National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Anthony Wilhelm addressed the Broadband Communities Summit and spoke about the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, or BTOP and the State Broadband Initiative (SBI)...

Investing in broadband is investing in your community’s economic future. In 2009, local officials in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in North Georgia were worried about what the future might bring in light of the economic crisis facing the country at the time, as well as the broader, long-term decline of the industrial economy. So when the BTOP was announced, local leaders like Bruce Abraham brought together the local college, economic development agencies and electric cooperatives to apply for funds to build the North Georgia Network (NGN).

Vice President Joe Biden visited a company called Impulse Manufacturing, a metal fabrication shop that produces customized metal machine components for Fortune 500 companies. Impulse was forced to make do with slow, spotty DSL service that sometimes could not even hold a connection. Ron Baysden, Impulse’s President at the time, told us that the lack of reliable high-speed Internet became an impediment to doing business.

Abraham proceeded to tell me about how the twelve counties comprising the new network are being transformed. Now that the 1,100-mile network is built and delivering high-speed Internet connections to more than 300 businesses, 42 schools, five college campuses, six libraries and dozens of other community anchor institutions, the region is more economically vibrant and more globally competitive.

But for every North Georgia that has successfully deployed broadband, thousands of communities remain at risk of being left behind in the digital economy. There is too much at stake to allow these gaps to remain. If we zoom out from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to the national and global level for a minute, we get a good perspective on why broadband is so critical for communities to participate in the digital economy.

• First, getting better, faster, cheaper and more ubiquitous broadband is good for employment.
• Second, broadband is good for businesses.
• Third, broadband is good for economic development in general.

As NTIA successfully winds down the BTOP program, we have been evaluating our strengths and considering what we can offer stakeholders like you. We are examining strategies to build on the $4 billion in BTOP investments across the country and help communities drive further economic development through the use of broadband.

At NTIA and the Department of Commerce, our work on Internet policy is guided by three simple principles:

1. We support the Internet as a platform for economic growth. In doing so, we focus both on increasing the number of Internet users as well as encouraging more intensive use by existing users.
2. We support the Internet as a platform for innovation. In doing so, we seek to develop policies that are flexible, creative and rapidly adaptable to fast-changing technology.
3. We view the “Internet” as our client, not any one set of stakeholders. In setting policy, we must balance the competing interests of users by focusing on what policies best support economic growth and innovation.

So how do we put these principles into practice? The two key concepts we apply in support of growth are maintaining and increasing the trust of users of the Internet and expanding the global reach of the Internet economy. To support innovation, we want to make sure policymaking is flexible and adaptable.

That is why we are such strong supporters of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance. The US government has been a vigorous supporter of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance from the start. However, we are not the only ones.

On March 14, NTIA announced the final phase of the privatization of the domain name system by asking ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the DNS. In making this announcement, we stated that the transition proposal must have broad community support and must address four principles:

1. Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
2. Maintain the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
3. Meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and
4. Maintain the openness of the Internet.