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isen.com, LLC: Internet Experts Tell FCC: It's the Internet Stupid! FCC's National Broadband Plan Should Put Internet First
COS COB, CT, Jun 08, 2009 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) --
A group of 41 computer scientists, network engineers, Internet
business owners, legal scholars, best-selling authors and other
Internet experts are telling the FCC to put the Internet at the
center of its National Broadband Plan. "This is our country's big
chance to make up lost ground," said spokesperson David Isenberg,
Principal Prosultant(SM) of isen.com, LLC, "but a faster connection
won't matter if we're not connecting to a free and open Internet." In
essence, the experts are telling the FCC, "It's the Internet,
Stupid." They've published their statement at
http://ItsTheInternetStupid.com/.
The group points out that most of the benefits that Congress wants
the National Broadband Plan to deliver -- such as job creation, civic
participation, energy efficiency and health care delivery -- come
from one specific use of broadband connectivity: accessing the
Internet. (Broadband is also used in cable TV, cell phone and
corporate networks.) The group is concerned that a focus on broadband
that does not emphasize Internet connections could lead to an
infrastructure that does not yield the very benefits the Broadband
Plan aims to deliver.
The group includes Vint Cerf, who, with Bob Kahn, designed the TCP
and IP protocols in 1973. It also includes David P. Reed, a
co-inventor of one of the Internet's most important principles, Steve
Crocker, who designed the process that improves and expands the
definition of the Internet, and Scott Bradner, a lifelong leader of
the Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force and other
Internet technical groups. It also includes Mitch Kapor and John
Perry Barlow, who founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Robin Chase, who was recently named
by Time Magazine as one of 100 most influential people of 2009, and
Lawrence Lessig, a leader in Internet law and culture.
The group includes Michael R. Nelson, who worked as lead Senate
staffer on the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, which helped
transform the Internet from an academic experiment to the useful
utility it is today. It includes Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Media,
producer of many widely-respected technical books and conferences. It
includes authors of formative books about the Internet such as Howard
Rheingold, Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Jeff Jarvis,
insider newsletter publishers Dave Burstein and Gordon Cook, and some
two dozen other Internet experts of many stripes. The group was
organized over the weekend by David S. Isenberg, Robin Chase and
David Weinberger to address concerns about fundamental assumptions of
the FCC's first document on a National Broadband Plan.
"The telephone and cable companies, who are saying 'broadband,
broadband, broadband,' have money, power, lobbyists and a cash-cow
business that is threatened by the Internet," says Isenberg. "The
best way to get our message out is by organizing a large group of
distinguished Internet experts."
The FCC was directed to produce a National Broadband Plan as a
provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The
ARRA tells the FCC to deliver a National Broadband Plan to Congress
by February 17, 2010. The "It's the Internet, Stupid," experts and
over 50 other signers are submitting their statement to the FCC in a
first round of public comments that ends today.
About David S. Isenberg: Isenberg was a Distinguished Member of
Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories until he quit in 1998 to
found isen.com, LLC, a decidedly independent telecom analysis firm.
He blogs at isen.com/blog and produces F2C: Freedom to Connect, a
technology policy conference held in Washington, DC, every March.
About Robin Chase: Chase is currently CEO of GoLoco, a ride-sharing
and social network, is also founder and former CEO of ZipCar, the
world's most successful car-sharing network. Chase was named as one
of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of 2009. She was an
invited speaker at the prestigious TED conference in 2008.
About David Weinberger: Weinberger is co-author of the best-selling
"Cluetrain Manifesto" and author of two other books that are seminal
Internet works, "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," and "Everything is
Miscellaneous." He is a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for
Internet and Society.
About isen.com, LLC: isen.com, LLC is an independent telecom analysis
firm based in Cos Cob, CT.
Prosultant is a service mark of isen.com, LLC
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact
David S. Isenberg
203-661-4798
Email Contact
SOURCE: isen.com, LLC
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=D93BD6716E4586C8
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