In response to the announcement by the FCC of the panelists for the workshops on deployment and technology for the National Broadband Plan, Harold Feld, Legal Director, Public Knowledge, issued the following statement.
“It would appear that the FCC has chosen to begin by concentrating on the perspective of traditional industry infrastructure providers. There is no harm in that, provided that the deployment experiences of non-commercial providers, local governments, anchor institutions, and other non-traditional infrastructure and “last mile” providers — as well as the perspective of public interest organizations and academics with appropriate expertise — will likewise receive the same attention.”
“We fully expect that the FCC will include these non-industry providers and these public interest perspectives on the critical questions of deployment and industry structure on future panels. It would create an extremely inaccurate picture of our national broadband infrastructure if the FCC relegated non-commercial providers and public interest experts to areas such as ‘consumer protection’ and excluded them from the discussion of deployment, investment, and ensuring robust competition.”
The list of FCC workshop participants can be found here.
Members of the media may contact Communications Director Shiva Stella with inquiries, interview requests, or to join the Public Knowledge press list at shiva@publicknowledge.org or 405-249-9435.