"While some have protested the international broadband penetration rankings," Adelstein said, alluding to some of his colleagues at the Commission, "the fact is the U.S. has dropped year-after-year. This downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global competitors."
Copps called the lack of a national broadband policy "tantamount to playing Russian roulette with our future."
"Each and every citizen of this great country should have access to the wonders of communications," Copps said. "I'm not talking about doing all these people some kind of feel-good, do-gooder favor by including them. I'm talking about doing America a favor. I'm talking about making certain our citizens can compete here at home and around the world with those who are already using broadband in all aspects of their lives."
“Freedom” is a word that gets used a lot in Washington, but what does it mean, exactly, for Google and its users? Tuesday night, our CEO Eric Schmidt told the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s annual Aspen Summit that freedom and openness are the core principles that helped make possible the Internet's – and Google's -- birth and growth.
The Internet was built on open standards, Eric noted, and that those platforms are really platforms of economic opportunity and free expression. Free markets and open standards have led to so much innovation, that it’s usually best for government not to rush into regulating new technology. And he cited both political empowerment (such as the YouTube presidential debates) and economic empowerment (like the $3 billion that we paid out to website owners last year through our advertising partnerships) as the fruits of Internet freedom.
In the policy arena, Eric offered three specific calls to action. First, he said we need to defend freedom of speech as more speech comes online – and give teeth to the issue by pressing governments to classify censorship as a trade barrier. Second, we need to continue working toward universal broadband access, by government collaborating with industry and making sure that networks remain content neutral. And third, he called on government to be more transparent to its citizens – citing as an example our Sitemaps partnership with the federal government and five state governments.
But freedom wasn’t the only thing on Eric’s mind Tuesday. The PFF crowd was particularly interested in Google’s positions on both the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction and on net neutrality (and posed a few questions skeptical of our stance). Without announcing any definitive plans to bid, and cautioning that we're still carefully evaluating our options, Eric indicated that Google “probably” would decide to participate in the auction.
Check out the complete video of Eric’s talk, and tell us what freedom on the 'Net means to you.
Those who complain about Google's purchase of DoubleClick make two claims. Both are flawed. The first argument is that, since both firms have a large market share of their respective spheres, a merger would be monopolistic. The flaw is that the two companies undertake activities that don't overlap. Google places text ads mainly on its own Web sites and search-result screens. DoubleClick delivers display ads from advertisers to Web sites. It creates no ads and controls no Web sites. Even if we believe that Internet advertising is a distinct market (debatable, since it comprises only about 5% of all advertising) the combined firms will not gain any market power since they do not have any business in common. The second argument comes from privacy advocates who have filed a brief with the FTC. They say the merger "could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America." The FTC's antitrust function and its consumer protection function are fundamentally different. Indeed, the more information markets have, the more competitive they are. If "privacy" advocates have their way, there would be less information and markets would not work as well.
Those who complain about Google's purchase of DoubleClick make two claims. Both are flawed.
The first argument is that, since both firms have a large market share of their respective spheres, a merger would be monopolistic. The flaw is that the two companies undertake activities that don't overlap. Google places text ads mainly on its own Web sites and search-result screens. DoubleClick delivers display ads from advertisers to Web sites. It creates no ads and controls no Web sites. Even if we believe that Internet advertising is a distinct market (debatable, since it comprises only about 5% of all advertising) the combined firms will not gain any market power since they do not have any business in common.
The second argument comes from privacy advocates who have filed a brief with the FTC. They say the merger "could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America." The FTC's antitrust function and its consumer protection function are fundamentally different. Indeed, the more information markets have, the more competitive they are. If "privacy" advocates have their way, there would be less information and markets would not work as well.
Coveted bits of the radio spectrum called "white spaces" -- unused areas of spectrum wedged between licensed TV channels -- may soon be freed up by the Federal Communications Commission. Right now no broadband devices are allowed to use these parts of the spectrum, but the FCC is considering whether to let companies sell FCC-certified wireless devices that would be used without an exclusive broadcast license in these slivers of bandwidth. Such white-space devices (WSDs) would be low-power and so would emit signals over very small geographic areas. White space within the TV band is unlicensed, like WiFi, but is physically better suited than WiFi for broadband transmission.
Google and other companies (including Dell, EarthLink, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, and Philips) have formed the "White Spaces Coalition," to persuade the FCC to establish appropriate interference standards that would allow entrepreneurs to develop fixed and mobile devices that utilize these airwaves. Earlier this year, the coalition submitted two prototype devices (from Microsoft and Philips) to the FCC's engineers to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.
The FCC's engineering analysis, released two weeks ago, confirms what we have stated all along: it is technologically feasible to provide Internet access through this segment of spectrum without interfering with either digital television signals or wireless microphones. While one of the prototypes unfortunately was damaged, the other prototype fully demonstrated the promise of using these "white spaces" for Internet access. The coalition filed comments at the FCC yesterday responding to these test results.FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has expressed a keen interest in keeping this matter moving forward, and the coalition will be working with FCC staff to address any remaining technical issues. As the Washington Post notes today, the promise that this spectrum holds for bringing the Internet to more Americans is too great to ignore:
