weekly issue.
There’s always a charged atmosphere around the approval process for free trade agreements (FTAs), because so many different parties have so much at stake. What makes the FTAs currently before Congress unique is the overwhelming support for them across all facets of U.S. industry.
It’s no secret that the Korea FTA, in particular, would present major benefits to the U.S. high tech economy. The FTA would reduce Korea’s domestic preference programs, especially for wireless technologies, where U.S. suppliers have marked advantages, while putting not a single U.S. job at risk because of the high cost of labor in Korea. Other terms negotiated with significant feedback from TIA and its members include the elimination of onerous licensing requirements and burdensome customs procedures. Opening a new market to U.S. products with no ill effects back home is an opportunity too good to let pass, and TIA is working actively to educate Congress on its benefits.
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