benton's blog

Meeting in Tampa this week, the Republican Party adopted its 2012 platform self-proclaimed to be “both a vision of where we are headed and an invitation to join us in that journey.” Telecommunications and, specifically, the Internet are key planks in the party’s principles and policies this year.

Last week, Benton’s Headlines staff was distracted by breaking news from the Department of Justice that it was approving, with some changes, a nearly $4 billion deal between Verizon and some of the country’s largest cable companies. By this week’s end, the deal was approved by the Federal Communications Commission as well. Here’s a quick recap of how the week played out.

With our history so closely tied to advertising and broadcasting and our mission focused on enhancing democracy, the Benton Foundation has always had an eye on the impact of media on elections. So we take a moment this week to reflect on advertising and the 2012 elections.

Although we may take for granted these days that “everyone uses the Internet,” recent headlines demonstrate that Internet and broadband adoption are not yet universal and much work still needs to be done if the U.S. is going to realize the full benefit of these powerful tools. Without broadband, people and businesses are cut off from the $8 trillion global Internet economy, limiting opportunities for jobs and economic prosperity.

:

Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage

And a Psychology of Bandwidth Abundance

To

Drive High-Performance Knowledge Exchange

Fujitsu Conference on

Paving the Road to Unlimited Bandwidth:

Technologies and Applications for a Connected Age