Yesterday, NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow and Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott sent a letter to Senate leadership supporting the proposed broadband funding that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) would oversee, but identifying several areas of the legislation should be refined as work on the stimulus package continues.

The letter (posted on NCTA’s website) supports unifying the $9 billion in broadband grant funding at NTIA; suggests that infrastructure funding should be targeted to areas without broadband service; and proposes that private broadband providers should be eligible to receive funding directly without the need for prior approval from governmental agencies.

This is in line with earlier comments from McSlarrow on how best to improve America’s broadband infrastructure. You may have seen last week’s video, in which he discussed what goals are best considered when debating current broadband stimulus proposals.

In December of last year, in a letter to Presidential Transition Team member Susan Crawford, McSlarrow offered the cable industry’s perspectives on the communications marketplace. In that letter, he proposed that stimulus measures should be targeted to unserved areas, should be technology-neutral, should address the needs of low-income households, and should recognize the need for making computers or laptops available to those that can’t afford such technology. Other issues are touched on in the letter, which you can also find on NCTA’s website.

Tags: broadband stimulus

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.