National Broadband Plan Workshop on International Lessons

National Broadband Plan Workshop (National Lessons)

See a webcast of the workshop

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Federal Communications Commission
August 18, 2009
9:30-12:00

Contact:
Narda Jones
Narda.Jones@fcc.gov
(202) 418-2489
http://broadband.gov/ws_int_lessons.html

FCC Participants

• John Giusti, Chief, International Bureau
• Paul de Sa, Chief, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis
• Irene Wu, Director of Research, International Bureau (see prepared presentation)

Outside Participant

• Yochai Benkler, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School

Panel: International Lessons

• Debra Lathen, President, Lathen Consulting and non-executive Director of British Telecom
• Raul Katz, Director, Business Strategy Research, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) (see prepared presentation)
• Robert Atkinson, Founder and President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) (see prepared presentation)
• Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, World Bank (see prepared presentation)
• Young Kyu Noh, Information and Communications Counselor, Embassy of Korea
• Jeffrey A. Eisenach, Ph.D., Chairman and Managing Partner, Empiris LLC and Adjunct Professor, George Mason University Law School (see prepared presentation)
• Robert Pepper, Vice President, Global Technology Policy, Cisco Systems (see prepared presentation)

The goal of this workshop will be to provide an overview of the international experience with broadband, highlighting select national broadband strategies, with a particular focus on the deployment of broadband infrastructure, increase in adoption, and successful regulatory approaches. The Commission seeks to identify global best practices for broadband strategies within other nations that may have particular relevance to expanding broadband deployment, adoption and usage the United States.

Speakers and other participants will focus on a number of subjects concerning the international experience including national broadband strategies, regulatory and policy approaches; data on international broadband usage, adoption, competition, and pricing from select countries; and approaches to benchmarking such data. The workshop will focus on countries (and areas within those countries) similar to the United States (and areas within the United States) in terms of population, income, education, urbanization, and other criteria.

The workshop will discuss whether and in which areas the United States is behind relative to other countries; and of these, which areas the United States is on a path to catch up as well as which areas the United States is likely to stay behind in the absence of a policy intervention. Participants will also discuss those metrics which should be a priority for study and how these could then form a baseline for policy discussions in the United States.

The following are some of the preliminary topics that will be covered at this workshop. The FCC is inviting suggestions.

• Review of other nations' strategies for broadband deployment
• Review of data on international broadband usage and adoption
• Approaches to benchmarking analysis for such data
• Use of international comparison in U.S. policy formation
• Cost and availability of key inputs, particularly spectrum.
• Best practices

Here's what some are already telling the FCC...

J. Scott Marcus
Late in 2008, my colleagues at the WIK (the Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste) completed a comprehensive study of Next Generation Access (NGA) on behalf of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA). Many would consider this study to be the definitive analysis of NGA for Europe. The study models the cost of various forms of fiber-based NGA (VDSL, PON, and point-to-point fiber to the home or building) in six major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden). A range of different characteristics were considered for each country, including the teledenstity of various portions of the national territory, topography, the fraction of access lines that can be run aerially, and other regulatory and pragmatic considerations that impact cost.

Europe Says It Leads US in Broadband Use
The European Union has re-established its lead over the United States in the use of high-speed computer connections, making the Continent "the world leader in broadband Internet."