LegiStorm

Summary:

Over the past decade, the telecommunications sector has undergone a vast transformation fueled by rapid technological growth and subsequent evolution of the marketplace. Much of the U.S. policy debate over the evolving telecommunications infrastructure is framed within the context of a "national broadband policy." The way a national broadband policy is defined, and the particular elements that might constitute that policy, determine how and whether various stakeholders might support or oppose a national broadband initiative. The issue for policymakers is how to craft a comprehensive broadband strategy that not only addresses broadband availability and adoption problems, but also addresses the long term implications of next-generation networks on consumer use of the Internet and the implications for a regulatory framework that must keep pace with evolving telecommunications technology. Consumers have been integrating communications technologies into their lives at unprecedented rates. Trends include increased use of smartphones, increased subscribership on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, increased expectations of cross-platform accessibility, and development of "cloud computing" applications. Each of these trends taken alone likely would have had a significant impact on consumer behavior, but taken together they create a heretofore unseen demand for real-time access to information and an ability to share that information from wherever the consumer happens to be. Policy choices related to consumer use of the Internet, such as user authentication, privacy, digital rights management, filtering of unwanted information, wireless Internet standards, instant messaging, the deployment of IPv6 ("Internet protocol version 6"), and how to link the telephone network to the Internet will all have a profound impact on how broadband and next generation networks evolve. The challenge facing today's policymakers is to develop a regulatory environment that not only addresses these more recent trends, but that also contains the flexibility to accommodate future and possibly unanticipated changes in technology, applications, and consumer demands. The growth of broadband networks and the proliferation of applications and devices has placed increasing pressure on policymakers to formulate a framework to address a broadband-based world. Many of these developments were not anticipated when the 1996 Telecommunications Act (P.L. 104-104) was passed and have led to the need to update the regulatory assumptions and subsequent regulatory framework upon which the act was based. Technological changes such as the advancement of Internet technology and the melding of data, voice, and video have resulted in additional trends which must be considered. These trends include the transition from a circuit switched to a packet switched network, thereby enabling the integration of voice, video, and data; the transition from fixed to mobile service; and the transition from one-way to interactive service. Additionally, as broadband becomes an integral component of society, regulators have been called upon to consider how these trends may affect social goals that may or may not have been associated with traditional telephony. Social objectives such as the advancement of universal service goals, timely and accurate emergency services, disability access, and consumer protection that are part of traditional telephony regulatory policies are migrating to the broadband policy environment.