Benton Receives Hadden Pioneer Award, Renews Call for National Broadband Strategy

On February 09, 2007 Benton Foundation Chairman and CEO Charles Benton received the Susan G. Hadden Pioneer Award from the Alliance for Public Technology. The award recognizes “pioneering efforts in telecommunications and consumer access.”

In his remarks while accepting the award, Benton identified four steps to restore the country’s Internet competitiveness:

1) Better data. Benton noted, “As management gurus always say, you can’t accomplish something if you can’t measure it – and the tools we are using today to measure our progress on broadband are about as sharp and refined as Fred Flinstone’s hammer.”

2) A strategy. “Despite President Bush's announcing the goal in 2004 of achieving Universal Affordable Broadband Access by 2007, we still have a long way to go in developing the plan, let alone implementing it. We are likely the only industrialized nation without a comprehensive and coordinated national broadband strategy,” Benton said.

3) Restoring funding for the Department of Commerce’s Technology Opportunities Program which from 1994 to 2004, played an important role in realizing the vision of an information society by demonstrating practical applications of new telecommunications and information technologies in the public and non-profit sector.

4) Universal Service Reform. Benton said, “As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the E-rate later this month, we need to remember the critical role that the universal service program can play in advancing universal broadband – while also fostering competition, keeping rates affordable, and advancing speeds that enable digital voice, digital video and the vision Susan Hadden had where anyone can be a producer.”