‘Third Way’ is a measured response to the Comcast lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: June 16, 2010
Contact: Liz Rose, Communications Director, 202-265-1490 x 32

WASHINGTON – Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission will consider a Notice of Inquiry that will ask for public comment on the best legal framework for carrying out the agency’s National Broadband Plan to bring fast, open and affordable Internet access to all Americans.

Aparna Sridhar, Free Press policy counsel, made the following statement:

“There is broad agreement that without clarifying its authority over broadband, the Commission cannot implement the National Broadband Plan and connect rural and low-income communities to the Internet.

“Tomorrow’s FCC action begins a process of open discussion about how to achieve our nation’s broadband goals in a legally sustainable way. Based on their overheated rhetoric, the phone and cable companies would seem to prefer to keep the broken legal framework adopted by the Bush-era FCC rather than consider whether better, sounder options exist. Objecting to merely asking these questions is absurd.”

“Moreover, the FCC’s Third Way proposal presents a measured response to a problem created by a Comcast lawsuit: Without restoring its authority over broadband, the Commission won’t be able to bring broadband to rural and low-income Americans or promote policies that encourage innovation, creativity, free speech and job creation online. These are goals that we can all agree on, and we support the Commission’s effort to achieve them by first establishing a sound legal foundation for its policies.”

For more information, see the Free Press issue brief:
http://www.freepress.net/resource/truth-about-third-way-separating-fact-fiction-fcc-reclassification-debate

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