[TowerTalk] BPL: Presidential Backing

[Eric Rosenberg]

 From the President's speech:

"Secondly, a proper role for the government is to clear regulatory 
hurdles so those who are going to make investments do so. Broadband is 
going to spread because it's going to make sense for private sector 
companies to spread it so long as the regulatory burden is reduced -- 
in other words, so long as policy at the government level encourages 
people to invest, not discourages investment.

"And so here are some smart things to do: One, increase access to 
federal land for fiberoptic cables and transmission towers. That makes 
sense. As you're trying to get broadband spread throughout the company, 
make sure it's easy to build across federal lands. One sure way to hold 
things up is that the federal lands say, you can't build on us. So how 
is some guy in remote Wyoming going to get any broadband technology? 
Regulatory policy has got to be wise and smart as we encourage the 
spread of this important technology. There needs to be technical 
standards to make possible new broadband technologies, such as the use 
of high-speed communication directly over power lines. Power lines were 
for electricity; power lines can be used for broadband technology. So 
the technical standards need to be changed to encourage that.

"And we need to open up more federally controlled wireless spectrum to 
auction in free public use, to make wireless broadband more accessible, 
reliable, and affordable. Listen, one of the technologies that's coming 
is wireless. And if you're living out in -- I should -- I was going to 
say Crawford, Texas, but it's not -- maybe not nearly as remote. 
(Laughter.) How about Terlingua, Texas? There's not a lot of wires out 
there. But wireless technology is going to change all that so long as 
government policy makes sense.

"And we're going to continue to support the Federal Communications 
Commission. Michael Powell -- Chairman Michael Powell, under his 
leadership, his decision to eliminate burdensome regulations on new 
broadband networks availability to homes. In other words, clearing out 
the underbrush of regulation, and we'll get the spread of broadband 
technology, and America will be better for it. (Applause.)

----

Eric W3DQ
Washington, DC


At 04:25 AM 4/27/2004 -0400, you wrote:


>Message: 10
>Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 08:25:08 +0000
>From: Chris Pedder <chris at g3vbl.co.uk>
>Subject: [TowerTalk] BPL: Presidential Backing
>To: towertalk at contesting.com
>Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20040427082158.01d6a048 at mail.plus.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
>Yesterday, during a speech in Minneapolis, President Bush appeared to 
>give
>his backing to BPL.
>
>http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040426-6.html
>
>Chris G3VBL
>
>(Five or six paragraphs from the end.)