Upcoming event
Access to reliable and affordable broadband service is imperative to not only the success of small businesses, but the overall economic development of the nation. Unfortunately, many parts of the country lack reliable access to broadband at benchmark speeds. As Congress debates an infrastructure plan, investing in the nation’s broadband must be part of the conversation. At this hearing, Members will examine broadband as a critical part of the nation’s infrastructure and strategies to reduce the digital divide.
Congresswoman Alma Adams (NC-12) will host the fourth annual Diversity in Tech Summit. The Summit brings together private sector, government, and education leaders to address and ultimately improve the representation of Black Americans and people of color, including women of color, in the tech sector.
The hearing will examine ways in which the federal government can support deployment of resilient, redundant, and secure broadband and telecommunications infrastructure, and review the lessons learned from outage incidents. The hearing will focus on gaps revealed by these incidents and legislative proposals to improve network resiliency and reliability.
Witnesses:
Getting children back to school in September provides an unprecedented opportunity to do better by lower-income families—those who have borne the brunt of the impact of school building closures for more than a year and have been hardest hit by the health and economic crises of the pandemic.
When colleges and universities shuttered their campuses and pivoted to online learning last year, it exacerbated an existing crisis: too many college students lack access to affordable and high-quality internet.
Authoritarian controls on internet access have increased at an unprecedented pace in the past two years, particularly under claims of preventing disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. As more governments seek to restrict information, democracies must evaluate the impacts of these controls and develop effective policy responses.
Chuck Robbins is the chair and CEO of Cisco, a Silicon Valley-based tech company that is one of the largest and most influential software and hardware businesses in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cisco’s Webex was the leading video conferencing and cloud service used by businesses and governments around the globe to help more people work from home.
Witnesses
- Mr. Ryan McCrate
Vice President And Associate General Counsel
Amazon
Seattle, WA
- Mr. Wilson White
Senior Director Public Policy & Government Relations
Google Inc.
Mountain View, CA
- Mr. Eddie Lazarus
Chief Legal Officer
Sonos
Santa Barbara, CA
- Mr. Matt Crawford
Research Fellow At The Institute For Advanced Studies In Culture
University of Virginia
San Jose, CA
- Mr. Jonathan Zittrain
Professor Of Law And Of Computer Science
Witnesses
- The Honorable Daniel Horrigan
Mayor
Akron, OH
- The Honorable Cyndy Andrus
Mayor
Bozeman, MT
- The Honorable Corey Woods
Mayor
Tempe, AZ
- Mr. Josh Parsons
County Commissioner
Lancaster County, PA
- Mr. Brian Riedl
Senior Fellow
Manhattan Institute
Today, enterprise telecommunications services procurements accommodate more than just internal corporate data and voice requirements. Robust Internet connectivity is essential for communicating with tech-savvy customers, suppliers, and employees. Network security is a pre-eminent discipline and reliable, secure access to cloud resources is a basic requirement. Demand for increased bandwidth is constant. This webinar will take a fresh look at telecommunications service procurements and the basics of dark fiber leases and Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRUs).