It’s easy for the FCC to set aside Title II rules that don’t apply in particular technological and market situations. In fact, it does this all the time.

This week, the Federal Communications Commission released information about new draft rules for an open internet. This followed the U.S. Court of Appeals decision which struck down the legal path used to implement the original Open Internet rules, but upheld the FCC’s authority to do so under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, or via reclassification of broadband as a “Title II” service.

The Agriculture Act of 2014 is signed into law, along with a provision creating a rural gigabit network pilot program. This is big news for some rural communities.

As communications technology changes, it is important that all Americans have access to reliable communications service. Rural America cannot get left behind.

From Sunday, June 23 to Wednesday, June 26, 2013 participants representing more than 500 local, regional, and national advocacy organizations gathered outside of DC to participate in the National Rural Assembly.  The Assembly works to build a stronger, more vibrant rural America and during the conference attendees discussed rural policies regarding health care, education, community development, and broadband deployment.

There has been a spate of editorials recently from various telecommunications industry executives and analysts that try to paint a cheerful picture of the state of US broadband. Today’s piece in the New York Times by Verizon head Lowell McAdam is the latest. These pieces generally operate by cherry-picking statistics and using rhetorical tricks to make their point. The op-ed format, of course, is hardly suited to the nuanced analysis that is necessary to understand the state of US broadband, and in particular how it compares to broadband in other advanced industrial economies. As a result, unpacking every claim in it that I have issue with would be a time-consuming enterprise. So instead of going through Mr. McAdam’s piece claim-by-claim I’d like to call attention to one argument in particular that I think could lead people to the wrong conclusion.