National broadband policy on president’s radar screen

President Bush appears to be close to calling for a national policy to jumpstart high-speed Internet deployments. At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., is formulating his own remedy for bringing broadband Internet connections to businesses and residence across the country.

Bush’s policy likely will lean heavily toward deregulation, according to Scott Cleland, president and CEO of the Precursor Group. This strategy will be employed because Bush recognizes that federal funding of a national broadband initiative is unlikely given the recession, previously announced tax cuts and the drain on the treasury created by the homeland security initiative and the war on terror, Cleland said.

“We believe the Bush administration will [decide] deregulation is the cheapest and easiest policy to take and that a lot can be done just at the FCC,” he said.

Cleland also noted the commission has deregulatory powers under Section 706 of the Telecom Act. The FCC already has started the 6-month-long triennial review process needed to take such action.

Daschle, on the other hand, is likely to develop a policy that would classify high-speed Internet services as a universal service--similar to voice services, predicted Cleland. However, Cleland said Bush and Daschle would find a way to work together, despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum on other matters.

“Broadband is too important to the economy for this to become a partisan issue,” Cleland said. “This isn’t like campaign-finance reform. There’s already a consensus that there is a problem. We think there’s a developing consensus as to what to do about it.”

Earlier this week, the trade group TechNet--led by Cisco, Intel, 3Com and Microsoft--called on Bush to commit to a goal of providing Internet connections of 100 Mbps to 100 million homes nationwide by 2010.