Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 1 AFFIRMATIVE
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Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 1 AFFIRMATIVE ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................3 1AC Plantext .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................4 1AC—Digital Democracy ..............................................................................................................................................................................................5 1AC—Digital Democracy ..............................................................................................................................................................................................6 1AC—Digital Democracy ..............................................................................................................................................................................................7 1AC—Digital Democracy ..............................................................................................................................................................................................8 1AC—Digital Democracy ..............................................................................................................................................................................................9 1AC—Digital Democracy ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 1AC—Broadband ....................................................................................................................................................Error! 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Bookmark not defined. 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 20 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 21 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 22 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 1AC—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 24 2AC Add-On—Health IT ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 25 2AC Add-On—Diseases ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 26 2AC Add-On—Natives ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 27 2AC Add-On—Freedom of Speech [1/2] ............................................................................................................................................................... 28 2AC Add-On—Freedom of Speech [2/2] ............................................................................................................................................................... 30 2AC Add-On—Global Anti-Poverty ........................................................................................................................................................................ 31 2AC Add-On—Education .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 2AC Add-On—Obesity............................................................................................................................................................................................... 33 2AC Add-On—Warming [1/2].................................................................................................................................................................................. 34 2AC Add-On—Warming [2/2].................................................................................................................................................................................. 35 2AC Add-On—Terrorism [1/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................ 36 2AC Add-On—Terrorism [2/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................ 37 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity................................................................................................................................................................................... 38 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity................................................................................................................................................................................... 39 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity................................................................................................................................................................................... 40 Ext Digital Divide Now............................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy ......................................................................................................................................................................... 42 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy [1/2] ............................................................................................................................................................... 43 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy [2/2] ............................................................................................................................................................... 44 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness ................................................................................................................................................................ 45 Ext Broadband KT Democracy ................................................................................................................................................................................. 46 Ext Broadband KT Economy Short Term .............................................................................................................................................................. 47 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Competitiveness ............................................................................................................................................................ 48 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Competitiveness ............................................................................................................................................................ 49 Ext Jobs KT Broadband .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 50 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Economy......................................................................................................................................................................... 51 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp Solves Unemployment ......................................................................................................................................................... 52 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp Solve Digital Divide ............................................................................................................................................................. 53 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness ................................................................................................................................................................ 54 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness/Now Key ............................................................................................................................................. 55 Ext Digital Divide Kills Economy............................................................................................................................................................................. 56 Ext Poor People KT Broadband ............................................................................................................................................................................... 57 Ext Poor People KT Broadband [1/2] ..................................................................................................................................................................... 58 Ext Poor People KT Broadband [2/2] ..................................................................................................................................................................... 59 Ext Poor People KT Broadband ............................................................................................................................................................................... 60 Witty Quote 1 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 2 Ext Poor People KT Broadband/AT Rural ............................................................................................................................................................ 61 Ext LifeLine Solves Fall-Off ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 62 Habermas Advantage [1/3] ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 63 Habermas Advantage [2/3] ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 64 Habermas Advantage [3/3] ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 65 AT LifeLine/LinkUp Fails .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 66 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 67 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 68 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 69 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 70 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 71 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 72 AT States ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 73 AT States/Federalism—States Fail ........................................................................................................................................................................... 74 AT States/Federalism—Preemption......................................................................................................................................................................... 75 AT Federalism ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 76 AT Free Market ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 77 AT Free Market ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 78 AT Free Market/National Investment Key ............................................................................................................................................................. 79 AT Net Neutrality ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 80 AT Net Neutrality—Links to Ptx .............................................................................................................................................................................. 81 AT Stimulus Solved ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 83 T Social Services [1/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 84 T Social Services [2/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 85 T Means Tested Evidence ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 86 T Persons In Poverty ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 87 AT Don’t Target CP .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 88 AT Competitiveness Adv CPs .................................................................................................................................................................................... 89 AT Low Income Not Key ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 90 Politics—Plan Partisan................................................................................................................................................................................................. 91 Politics—GOP Hate the Plan .................................................................................................................................................................................... 92 Politics—McConnell Link [1/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................ 93 Politics—McConnell Link [2/2] ................................................................................................................................................................................ 94 Politics—Plan Bipartisan ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 95 Politics—Plan Bipartisan ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 96 Politics—Plan Bipartisan ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 97 Politics—Plan Popular (Telecomm) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 98 Politics—AT Tech Lobby Turn ................................................................................................................................................................................. 99 NEGATIVE ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 100 SQ Solves ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 101 SQ Solves ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 102 LifeLine/LinkUp Fails ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 103 LifeLine/LinkUp Fails ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 104 Free Market Solves ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 105 Free Market Solves/Deregulation CP ..................................................................................................................................................................... 106 Free Market Solves/Deregulation CP ..................................................................................................................................................................... 107 States Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 108 States Solvency ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 109 State Deregulation CP ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 110 AT 50 State Fiat Bad .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 111 AT Commerce Clause ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 112 AT Health Add-On .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 113 AT Broadband KT Competitiveness ...................................................................................................................................................................... 114 T Means Tested ........................................................................................................................................................................................................... 115 Witty Quote 2 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 3 AFFIRMATIVE Witty Quote 3 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 4 1AC Plantext PLANTEXT: THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASE LIFELINE AND LINKUP TO INCLUDE BROADBAND. Witty Quote 4 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 5 1AC—Digital Democracy CONTENTION ONE: DIGITAL DEMOCRACY Broadband is quickly expanding in the US. Unfortunately, lower-income families are losing access causing a massive digital divide Corbin 8 [Kenneth, columnist for Internet News, “Low-Income Americans Slipping on Broadband,” Internet News July 3, http://www.internetnews.com/webcontent/article.php/3756836] A new study from the Pew Internet Project has found that while overall broadband adoption is up, the portion of African Americans with high-speed Internet access showed only modest growth in the past year, while among lower-income households it actually declined. The survey found that 55 percent of all adult Americans have broadband service, up from 47 percent in a similar study conducted in early 2007. Among African Americans, home broadband access dropped from 40 percent to 43 percent in the same period. For households earning less than $20,000 a year, broadband adoption dropped from 28 percent to 25 percent. "The flat growth in home high-speed adoption for low-income Americans suggests that tightening household budgets may be affecting people's choice of connection speed at home," said John Horrigan, author of the report. The study comes amid increasing anxiety about a digital divide in the U nited S tates, a concern heightened by a recent report from the O rganization for E conomic C ooperation and D evelopment, the multinational economic forum that ranked the U nited S tates as No. 15 in average broadband speed among the 30 countries it measured. Another research group, IDC, has reported that China eclipsed the United States in total Internet users last year. One group looking to make the digital divide a part of the national debate is Internet for Everyone, a nonprofit coalition of public-interest groups and businesses formed last month to press for a national broadband policy. Then, too, the Federal Communications Commission has floated a plan to sell off a swath of wireless spectrum in Broadband deployment is often characterized as a problem of rural America, where Internet service providers have been slower to build out their networks than in more densely populated areas. But the Pew researchers reported that 38 percent of rural Americans have broadband service at home, a 23 percent increase since 2007. auction that would require the winning bidder to provide broadband access to at least 95 percent of the country within 10 years. This is attributed to a lack of federal social services Lloyd 5 [Mark Lloyd, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, “Congress Needs to Address the Digital Divide – 2005,” October 6, 2005, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/10/b1097565.html] In 1995 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Department of Commerce (NTIA) issued its first comprehensive report on the access of all Americans to advanced telecommunications services. “Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the 'Haves' and 'Have Nots' in Rural and Urban America” documented a disturbing disparity in access to computers and the Internet. In 1998, NTIA called its report “Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide.” The term “digital divide” proved very useful in drawing attention to the problem of inequality in an America increasingly dependent upon information technology. And in 1996, Congress established policy to monitor the access of all Americans to advanced communications technology and required all telecommunications companies to contribute to a fund that would help bridge the gap between the “information haves” and the “information have-nots.” Those seem like the good old days. The Bush NTIA’s most recent report on American access to advanced communications technology hides the facts about minorities, the disabled and the poor in a series of mind-numbing charts, and fails to even mention racial and ethnic disparities in the text of “A Nation On-Line: Entering the Broadband Age.” There should be no surprise that this administration’s refusal to acknowledge reality extends to telecommunications. The 1996 Telecommunications Act contained many flaws: it helped to spur an increase in media consolidation, it relied far too much on promises of competition, and it was outdated before the ink was dry. But in many ways it embodied an old progressive ideal of policymaking. Namely, several sections of that Act expressed a commitment to discover the facts (about the deployment of advanced technology and the barriers facing small entrepreneurs trying to enter the industry, for example), and to establish policy benefiting all Americans based upon those facts. As it should reassert its commitment to this ideal. Congress reconsiders the Telecommunications Act this fall, The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund has just released a new study of the most comprehensive database focused on home computer and Internet use, “Are We Really a Nation Online? Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Access to Technology and Their Consequences.” The study was conducted by Dr. Robert Fairlie of the University of California at Santa Cruz. What Dr. Fairlie found was dramatically different than what NTIA reported last November, specifically: Witty Quote 5 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 6 1AC—Digital Democracy The digital divide is large and does not appear to be disappearing soon. Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latinos (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent). They are also less likely to have Internet access at home (40.5 and 38.1 percent compared to 67.3 percent). Slightly more than half of all black and Latino children have access to a home computer and approximately 40 percent have access to the Internet at home (compared to 85.5 and 77.4 percent of white, non-Latino children). Ethnic and racial disparities in home computer and Internet access rates are larger for children than for adults. Income differences are partly, but not entirely responsible for ethnic and racial disparities in computer and Internet access. Even among individuals with family incomes of at least $60,000, blacks and Latinos are substantially less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are whites. As a diverse panel of experts reported at a briefing on Capitol Hill in late September, the growing disparity in access will have serious consequences for a population growing both older and more diverse. The lack of information technology skills for a growing proportion of our national population will harm not only “minorities” but our national productivity. Federal broadband programs are empirically successful but expansion is key Dickard & Schneider 2 [Norris Dickard is a senior associate at the Benton Foundation. His work focuses on public policies related to universal service, educational technology, and bridging the digital divide. Diana Schneider formerly served as the Assistant Director of Outreach at The George Lucas Educational Foundation. She currently works with the Benton Foundation Communication Policy program on projects related to educational technology and bridging the digital divide, “The Digital Divide: Where We Are Today,” 7/1/2002 http://www.edutopia.org/digital-divide-where-we-are-today] The digital divide is most commonly defined as the gap between those individuals and communities that have, and do not have, access to the information technologies that are transforming our lives. In February 2002, the U.S. Department of Commerce released "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet," the latest study on computer and Internet use in America. Formerly a national benchmark for measuring disparities in access, the implied message of this latest release is that the digital divide is no longer a major concern. Many organizations feel differently, and as the debate intensifies, we are asking after ten years of national leadership to address the issue, "Where are we?" "A Nation Online" pointed to U.S. Census data showing that 143 million Americans, or about 54 percent of the population, are using the Internet. It also reported that the rate of growth of Internet use in the United States is currently 2 million new Internet users per month, with Internet use continuing to increase across income, education, age, race, ethnicity, and gender lines. This is all good news, and a testament, in part, to the effectiveness of several federally funded programs such as the ERate, or telecommunications discounts to schools and libraries, the Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) and the Community Technology Centers Program (CTC). The CTC program provides matching grants that leverage state, local, and other resources to create and improve technology access and training facilities. The TOP program provides matching grants for projects that use technology in innovative ways to solve social problems and improve community access to modern Progress has been made, but a deeper look at the numbers in "A Nation Online" reveals that considerable work remains to bridge the digital divide. With 54 percent of Americans online, the current Administration sees "A Nation telecommunications. The Debate Online" as proof that a targeted national commitment to bridging the divide is no longer necessary. Along with a 17 percent decrease in educational technology funding from FY 2001, the TOP and CTC programs have been slated for termination in 2003. The rationale is that Americans are gaining access to computers at an acceptable pace and as a result the role of government can be curtailed. Sonia Arrison, director of the Center for Technology Studies at the Pacific-Research Institute, is one of several conservative commentators who has argued recently that "the digital divide is not a crisis that places citizens in urgent need of more government help." Echoing past comments of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell that what we have is a "Mercedes divide," Arrison also argues "many of the Internet's so called 'have-nots' are really 'want-nots.'" On the opposite end of the debate, numerous organizations have rallied in support of continued federal funding for the CTC and TOP programs by launching the Digital Empowerment advocacy campaign. They note that almost half of Americans do not have Internet access at home and only 25 percent of America's poorest households are online compared with approximately 80 percent of homes earning over $75,000. Only around 30 percent of youth in the lowest household income category use computers at home compared to over 90 percent of youth in the highest income category. Even more striking is the fact that this gap has expanded in recent years. Similar disparities can be found among populations with limited formal education. Hispanics (31.8 percent) and African Americans (39.8 percent) lag behind whites (59.9 percent) in Internet access at home, suggesting serious ethnic and racial divides. The Civil Rights Forum, Consumers Union, and the Consumer Federation of America released a report in May 2002 called "Does the Digital Divide Still Exist? Bush Administration Shrugs, But Evidence Says 'Yes.'" The report concludes that the Witty Quote true measure of the digital divide is in assessing home 6 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 7 1AC—Digital Democracy Internet access. It also states that an inability to access the enhanced content available via broadband is creating a second-generation divide. In response to arguments that the Internet is unnecessary or something of a luxury, Mark Lloyd, Executive Director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, said, "Being disconnected in the Information Age is not like being deprived of a Mercedes or some other luxury. Being disconnected means being disconnected from the economy and democratic debate." Reaping the Rewards of National Investment A new policy brief from the Benton Foundation, publisher of the Digital Divide Network, explores the likely impact of the federal budget cuts and how ending targeted efforts to bring technology to underserved communities could dampen economic and community development. The brief focuses on how national programs such as the CTC and TOP have helped to wire schools and libraries and bring technology training into underserved communities. Objective research on the CTC program from SRI International, one of the nation's premier education technology research groups, shows technology being used in disadvantaged communities is improving pre-school, after-school, and adult learning. A recent report on telecommunications access in rural America shows that TOP has been instrumental in enabling rural communities to enhance local economies, better manage natural resources, and improve access to education and health services. Like the CTC program, its funding peaked in 2001 and elimination is in the works for 2003. Continuing to Overcome the Digital Divide Nobody believes that technology will be a quick-fix solution to poverty, but ensuring that underserved individuals and communities can access education and tools to improve the quality of their lives certainly appears to be a critical piece of the answer. The appropriations process will go on until September, when the 2003 budget will be finalized. Until that time, the debate will continue with one side saying "the invisible hand" of the free market is taking care of the problem and another pressing to save federal investments they feel are critical to connecting all Americans. This digital divide is a breach in democracy—the plan is vital to advance civic participation Lloyd 8 [Mark Lloyd is an affiliate professor of public policy at Georgetown University and a member of the advisory board of Science Progress, “Advanced IT Policy for a New America,” December 19, http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/12/advanced-it-policy-for-a-new-america/] Federal investment in communications services for the purposes of strengthening our democracy is a deeply-rooted American tradition going back to the founders’ substantial investment in the U.S. Postal System. The rationale underlying much of U.S. communications policy is tied to the value of ensuring all Americans access to competing sources of information to support robust democratic discourse . In addition to democratic discussion, supporting the ability of citizens to actively engage with government is also a long standing tradition. Both democratic deliberation and civic engagement must be protected in the digital age. Increasingly, being able to take part in an open government requires access to the Internet. As government records, administrative proceedings, requests for proposals, tax forms, job announcements, even school closings and emergency warnings go online it is increasingly important for all Americans to have access to advanced telecommunications services. The Obama campaign and the Obama transition team demonstrated a unique understanding of the importance of advanced IT, enabling them to go around traditional gatekeepers and speak to and hear from the American public. The online activity of this historic campaign and transition is far deeper and far more engaging than the mass media interviews, and it encompasses not only record-breaking fundraising but sophisticated policy discussions. Unfortunately, not every American has equal access to either government records or on-line policy discussions. Libraries and schools are all too often only occasional access points for the community, and many employers discourage non-work related access to the Internet. This leaves too many Americans with very limited access to advanced IT. Yet access to participate in a local, state, or federal proceeding should not be determined by the unwillingness of the private sector to deploy new fiber or Wi-Max connectivity to particular communities. And access in already-wired communities cannot continue to rest upon a local library’s limited number of computers or whether it can keep its doors open long enough for those working two jobs. This inequality in access to important civic information and engagement should not be tolerated in a democracy. That’s why the Obama Administration needs to ensure that its IT czar or chief technology officer and all the other relevant federal office holders are given a wide remit to craft advanced communications and IT policy to open online civic participation to every American. The director of this new office, however, must then grasp that closing this digital divide will first require extensive, data-driven investigation. Defining the Digital Divide Structural barriers to widespread and speedy Internet connectivity are stubborn. The Obama administration needs to get the data and then get going. The barriers that cause the digital divide will not come down on their own, and they will certainly not come down if we fail to look for them in the rush simply to roll out more broadband. Alas, progressives are not at all immune to the powerful dream of free market competition or ever-advancing technology as solutions to the problems of discrimination or isolation. Witty Quote 7 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 8 1AC—Digital Democracy Even since Herbert Croly, who in 1909 penned the progressive manifesto “The Promise of American Life,” there is a strong strain in progressive thought that believes somehow the combination of new technologies and free markets will solve the persistent problems of inequality. Without denying the importance of either free markets or technological advance to the general improvement of living conditions around the world, the early 20th century progressive intellectual (and eventual Supreme Court Justice) Louis Brandeis teaches us to look clear-eyed at the world as it is, and to make policy and law that promotes the public interest. In the world as it is, there are still very high barriers facing women, people of color, people with disabilities, the poor, and those Americans in the isolated regions of Appalachia, Indian Country, and the hundreds of small black communities in the rural South. These structural barriers, the vestiges of a not-solong-ago America where women could not vote, Mexican Americans were stacked in barely habitable migrant camps, and Jim Crow laws were strictly enforced, have not been torn down. There remains a danger that as advanced IT becomes increasingly important to our economic prosperity, our educational system, our health care system, our ability to respond to natural disasters and threats at home and abroad, and our ability to engage as citizens, the structural barriers of sexism, racism, poverty, and geographic isolation will reinforce the advantages of a few and make it even more difficult for children living in the other America to ever catch up. Simply assuming that the market and continued technological advance will address the problems faced by those Americans we do not see until a levee breaks is taking too great a risk. There is still inequality in America because of the continued challenges of gender preferences, racial segregation and rural isolation, and there is still a digital divide. And, bridging the digital divide sets the stage for a global democratic shift Shirazia, Ngwenyamaa, & Morawczynskib 9 [*Farid Shirazia, Institute for Research on Innovation and Technology Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada AND **Ojelanki Ngwenyamaa, Institute for Research on Innovation and Technology Management, Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, AND ***Olga Morawczynskib, Sciences Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, “ICT expansion and the digital divide in democratic freedoms: An analysis of the impact of ICT expansion, education and ICT filtering on democracy,” Telematics and Informatics, Received 12 April 2008; revised 27 February 2009; accepted 3 May 2009. Available online 15 May 2009, Science Direct] Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are central to information access and participation in social and political life ([Bennett and Fielding, 1997], [Becker, 2001], [Harwit and Clark, 2001], [Snellen, 2001] and [Drezner and Farrell, 2004]). These technologies facilitate the rapid accumulation and dissemination of information, group interaction (Norris, 1999), communication and collaboration. They allow citizens to engage in debate on political matters, and become familiar with political opinions and events that affect their communities ([Jankowski and van Selm, 2000], [La Porte et al., 2001] and [Oates, 2003]). The use of ICT for communication and collaboration is viewed as an opportunity for otherwise disenfranchised citizens to participate in political life and to challenge the dominant order. One well-cited example is that of the Zapatista rebellion in the state of Chiapas, Mexico ([Cooper, 1994], [La Botz, 1995] and [Gilbreth and Otero, 2001]). This movement consisted mainly of impoverished Mayan citizens who contested the state’s political transition towards neo-liberalism. Because the majority of the state’s media resources sided with the ruling elite, they refused to reproduce Zapatista material. The Zapatistas needed to find other media through which they could articulate their interest and influence the political process. Through the Internet, they contacted newsgroups, indigenous rights groups, and human rights organizations and quickly made the world aware of their situation. Soon the story of the Zapatista made international headlines and neglected segments of the Mexican population received increasing attention, while the ruling elite came under intense pressure and scrutiny from the international community. Dahlgren (2005) argues that the Internet extends and pluralizes the public sphere in a number different ways including structures, representation, and interaction. ICTs not only foster the expression of individual interests, but also enhance public dialogue and collaboration among constituents with divergent interests. Some even believe that these ICT initiatives are creating a new type of political actor called the “digital citizen” (Katz, 1997). While anecdotal evidence is used to argue that ICT expansion has significantly influenced the expansion of freedom and democracy globally , there are few systematic studies on this issue (Kampen and Snijkers, 2003). The existing literature is mostly comprised of case studies of individual countries or journalistic reports on specific regions of the world. This paper will fill this gap in literature. Our study uses archival data from 133 counties in different stages of ICT expansion. We use 2SLS estimate to investigate three important relationships: (1) ICT expansion and democracy; (2) literacy and ICT expansion; (3) ICT filtering and its impact on the future development of ICTs. This will allow us to analyze the extent to which ICT is influencing democracy worldwide. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the theoretical basis of the concepts of freedom and democracy that we are using in our study. Section 3 discusses our research hypotheses and methodology. Section 4 provides analysis of the findings. Finally, Section 5 discusses issues for future research. 2. e-Democracy framework 2.1. Defining democracy At the most basic level, democracy denotes a form of government in which all constituents are able to participate by also includes the right to challenge and/or call to standing for election to public office and electing others to represent their interests. This Witty Quote 8 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 9 1AC—Digital Democracy account an existing government for actions that violate public trust. In a recent comment on the nature of democracy, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen asserted that “democracy has complex demands, which certainly include voting and respect for election results, but it also requires the protection of liberties and freedoms, respect for legal entitlements, and the guaranteeing of free discussion and uncensored distribution of news and fair comment” (Sen, 1999). Norris (2001) in regards to the representative democracy points out to three major characteristics: (1) its pluralistic competition among parties and individuals for all positions of government power; (2) its participation feature that allows citizens equal opportunities in the selection of parties and representatives through free, fair and periodic elections; and finally (3) its civil and political liberties to speak, publish, assemble, and organize, as necessary conditions to ensure effective competition and participation. These characteristics focus particularly “upon how representative democracies function through free and fair elections, as the primary mechanism for holding governments accountable for their actions” (p. 7). Balkin (2004) argues that central to free expression and democracy is access to information. Recent research shows that citizens who have access to ICT are more likely to participate in the political process (Weare, 2002). In this regard, the role of the state in promoting democracy is to foster the freedom of expression and access to information. Theories of political mobilization also assert that open access to information enables citizens to monitor electoral campaigns and government actions ([Berry, 1984] and [Bimber, 2001]). However, information also enables governments to identify citizens who participate in the political process, and this can be problematic in societies where democracy is immature or does not exist ([Lynch, 2003] and [Yu, 2004]). 2.2. ICT and e-democracy Numerous studies illustrate the ways in which national and local governmental bodies are employing ICTs to enhance democracy ([Dertouzos, 1997], [Sussman, 1997] and [Cigler and Burdett, 1998]; Bennett and Fielding, 1997; Bimber, 2001). Mudhai (2003) argues that ICTs have been perceived as a drive to the “third wave” of democratization. Balkin (2004) points out that the digital revolution brings features of freedom of expression to the forefront of our concern and makes possible for widespread cultural participation and interaction. He identifies cultural participation as a means of citizens’ participation in the production of culture, and in the development of the ideas and meanings that constitute them and the communities and sub-communities to which they belong. ICTs have enabled citizen participation in the democratic process by providing e-democracy ([Clift, 2003], [Coleman, 2003], [McCullagh, 2003], [Morrisett, 2003], [Rushkoff, 2003], [Norris, 1999] and [Norris, 2001]). ICT tools and services such as the Internet and mobile SMS have enabled citizens to not only participate in democratic process, but also mobilization. The wide spread and usage of the Internet in organizing and mobilizing people around the world have helped individuals and groups to debate and influence issues relevant to political life and increase civic and political participation ([Suarez, 2006] and [Weber et al., 2003]; [Gilbreth and Otero, 2001], [Norris, 2001], [Bennett and Fielding, 1997], [Dertouzos, 1997] and [Sussman, 1997]). ICT tools and services are widely used as a source of information and mobilization in political life. For example, authorities in Thailand sent SMS messages to over 25 mobile cell phone users encouraging them to participate in election (Thai election, 2006) or in the recent US presidential election about 24% of Americans regularly learned about the presidential campaign from the Internet (The Pew, 2008). These tools and services were also widely used as a means of mobilizing people in political discourses or monitoring the election outcomes. Suarez (2006) points out that SMS had a crucial role for mobilizing people for mass demonstration against government demanding for the truth in 2004’s Madrid terrorist attack. It had also a crucial role in mobilizing people during the election campaign. In Iran’s presidential election (2005) the massive usage of SMS sent by citizens in boycotting the election or to support other candidates frustrated the hardliners who monitored the election and threatened SMS users for revenge (Iranian Judiciary, n.d.). These tools and services were also used as a means of monitoring tool for election outcomes around the world. For example, Sierra Leone’s election was faced with the challenge of monitoring election outcome in a country that lacks infrastructure and reliable Internet access to transmit election data by conventional means, the election monitoring group used SMS to transmit election data and particularly from their rural areas where there is no ICT infrastructure established (Sierra Leone, 2008). The same monitoring feature of SMS was used in Ghana’s election 2008 after the violence and fraud experienced in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria (Ghana, 2008). ICT tools and services are also used for organizing groups and individuals to express their grief and protestation against different social, political and global issues ([Norris, 1999] and [Postmes, 2002]; Suarez, 2006). Backus (2001) defines e-democracy as processes and structures that encompass all forms of electronic interaction between the government (elected representatives) and the citizens (electorate) (cf. Savic, 2006). This is vital to human survival Montague 98 [Peter Montague, co-director Environmental Research Foundation and publisher of Rachael’s Environment and Health News, 14 October 1998 http://www.greenleft.org.au/1998/337/20135] The environmental movement is treading water and slowly drowning. There is abundant evidence that our efforts -- and they have been formidable, even heroic -- have largely failed. we have failed to stem the tide of environmental deterioration After 30 years of exceedingly hard work and tremendous sacrifice, . Make no mistake: our efforts have had a beneficial effect. Things would be much worse today if our work of the past 30 years had never occurred. However, the question is, Have our efforts been adequate? Have we succeeded? Have we even come close to stemming the tide of destruction? Has our vision been commensurate with the scale and scope of the problems we set out to solve? To those questions, if we are honest with ourselves, we must answer No. What, then, are we to do? This article is intended to provoke thought and debate, and certainly is not offered as the last word on anything. Openness. Witty Quote Open, democratic decision-making will be 9 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 10 1AC—Digital Democracy an essential component of any successful strategy. After the Berlin wall fell, we got a glimpse of what had happened to the environment and the people under the Soviet dictatorship. The Soviets had some of the world's strictest environmental laws on the books, but without the ability for citizens to participate in decisions, or blow the whistle on egregious violations, those laws meant nothing. For the same reason that science cannot find reliable answers without open peer review, bureaucracies (whether public or private) cannot achieve beneficial results without active citizen participation in decisions and strong protection for whistle-blowers. Errors remain uncorrected, narrow perspectives and selfish motives are rewarded, and the general welfare will not usually be promoted. The fundamental importance of democratic decision-making means that our strategies must not focus on legislative battles. Clearly, we must contend for the full power of government to be harnessed toward achieving our goals, but this is quite different from focusing our efforts on lobbying campaigns to convince legislators to do the right thing from time to time. Lobbying can mobilise people for the short term, but mobilising is not the same as organising. During the past 30 years, the environmental movement has had some notable successes mobilising people, but few successes building long-term organisations that people can live their lives around and within (the way many families in the '30s, '40s and '50s lived their lives around and within their unions' struggles). The focus of our strategies must be on building organisations that involve people and, in that process, finding new allies. The power to govern would naturally flow from those efforts. This question of democracy is not trivial. It is deep. And it deeply divides the environmental movement, or rather movements. Many members of the mainstream environmental movement tend to view ordinary people as the enemy (for example, they love to say, “We have met the enemy and he is us”.). They fundamentally don't trust people to make good decisions, so they prefer to leave ordinary people out of the equation. Instead, they scheme with lawyers and experts behind closed doors, then announce their “solution”. Then they lobby Congress in hopes that Congress will impose this latest “solution” on us all. Naturally, such people don't develop a big following, and their “solutions” -- even when Congress has been open democratic decision-making is essential to survival. Only by informing people, and trusting their decisions, can we survive as a human society. Our technologies are now too complex and too powerful to be left solely in the hands of a few experts. If they are allowed to make decisions behind closed doors, small groups of experts can make fatal errors. One thinks of the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) justifying above-ground nuclear weapons testing. In the early 1950s, their atomic fallout was showering the population with strontium-90, a highly radioactive element that masquerades as calcium when it is taken into the body. Once in the body, strontium-90 moves into the bones, where it irradiates the bone marrow, causing willing to impose them -- have often proven to be expensive, burdensome and ultimately unsuccessful. Experts. In the modern era, cancer. The AEC's best and brightest studied this problem in detail and argued in secret memos that the only way strontium-90 could get into humans would be through cattle grazing on contaminated grass. They calculated the strontium-90 intake of the cows, and the amount that would end up in the cows' bones. On that basis, the AEC reported to Congress in 1953, “The only potential hazard to human beings would be the ingestion of bone splinters which might be intermingled with muscle tissue in butchering and cutting of the meat. An insignificant amount would enter the body in this fashion.” Thus, they concluded, strontium-90 was not endangering people. The following year, Congress declassified many of the AEC's deliberations. As soon as these memos became public, scientists and citizens began asking, “What about the cows' milk?” The AEC scientists had no Secrecy in government and corporate decision-making continues to threaten the well-being of everyone on the planet as new technologies are deployed at an accelerating pace after inadequate consideration of their effects. Open, democratic decisionmaking is no longer a luxury. In the modern world, it is a necessity for human survival. response. They had neglected to ask whether strontium-90, mimicking calcium, would contaminate cows' milk, which of course it did. Witty Quote 10 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 11 1AC—Broadband CONTENTION TWO: COMPETITIVENESS Digital divide is crushing US broadband capabilities and devastating US competitiveness Orne 8 [Peter Orne, Editorial Director of W2i, “Ensuring US Competitiveness Prompts Need to Revisit Wireless Business Strategies,” Digital Communities, Feb 19, http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/264690] The standing of the United States in the international broadband ranking numbers is often debated, but it's the personal anecdote that drives home the story. "So much of our country is falling behind in our ability to produce high-value-added jobs," said Jim Hueser, business unit executive for IBM's Wireless Broadband Americas Group, at the 15th W2i Digital Cities Convention, in Washington, DC, this past December. "I go back to the Midwest, where I grew up, where I worked in the factory as a kid, to put my way through school," Hueser said. "It's still a factory town. Factories are disappearing.... Without a doubt we're losing a lot of our smaller towns and cities. The jobs manufacturing -- we've lost it." have dried up. I can't even say we're losing the Hueser evoked an urban myth of sorts. "In Long Beach, California, they say the sun sets at 3:00 in the afternoon because of all the stacked up cargo containers from the Pacific Rim. We've got nothing to ship back. Now, that's hyperbole; it's not true. We are exporting, and the dollar's value The challenge is twofold -- to transform the United States domestically, bridging the domestic digital divide -- and globally, ensuring it remains a competitive information society in the 21st century. "The economy has changed, and we've got to look to things like research technology," Hueser said. "We have to realize that if we don't keep creating high-value jobs, this country will be in a world of hurt." helps with that. But the bottom line is, we're not a manufacturing powerhouse anymore." * See also W2i's: "Japan Eyes 10 Gigs by 2010 as United States Sweats 200 Kbps," based on the proceedings from the Convention.) * Visit W2i's newly inaugurated Digital Inclusion Forum to learn how W2i, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and OneCommunity are organizing to raise awareness about the digital divide in the United States. Revisiting the Search for Solutions The stakes have never been higher for local communities and regions exploring the broaband-wireless opportunity. At the same time, the path to viable implementation remains complex. And, lack of broadband is a direct result of a lack of federal action Lloyd 7 [Mark, Mark Lloyd is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. A communications attorney and award-winning broadcast journalist, Lloyd is the recent author of Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, published by the University of Illinois Press. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his law degree from Georgetown University. “The Wiring of Rural America,” June 7 http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/lloyd_testimony.html] Rural Americans are lagging behind in connectivity as compared to urban and suburban Americans, and they are lagging behind their rural competitors in Canada, Europe, and the industrial nations of Asia. America got a head start in the advanced telecommunications race thanks to national policies that promoted the development of the Internet and promoted the transfer of digital technologies from military uses to educational, scientific, and business uses. Make no mistake about it, we have lost our head start because of national policies that have been abandoned, ignored, or violated during the Bush administration. The promise of new digital information and communications technologies is to move from a media environment dominated by a few to an environment where the many can communicate effectively to the all. This new technology would leap over the barriers of print and broadcast and cable media. But not only that, this new communications capability would allow for improvements in education, for better health care, for expanded business opportunities, and for greater civic engagement. But it will not happen on its own. This great promise is being realized in New Brunswick, Canada, and Tono, Japan, and in the farm country of southwest Ireland. Great strides have been made in these countries since 2000, but despite the distortions of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and NTIA Director John Kneuer about broadband penetration in the United States, great strides have not been made in Mississippi and Utah and Oklahoma and Kansas. Why has this Republican administration and the Republican Party which dominates those states and has dominated Congress since 2000 allowed this promise to fade in rural America? Why is President Bush’s promise of broadband to all by 2007 so empty? This is a nonpartisan issue, a nonpartisan goal, but we should not shrink from holding our elected and well-paid representatives responsible. And if Democrats are ever in a Witty Quote 11 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 12 1AC—Broadband position to move real legislation and get it signed, we should not shrink from holding them responsible for the sorry state of advanced telecommunications services in the United States. We should be clear that this is not a technological problem, nor is this really a market problem about encouraging competition. This is a political problem. The details. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported in 2006 that nearly three-quarters of Americans have internet access and 42 percent have broadband connections at home.[i] Parks Associates estimates that 55 percent of U.S. households will have broadband in 2007.[ii] So what’s the problem? If you dig into the weeds of the Pew survey of some 4,000 people you will not be reassured that even a majority of the respondents who say they have broadband have any idea of how fast their service is. Parks Associates is relying on projected data released by the cable and telecommunications on what consumers are going to be provided something called broadband service, again with no clarity about what speeds will be provided. I do not mean to disparage or dismiss the work of either Pew or Parks. They are not responsible for gathering data to assist the public or legislators in determining public policy. Put away your alt-causes—broadband is the sole yardstick to determine competitiveness Wagner 9 [Mitch, Executive Editor of Information Weekly, “Internet Faces Threat Of Breaking Apart,” June 11, http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2009/06/internet_faces.html;jsessionid=YIHLFWMXHUZTIQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN] Also during the brief time Werbach got to speak, he talked about the U.S. lagging other developed countries in broadband penetration. Like net neutrality, the U.S. lag in broadband penetration has been widely discussed, but Werbach gave the best explanation I've heard for why the issue is important. Werbach argues that broadband penetration is a standard yardstick for competitiveness among nations. The US is unique among major industrialized nations in that it lacks a national broadband strategy, and it shows. "Broadband is the platform for an information society," Werbach said. "It's the mechanism for how governments deliver information services and the mechansim for how people interact." Prosaically, it's the platform for watching video and participating in discussion, and it's also a platform for business. "Most countries over the past decade have made a conscious decision that broadband is an important element of their citizenry. The U.S. has been unique in leaving it to the private sector, and government stays out of the process. By most metrics, the U.S. was a leader in the world on the Internet on dial-up, and now it's a laggard." On the other hand, Werbach notes, the US has been tremendously successful in the technology industry and in boosting technology startups. And, only a federal commitment to broadband expansion can reinvigorate US competitiveness. The plan builds on the stimulus to invigorate a broadband revolution Basu 9 [Indrajit Basu is an international correspondent for Government Technology's Digital Communities., “The Push for a Real, No-Hype National Broadband Strategy,” May 27, Government Technology, http://www.govtech.com/gt/691095?id=691095&full=1&story_pg=1] America is falling behind many developing countries in its broadband reach. we have always managed to figure out that role with active participation of the public sector and private sector in the early days of building turnpikes, bridges and railroads, rural electricity and basic telecom. The government has always found a way to do all those things," he said. "Somehow over the course of several years, we got away from that, but we need to go back in the past, and that's what we are doing now," he added. According to Copps, although the American government was involved in planning infrastructure for the last eight years, there was no conscious effort Copps admitted that the government is fully aware that "If you go back in the course of our history, to provide a stimulus because the general feeling was that somehow the magic of the marketplace would get everything done. that's why we find ourselves where we are in the present comparative broadband rankings among the nations of the world." However, he said, that state of affairs has changed. "We have a new government and we have an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that carves out a very active role for the government," Copps said. "This administration is a believer that the government has a central role to play in promoting infrastructure." "Part of that is the stimulus of the $7.2 billion for broadband. But that is short-term stimulus. I call that the down payment," Copps said. He emphasized the federal government's resolve to roll out a broadband plan. "In the long term, there is a commitment to formulating a strategy "But that did not really happen," he said, "and to get broadband to all of our citizens, and the FCC has been put at the center of this and instructed within the next 10 months to come up with a national broadband plan," he said. Witty Quote 12 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 13 1AC—Broadband And that will lead to a new plan, said Copps, as well as a longer-term investment and investment stimulus. "So the role of the government is growing, and it is not just on the economic side, but I think we will see a really proactive effort here to make this process open and transparent," Copps said. Clarifying the doubts some have about whether the new broadband plan would include all sectors of American society, Copps said, "As we develop the national [broadband] plan we will be talking not only to the business and people, but also what I call nontraditional stakeholders of our country, which conceivably could be every citizen. "We want to make sure we have a citizen-friendly Internet that is free, open, dynamic and does not allow unreasonable network management," he said. Meanwhile, comments, suggestions and complaints have been pouring in every day since the FCC invited feedback from citizens to help the commission craft an inclusive broadband plan. Some of these suggestions are eye openers about the poorstate of American broadband. "The only broadband access available to me is over a cell phone," said Allen Cole, an Oklahoma City resident. "This is too expensive and not much faster than dial-up. We need affordable access out in the woods where no one will install telephone lines and dish is unavailable because of the trees. I cannot even get cable TV! I know as soon as the leaves come out in the trees, I will not have any TV service since all signals are digital now. We used to get fuzzy TV with analog but now when it rains our signal goes out. It is only a matter of time before the leaves block the digital picture." broadband is the only way Americans can lead the world. He insists that the government should build the information superhighway, and build it now. Russell Parks, a rural resident of Ravenna, Ky., thinks "Rural Americans cannot wait for the market or competition to eventually build out high-speed networks to them," he said. "It just wouldn't happen in a reasonable time at all, as we are still waiting for cable TV after 30 Broadband is far more important to America's ability to lead the world than to allow the broadband gap to widen and deepen. The time is now to roll out broadband and make it available to anyone who would want it. It makes no sense to let the market take care of itself while the rest of the world advances ahead, leaving the United States to catch up." years. This must start with persons in poverty Carvin & Edwards 7 [*Andy Carvin, Host of PBS’ Learning.Now, AND **John Edwards, Presidential Candidate, Lawyer, and total badass, “Discussing Edtech and the Digital Divide with Barack Obama and John Edwards - Sort Of,” PBS Teachers, Nov 27, http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/11/discussing_edtech_and_the_digi.html] I believe that the single most important factor for America’s future prosperity is investment in education, science, technology and innovation. But today we are challenged by other countries which have invested aggressively in education, engineering and infrastructure, giving them an edge in the global economy. The country that developed the Internet is now 16th in broadband deployment, and America’s competitiveness has suffered…. The spread of broadband has been uneven and costly, too driven by the profits of a few entrenched companies and technologies to allow the nation as a whole to realize the billions in economic benefits promised by truly universal Internet access. I will set a goal of universal broadband by 2010, make the Research and Experimentation tax credit permanent, make higher education affordable with college for everyone and improve patent quality by reforming our patent laws and devoting more resources to the patent office. After a few more tech policy questions, Arrington asked Edwards a dual question based on the ones I’d asked about increasing the number of technology and science graduates, and the technology literacy clause of No Child Left Behind. Edwards replied this way: We all pay a price when young people who could someday find the cure for AIDS or create the next Google end up sitting on a stoop because they didn’t get the education they need. Today, too few of our schools are teaching our children creative, analytical skills, and too few students have access to the technology that can light that spark. Ninety-five percent of urban high schools report problems getting qualified science teachers. American 9th-graders are 18th in the world in science education. No Child Left Behind has lost its way by imposing cheap standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum at the expense of science, history, and the arts and mandating unproven cookie-cutter reforms on schools. As a result, it has lost the support of teachers, principals, and parents, whose support is needed for any reform to succeed. Every year, 200,000 college-qualified students cannot enroll because their families cannot afford it. Our children are every bit as talented as our foreign competitors, but they have not been given the tools they need to succeed. I believe that every school should be wired and that we need to overhaul our curricula to emphasize technological skills, math and science, creative thinking and problem-solving. I also support Career Academies in high schools that link students to local employers and skills in high-demand industries, including information technology. If we do not invest in developing these skills among our children now, the United States risks becoming a technology follower, rather than a leader. As president, I will overhaul No Child Left Behind to center our schools around children, not tests, and help struggling schools, not punish them. I will also launch a “School Success Fund,” a Marshall Plan-like effort to rebuild and restore America’s schools. I would ask teams of experienced educators, what I call “education SWAT teams,” to spend a year at struggling schools helping launch reforms where we need them the most. To ensure that every child is prepared to succeed, I will provide resources to states to help them offer universal high-quality “Great Promise” preschool programs for four-year-olds. I will work with states to give all teachers in successful high-poverty schools up to a $15,000 raise. I will also create a national teachers’ university – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed most. Finally, I will create a national version of a program I started in a rural county in North Carolina, called College for Everyone, which provides a full year of public college tuition and books to any college-qualified student who is willing to work part-time. Arrington followed it up with another pair of questions based on the ones I submitted about the E-Rate and the digital divide. Arrington: The Digital Divide is roughly defined as the gap between those with access to computers and the Internet with those who don’t. More broadly, it includes not only access, but the skills and ability to use those resources effectively. Witty Quote 13 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 14 1AC—Broadband The controversial Federal E-rate program allocates money from telecommunication taxes to poor schools without technology resources. Some statistics suggest 100,000 or more schools have been provided with Internet connectivity and additional computers. What is your opinion of the E-rate program? What else can be done to increase access to technology in our schools? What can be done outside of schools to address the digital divide more generally? Edwards: First, let’s talk about what the digital divide really means in America. It means that while half of urban and suburban households have broadband, less than a third of rural homes do. It means that African Americans are 25 percent less likely to have Internet access at home than whites. The Internet has been an engine of innovation and opportunity – one that started in America and then revolutionized the world. Yet, here at home, too many are denied access to it, including 40 percent of rural Americans. That is just not acceptable. As president, I would do a number of things. First, I will help create universal, affordable access to broadband. There should be no neighborhoods in America where the lights of the Internet are not on. The starting place for that is setting a goal of giving all U.S. homes and businesses access to real high-speed Internet by 2010. I will establish a national broadband map to identify gaps in availability, price, and speed. I will also create public-private partnerships to promote deployment and require providers not to discriminate against rural and low-income areas. I will work to improve Internet accessibility for people with disabilities. I believe we need to improve the e-rate program with a goal of universally wired schools. Key to the economy Abdullah 9 [By: Khalil Abdullah, New America Media, News Feature, “U.S. Lags in Broadband Impede Economy,” http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=740b41efe70d0e0195f464edecfb2564] America’s 42 million low-income residents will only marginally participate in a “knowledge economy” unless Internet access to job training skills is increased, according to Dr. Eileen Applebaum, director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. At a symposium entitled “Economic Empowerment for Low-Income Workers Through Broadband Training,” Applebaum joined other panelists who touted the necessity of an aggressive expansion of U.S. broadband capacity. The United States currently ranks fifteenth in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Broadband measurements assess the rate of speed with which information can be Critical services like telemedicine, for example, which utilize a system’s capacity to send and receive large volumes dependent on the availability of broadband. While corporations and institutions can afford the cost of broadband systems that use fiber optics, satellite, or cable, many Americans still access the Internet through telephone dial-up services at a far lower rate of speed. Within the digital divide -– those who have access to computers and the Internet versus those who do not –- there is a newer divide between those who use dial-up and those who have broadband access. “Speed matters,” said Debbie Goldman, telecommunications policy director for the uploaded, transmitted and received. of data, are Communications Workers of America. CWA, a symposium co-sponsor on May 18 with the Alliance for Public Technology and the Alliance for Digital Equality, has in fact christened its annual U.S. survey of states’ broadband capacities as “Speed Matters.” In 2008, Rhode Island retained its number one download speed ranking; Affordability is a key factor of broadband access. Though women, minorities, and immigrants comprise a significant percentage of the low-income cohort, in reality, every ethnic demographic is represented North Dakota, Alaska, and Puerto Rico brought up the rear at 50th, 51st, and 52nd, respectively. and consequently affected by the cost of broadband. The implications for the future of America’s workforce are bracing, particularly given the current state of the U.S. economy where high rates of job loss and financial insecurity are fueling increased competition for jobs. But even in the long term, the perception that the knowledge economy will be limited to employment opportunities for those with highly technical training, like engineers, physicists, and computer programmers, underestimates the impact that evolving technologies will have on the world of work, Applebaum said. In fact, “the knowledge economy really extends to every kind of job there is,” she explained. Technology can improve the quality of jobs, but it also changes how tasks are executed. As the implementation of technology ripples through the global economy, not only are new skills needed, but workers will be called on to be more adept at problem-solving tasks and to be better trained to provide enhanced customer service. The Internet can be a phenomenal tool to acquire job training skills, but using dial-up “inhibits the richness of the experience,” said Applebaum, because educational curricula may include interactive video links with teachers, or the need to download photographs, charts, or other materials. These features are particularly critical as “one-half of all Americans do not possess the literacy skills to participate in the knowledge economy.” For panelist C. Vanessa Spinner, special assistant to the provost for Community College Expansion and Workforce Development at the University of the District of Columbia, the city’s double-digit unemployment stems from several factors, but tends to skew along lines of poverty and race. “We have a technology divide that is unbelievable,” she said. In the more affluent part the nation’s capitol, 37 percent of the populace has bachelor’s degrees and access to broadband and Wi-Fi, she said, while 37 percent of the poorer and predominantly minority population is illiterate with few Internet options available. Witty Quote 14 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 15 1AC—Broadband Nuclear wars worldwide Friedberg & Schoenfeld 8 [Aaron Friedberg is a professor of politics and international relations at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor of Commentary, is a visiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J., “The Dangers of a Diminished America,” Wall Street Journal, Ocbtober 21, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html] With the global financial system in serious trouble, is America's geostrategic dominance likely to diminish? If so, what would that mean? One immediate implication of the crisis that began on Wall Street and spread across the world is that the primary instruments of U.S. foreign policy will be crimped. The next president will face an entirely new and adverse fiscal position. Estimates of this year's federal budget deficit already show that it has jumped $237 billion from last year, to $407 billion. With families and businesses hurting, there will be calls for various and expensive domestic relief programs. In the face of this onrushing river of red ink, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been reluctant to lay out what portions of their programmatic wish list they might defer or delete. Only Joe Biden has suggested a . Biden's comment hints at where we may be headed: toward a major reduction in America's world role, and perhaps even a new era of financially-induced isolationism. possible reduction -- foreign aid. This would be one of the few popular cuts, but in budgetary terms it is a mere grain of sand. Still, Sen Pressures to cut defense spending, and to dodge the cost of waging two wars, already intense before this crisis, are likely to mount. Despite the success of the surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular. Precipitous withdrawal -- attractive to a sizable swath of the electorate before the financial implosion -- might well become even more popular with annual war bills running in the hundreds of billions. Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of protectionism will blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying Meanwhile, . The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power. There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership. What does this all mean? It’s key to primacy Segal 4 [Adam, Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, “Is America Losing Its Edge?” November / December 2004, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20041101facomment83601/adam-segal/is-america-losing-its-edge.html] The U nited States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone else. For the last five decades, U.S. scientific innovation and technological entrepreneurship have ensured the country's economic prosperity and military power. It was Americans who invented and commercialized the semiconductor, the personal computer, and the Internet; other countries merely followed the U.S. lead. Today, however, this technological edge-so long taken for granted-may be slipping, and the most serious challenge is coming from Asia. Through competitive tax policies, increased investment in research and development (R&D), and preferential policies for science and technology (S&T) personnel, Asian governments are improving the quality of their science and ensuring the exploitation of future innovations. The percentage of patents issued to and science journal articles published by scientists in China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan is rising. Indian companies are quickly becoming the second-largest producers of application services in the world, developing, supplying, and managing database and other types of software for clients around the world. South Korea has rapidly eaten away at the U.S. advantage in the manufacture of computer chips and telecommunications software. And even China has made impressive gains in advanced technologies such as lasers, biotechnology, and advanced materials used in semiconductors, aerospace, and many other types of manufacturing. Although the United States' technical dominance remains solid, the globalization of research and development is exerting considerable pressures on the American system. Indeed, as the United States is learning, globalization cuts both ways: it is both a potent catalyst of U.S. technological innovation and a significant threat to it . Witty Quote The U nited S tates will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new 15 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 16 1AC—Broadband can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its privileged position in the world, the U nited S tates must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home. technologies; it Hegemony is the only guarantor of international stability—the alternative is nuclear wars worldwide Thayer 6 [Bradley A., Prof of Defense and Strategic Studies @ Missouri State University, “In Defense of Primacy.,” National Interest; Nov/Dec2006 Issue 86, p32-37] THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy Second, and other elements of its ideology of liberalism: Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. sympathetic to the American worldview.( n3) So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, leadership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Broadband expansion directly boosts economic and military dominance Ferguson 2 [Charles H. Ferguson is a nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and an independent computer consultant, “The U.S. Broadband Problem,” Brookings Policy Brief #101, July 2002, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2002/07technology_ferguson.aspx] There is strong evidence that the Internet has played a major role in the productivity revival experienced by the United States since the early 1990s. Productivity growth and military power are now driven primarily by information systems, which are becoming heavily Internet-dependent. As digital technology continues its progress, the broadband problem is becoming a major bottleneck in the U.S. and world economy . If allowed to persist, the broadband bottleneck will also cause "digital divide" problems, which arise when unequal access to Internet services is thought to contribute to widening inequalities in income, wealth, and power. However, computers are not the problem: the computer industry is highly competitive, and the inherent tendency of technology is to democratize access. Indeed, the computer industry is now being reshaped by palmtop, game, and consumer-oriented systems costing only a few hundred dollars, some of which already have more processing power than personal computers built in 1990. However, at current prices, one year of ADSL costs as much as a home computer, and one year of T1 service costs as Improved broadband services would support globalization and political freedom. China and other nations, for example, have been forced to permit increasingly widespread Internet use. They will be forced to permit broadband services, despite the fact that for technical reasons they are more difficult to censor than conventional email or web pages. much as five office computers. Witty Quote 16 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 17 1AC—Broadband And finally, local broadband deployment has significant interactions with energy, environmental, and national security policy. Nations increasingly need to maintain economic growth without increasing energy use, greenhouse emissions, and pollution. One response is to substitute communication for physical transportation via use of digital documents, videoconferencing, and so forth. However, large-scale broadband deployment is required to realize these gains. And finally, local broadband policy also has significant national security implications. U.S. national security and military power depend upon communications and information technology, whose performance is now driven by commercial markets, with military products following years later. Moreover, the widespread availability of broadband services for surveillance, videoconferencing, and other applications would directly increase the capabilities of law enforcement, medical, and national security authorities. Absent large-scale broadband environmental collapse, terrorism, oil-shocks, economic collapse, and healthcare problems are inevitable. Attempts to outweigh this advantage are futile. Ferguson 4 [Charles H. Ferguson is a nonresident senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and an independent computer consultant, “Broadband Policy and the Future of American Information Technology,” Brookings Policy, April 28, 2004, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2002/07technology_ferguson.aspx] On September 11, 2001, because it was judged unsafe for President Bush to return to Washington, DC, he conferred with his advisors over a secure videoconferencing link, a technology that will be critical to managing future national crises ranging from terrorist attacks to energy supply interruptions. Broadband technology is also critical to economic performance and national welfare. Yet the United States now ranks approximately 20th worldwide in broadband deployment, and is falling further behind. Although this industry is phenomenally complex, the sources of this problem are ultimately quite simple: broadband services are hostage to the self-interest and inefficiency of powerful incumbent firms, and Federal policy has failed to create a modern, competitive, open architecture local broadband industry. Let me begin with the still under-appreciated importance of broadband services. First, most terrorist threats involve significant transportation disruptions and/or quarantines, with broadband telecommunications required to replace physical transportation during the crisis. Second, videoconferencing and other broadband services are now critical to managing problems such as the cost and quality of health care, maintaining economic growth while limiting pollution and global warming, and surviving any future energy shock related to Mideast politics. And third, broadband services are critical to restoring and maintaining U.S. economic performance in an Internet-driven global economy. And yet the United States, which invented the Internet and pioneered the commercial Internet revolution ten years ago, is performing exceptionally poorly in broadband deployment, and more generally in local telecommunications services. Every other digital information technology industry - semiconductors, personal computers, disk drives, computer servers, software, consumer electronics, local area and corporate networking, fiberoptics, telecommunications equipment, long distance services - all of these industries deliver to their users exponential improvement in performance per dollar, ranging from 40% per year to 75% per year. There is, however, one exception: U.S. local telecommunications services, ranging from voice telephone service to broadband service, have displayed low or in some cases even zero or negative rates of improvement over the last decade. Furthermore, while the United States has one third of the world's computers, it has only 14% of the world's DSL lines. As of year-end 2003, the United States had 4.8 DSL lines per 100 telephones, versus for example 5.1 for China, 9.6 for France, 10.9 for Canada, 12.3 for Israel, 14.4 for Japan, and 21.4 for Taiwan. China and Japan both now have more DSL lines than the United States. World broadband deployment is growing 78% per year, while U.S. broadband deployment is growing only 35% per year. On a price-performance basis, U.S. broadband service is twice as expensive as China, eight times as expensive as South Korea, and thirty times more expensive than in Japan. This quite stunning situation generates many problems. First, as all information technology becomes more Internet-dependent, all IT products, services, industries, and applications are increasingly hostage to the local broadband bottleneck. This affects the health of the U.S. high technology sector and reduces productivity growth throughout the U.S. economy, perhaps by as much as 1% per year. Second, the high cost and low performance of U.S. broadband services is a driver of outsourcing, causing higher unemployment and downward pressure on U.S. wages, which have now stagnated in real terms for several decades. Third, local broadband costs are now the dominant source of the "digital divide," the growing inequality of information access between wealthy and average Americans. Because computers continuously become more powerful and less expensive, over a five year period Witty Quote 17 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 18 1AC—Broadband broadband costs are now greater than personal computer costs. And fourth, America suffers more than necessary with regard to health care costs, medical accidents, lack of preparedness for terrorist attacks, pollution, and vulnerability to energy price shocks. <<INSERT MARKOFF’S OIL SHOCKS IMPACT>> Witty Quote 18 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 19 1AC—Solvency CONTENTION THREE: SOLVENCY Expanding broadband is key to the effectiveness of every social service policy—it boosts economic growth and combats poverty domestically and internationally. Kamarck 8 [Elaine Kamarck, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, “Look to the Internet to fight poverty,” Boston Globe, Nov 29, Lexis] The challenge is tough but not impossible. In the past decade, information technology has begun to transform anti-poverty efforts and bring to the poverty world some of the increases in productivity that have been common in the private sector. If Obama can expand on this, the chances for him to make good on a broad social justice agenda will increase in spite of the other challenges he faces. In the past two decades, electronic database and Internet technologies have driven down the cost of government overhead while significantly elevating the productivity of the nation's anti-poverty programs. Fraud has been reduced while the needs of the economically distressed are addressed in a more timely manner. This has freed up money for other pressing anti-poverty needs. For example, the nation's food stamps and housing programs have been transformed by information technology. The food stamps program adopted the use of "smart cards" - electronic benefit transfer technology - to streamline benefits and eliminate fraud. The Department of Housing and Urban Development saved billions of dollars after adopting computer matching programs to handle housing assistance cases. America's public-assistance system has gone from being plagued by problems to a program that has made great strides in helping the poor. Part of the change was the result of government action in the 1990s to shift the incentive structure of the system. But the transformation of how welfare is administered, how cases are handled and processed, would have been impossible without information technology. This is one area where the investment has more than paid for itself, and, as welfare cases increase, this would be a good place for the new Congress to invest. Benefit eligibility is only one area where the Internet has helped improve anti-poverty work. It has also expanded the effectiveness of more traditional anti-poverty efforts. For example, the Internet has allowed the poor and their advocates to better navigate the complex bureaucracies that are characteristic of modern welfare states. In addition, it has helped poor children in underserved schools and poor adults seeking jobs, financial skills, or small-business opportunities. Through Beehive, a multi-lingual self-help portal created by One Economy Corporation, thousands have been able to find employment tools such as a business plan helper, and information on unemployment benefits and financial literacy. In the developing world, where anti-poverty programs are either small or nonexistent, the Internet has allowed non-government organizations to bridge the social, economic, and physical isolation of the poor. In countries like El Salvador and India, the Internet has helped to more effectively link farmers with markets, getting rid of costly and sometimes corrupt middlemen. One program in India provides Internet access to farmers via solar panels and satellites, allowing them up-to-the-minute information about weather, soil testing, and other factors that will increase productivity. And the Internet is becoming a critical tool for health workers who often work in remote areas far from doctors and specialists. Armed with PDAs, these workers can offer better medical care than ever before. Internet innovation has transformed business, entertainment, and even government. In an Obama administration, it can transform approaches to poverty at home and abroad. The government's efforts should be focused on expanding access to Internet and other technologies for as many Americans as possible while continuing to develop our national broadband capacity. An expanded technological infrastructure will help Obama make good on a broad social justice agenda as he confronts the myriad problems he has inherited. This must start with federal broadband expansion Lloyd 7 [Mark, Mark Lloyd is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. A communications attorney and award-winning broadcast journalist, Lloyd is the recent author of Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, published by the University of Illinois Press. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his law degree from Georgetown University. “The Wiring of Rural America,” June 7 http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/06/lloyd_testimony.html] We must reinstate the Technology Opportunity Program run by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that the Bush administration eliminated. Encouraging public private partnerships to both deploy and develop new applications for advanced communications technologies was smart policy. Canada largely adopted that policy while we cut Witty Quote 19 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 20 1AC—Solvency back. That’s how they jumped ahead of us. In New Brunswick, a largely rural Canadian province, the government of Canada provided up to $16.5 million, the government of New Brunswick investing $12.5 million, and the telecommunications company invested $15.6 million in the New Brunswick Broadband Initiative. They finished six months ahead of schedule and are reporting that 90 percent of New Brunswickers in 327 communities have access to truly high-speed broadband service. [viii] In addition, instead of capping the universal service program we must continue to protect and advance it. Despite the Chicken Little cries of “uncontrolled growth,” the universal service program is working to connect school and libraries and hospitals and small business in rural America. Much of the expansion of deployment has occurred because of the e-rate and other universal service programs. As Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) has argued, capping universal service is “an ostrich approach.”[ix] Despite the ongoing attacks on the so-called Gore Tax, the Universal Service program is one of the few parts of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that actually works. Over 90 percent of schools and libraries are connected and helping millions of Americans connect to advanced telecommunications service. And the rural portion of the universal service program, the Rural Utilities Service and the Rural Telephone Bank have been working effectively for 50 years to ensure service to communities ignored by the big telecommunications carriers. Universal Service needs to be extended, not capped. We need to make sure that broadband is provided, not only through traditional wireline, but through wireless terrestrial and satellite service as well. There is a continuing academic debate over Robert Metcalfe’s law on the value of networks. The importance of communications services that actually connect to a wide range of other communications services should be a no-brainer. But we don’t have to limit ourselves to recent observations about the obvious fact that the public importance of a communications system grows as you connect more members of the public to the system. This is not a new insight. It is in fact an insight with deep roots in our system of government. The historian Richard John reminds us that in 1787 Dr. Benjamin Rush argued for federal investment in a communications system “to distribute knowledge of every kind through every part of the United States.” Five years later James Madison pushed through Congress and President George Washington signed the Post Office Act of 1792, reversing the British colonial policies of postal service as a way to generate revenue and establishing a “service first” set of postal policies to ensure that all Americans had access to the most advanced What Rush and Madison and Washington were concerned about was how to make sure that a government of the people, by the people and for the people actually worked. And so they established a system of universal postal service that became the largest and most advanced the world had ever known. What the founders understood is still true today. If we are to make our democracy work all Americans need access to the most advanced tools to communicate with each other about public policy. Connecting all Americans to the most advanced communications service is important for business, health care, and education, and it is fundamental for civic participation. Rural Americans do not communications operation of its day.[x] represent only a need, they represent a resource. We need the energy and ideas and active engagement of our small towns and rural communities in our national discussion. Our federal policies should ensure not only that rural America sees and hears the world, but that the world has an opportunity to see and hear and benefit from rural America. Today that means two-way, real-time interactive communication of voice, data, and high-definition video. Specifically, Congress should include broadband in Life Line and Link Up Feinberg 3/12/09 [By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com, “Congress, Industry Execs Agree on Broadband in Revamped Universal Service Fund,” http://broadbandcensus.com/2009/03/congress-industry-execs-agree-on-broadband-in-revamped-universal-service-fund/] The Obama administration’s priority in broadband deployment injected an undercurrent of excitement into a Thursday hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, the Internet. While the hearing was scheduled to be focused on reforming the universal service fund high-cost program, both members and witness spent much of the hearing debating how best to use the fund to deploy broadband internet access to all Americans. “Broadband has emerged as a critical part of our telecommunications infrastructure,” said Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va. “New funding sources must be tapped” in order to bring access to unserved areas, he said. “Broadband is to communications today what electricity and telephone service were 100 years ago,” Boucher said. And while he acknowledged the impact of $7.2 billion in stimulus funding for broadband was a subject for debate, Boucher reiterated his view that broadband is “clearly deserving…of universal service fund support.” But Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said the stimulus plans made expansion of the fund irrelevant. Instead of expanding the USF, Stearns suggested examining the successes and failures of the stimulus program while it is implemented. Congress should focus efforts on reducing waste and fraud in current USF programs and adding a cap prevent more “uncontrolled growth” of the fund, Stearns said. “Throwing money at this crumbling program makes no sense,” he said. Instead of more subsides, Stearns suggested using “market-based, technology-neutral d Witty Quote 20 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 21 1AC—Solvency systems” to encourage broadband deployment. Industry leaders were in agreement on Boucher’s plan for expanding the USF to include broadband service. “The core principle of competitive telecommunications for every American remains an important and worthy goal,” said U.S. Cellular Chairman LeRoy Carlson. “[T]he proper role of [the USF] must be to ensure that [rural] areas have modern, high quality telecommunications infrastructure” that is both feature and price comparable with their urban and suburban counterparts, he said.” Broadband and mobile wireless services are two ‘must-have’ functionalities consumers expect and demand for home and business, Carlson declared,” whether they live in urban or rural areas. “I believe a reformed program can effectively…address those problems, and if tailored correctly, can even be complimented by leveraging the [broadband stimulus funds],” he said. “A central goal of this program must be to provide rural citizens with access to high quality mobile voice and broadband services, everywhere that people live, work and travel,” said Carlson. Verizon executive vice president Tom Tauke told the subcommittee he believes that consumers, industry and policymakers agree that modern and affordable communications services are “a prerequisite for economic growth, and an essential platform to address major social challenges.” But the high-cost fund “remains focused on yesteryear’s technology,” Tauke said. “Attempts to fit new technologies into a telecom framework.” service.” This process has not allowed the fund to meet its “fundamental objective: providing universal Qwest Communications Executive Vice President Robert Davis agreed for the need to reform the fund to allow for new technologies. “The grants for broadband deployment that will be provided by the [stimulus program] are a start,” he said, “but no one believes that this money will result in ubiquitous deployment of [broadband] to currently underserved areas.” There remains a crucial role for universal service funding,” David declared. Adopting broadband as part of universal service would also resolve questions on how to stop what some lawmakers described as “runaway” increases in USF fees. AT&T vice president Joel Lubin suggested that moving from charging consumers based on a portion of their bill to a per-number charge. While Lubin acknowledged revenues paid into the fund from telephone network access charges might temporarily decrease under such a plan, he predicted that the drop would be inevitable as more Americans move to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services. The increasing number of phone numbers used by consumers in next-generation technologies such as mobile phones, VoIP lines, and multi-line business systems would more than make up for the temporary drop, Lubin said. A broadband based USF program would eliminate access charges while providing “more capability, without the complexity of old narrowband pipes” Free “Broadband is a disruptive technology that redefines the game,” Lubin said. “Local calling areas are now the whole world.” Press research director Derek Turner noted both “critics and defenders of the high-cost fund all agree that broadband is the essential communications infrastructure of the 21st Century.” When USF was created in 1996, “internet access was an application that used telephony as an infrastructure,” he said. By contrast, Turner said in today’s world, “telephony is one of the many applications that are supported by broadband infrastructure.” And while the FCC can take steps to modernize the USF regulatory structure, Turner emphasized that “meaningful and lasting reform” can come only from congressional action. “Achieving this goal…will require the When Boucher asked the panel if the law should explicitly allow USF to cover broadband, there was no disagreement that the 1996 Telecommunications Act should be changed to allow USF funding to explicitly cover broadband services. was some disagreement over whether a “USF 2.0,” as complete upending of the status quo and direct confrontation of difficult and politically challenging choices,” he said. But there one witness put it, should be limited to wireline services only. While Davis said a program should be “technology neutral” once speed and price targets had been determined, Carlson said that both were equally important – and that wireline and wireless could be subjected to different speed requirements. And while Turner acknowledged wireless could have a role in reducing costs, he wasn’t convinced. “I’m not sure if checking Facebook while driving at 70 miles per hour is [needed in USF programs]. But Tauke pointed out that fixed and mobile wireless have different use cases and potentials. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., agreed, calling the two technologies “a different ballgame.” The Federal Communications Commission is currently accepting comments on a proposal to expand the USF-funded Life Line and Link Up programs to include broadband services. In response to a it is important for all Americans to have access to broadband and that USF should be included, but he could not offer specific alternatives to the Life Line/Link Up proposal except to suggest the program be technology-neutral. question from Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., Tauke said he didn’t support the proposal in its current form. Tauke later said in an interview that Verizon believes Low-income broadband is key to boosting competitiveness and solving poverty and the digital divide Connected Nation 8 [“US Senate Commerce Committee Hearing “Why Broadband Matters”,” Sept 16, http://connectednation.com/in_the_news/the_blog/labels/APT;%20broadband%20expansion.php] Today, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing designed to take a step back, look at the larger picture, and examine the importance of broadband in the daily lives of Americans. Chairman Daniel Inouye (HI–D) captured it well in his opening remarks – “This is why our discussion today is not about pipes and providers. It is about people; universal broadband adoption.” our citizens stand to gain the most from Representatives of the AARP, the American Library Association, the American Telemedicine Association and the head of an Alaskan health corporation broadband services are critical to healthcare, employment, education and quality of life for everyone in the United States. They told the stories of Americans who directly (which relies on distance medicine to effectively treat 28,000 patients in a geographic area the size of Oregon) all hammered home the point that benefit from broadband. Rey Ramsey, head of the One Economy Corporation, stressed the importance of broadband policies that focus on aggregating demand for and adoption of broadband services, reiterating a point One Economy “is a global nonprofit that leverages the power of technology and information to connect low-income people to the economic mainstream.” Larry Cohen, the President of the Communications Workers of America, pointed to Connected Nation’s initiative, Connect Ohio, as an example of successful public-private partnerships that bring together the public and private sectors to made often by Connected Nation - local applications that have value and use in day-to-day life drive demand for broadband services. Witty Quote 21 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 22 1AC—Solvency overcome broadband availability gaps, increase broadband adoption (particularly in low-income and rural populations) and deliver measurable improvements to the American quality of life. Cohen also recommended, as did other witnesses, that the Senate pass S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which would speed the creation of comprehensive broadband initiatives in the states. Congressional incentives are key Kruger & Kilroy 8 [*Lennard G. Kruger Specialist in Science and Technology Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, AND ** Angele A. Gilroy Specialist in Telecommunications Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Broadband Internet Access and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs,” June 4, http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL30719.pdf] On January 31, 2008, NTIA released a report, entitled, Networked Nation: Broadband in America, 2007.48 According to NTIA, the report showed “that the Administration’s technology, regulatory, and fiscal policies have stimulated innovation and competition, and encouraged investment in the U.S. broadband market contributing to significantly increased accessibility of broadband services.”49 Some policymakers in Congress have disagreed with the Administration’s assessment and assert that the federal government should play a more active role to avoid a “digital divide” in broadband access, and that legislation is necessary to ensure fair competition and timely broadband deployment. Bills have been introduced into past Congresses (and have been introduced in the 110th Congress) seeking to provide federal financial assistance for broadband deployment in the form of grants, loans, subsidies, and/or tax credits. LifeLine and LinkUp are key to broadband—solves the economy Congressional Quarterly 9 [TESTIMONY-BY: DEREK TURNER, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, “UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND; COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE; SUBCOMMITTEE: COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INTERNET,” March 12, Lexis] Broadband is the dominant communications service of the 21st century. There is little doubt that the benefits of transitioning the USF to a broadband infrastructure-based system far outweigh the costs. America's place atop the global economy for the remainder of this century requires a comprehensive policy commitment to closing our digital divide. We strongly encourage Congress and the Commission to move expeditiously to enact reforms that make open access broadband networks the centerpiece of universal service policy. The plan spills over—it boosts economic growth, healthcare efficiency, and energy conservation Connected Nation 8 [“Congress Has Opportunity to Connect the Nation,” Sept 27, http://connectednation.com/in_the_news/the_blog/labels/APT;%20broadband%20expansion.php] Last night during the first presidential debate, Senator Barack Obama included the deployment of broadband technology to all Americans as one of the economic priorities he would establish if he became President. Senator John McCain supports the deployment of broadband technology and calls it a “top priority” to ensure deployment as widely as possible. All year, both house of Congress have been considering legislation that would, among other things, establish grant programs to support mapping initiatives in the states to identify gaps in broadband deployment and to help fund the efforts of groups in the states, like Connected Nation, focused on promoting the deployment of Over the last several years, we have made great progress in a number of states in promoting broadband deployment using mapping strategies and “e-teams” focused on encouraging deployment and helping people get training and PCs so they can take advantage of broadband. There is abundant evidence that broadband technology can promote economic growth, energy efficiency, improved education programs and better health care. The multiplier effects of broadband technology are immense. Relatively small investments in broadband can encourage substantial returns in economic growth, new jobs and innovation. Dozens of organizations – from the Alliance for Public Technology to the Communications Workers of America to companies broadband. The legislation, S. 1492, has passed the Senate and is now pending in the House. like Verizon and Cisco – support S. 1492. Congress can take a big step to promote a healthy economy by passing this legislation and I hope it does so today. Witty Quote 22 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 23 1AC—Solvency State policy EMPIRICALLY fails—federal investment is key IPA 7 [By: Chris Berg, Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and Editor of the IPA Review, “Broadband projects an embarrassing, expensive failure,” Aug 22, Institute of Public Affairs, http://www.ipa.org.au/news/1461/broadband-projects-an-embarrassing-expensive-failure] But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Californian project is imploding. US internet provider EarthLink may pull out of San Francisco's municipal WiFi project. Australian governments should take note - local politicians are not always the best investors in communications technology. After the ACCC had torpedoed Telstra's proposal to build a Fibre-to-the-node network late last year -- but before the major federal parties had announced their intentions to simply pay for the high-speed networks themselves -- State governments one by one proposed their own solutions to the broadband controversy. Leading the charge, Peter Beattie proposed that a private firm finance, build and operate a fibre-to-the-home network in Brisbane, but this was little more than a wishful press release. Other states drew on overseas broadband proposals. Western Australia's $1 billion fibre proposal was modelled on Alberta's SuperNet. By all accounts, the Canadian network has been a relative success, but both SuperNet and the WA plan focus on building network backbone to essential services rather than piping internet direct to consumers. Certainly, there are a wide range of international comparisons to call upon. Particularly in the United States, local governments are taking it upon themselves to get into the broadband business, with or without private support. But the experience has been rocky. Local WiFi projects are often underutilised, underperforming, and expensive. Local councils may assume that free broadband would be popular, but one citywide project in Orlando, Florida was shut down in 2005 when the city realised that only 27 people were using the service per day. Uptake rates have been more positive in other cities, but are in the range of one to two percent of the population, comparing poorly with the forecasted demand of between 15 and 30 percent. The most high-profile network - and one which Iemma praised when announcing the Sydney plan - has also been the biggest debacle. San Francisco's joint venture with EarthLink and Google is no closer to deployment than when it was announced in 2005. Indeed, the project's failure was abundantly clear at the time when the NSW government was examining it. The Google-EarthLink plan has been derailed by political theatre and contractual disputes. And even if EarthLink doesn't pull out, the network speeds offered will be a paltry 300kbps - a speed which has been widely derided in Australia as 'fraudband'. Contrast this with the 60 mbps nationwide fibre-to-the-home network that Verizon is investing in at a cost of US$18 billion. It is tempting for politicians to offer things to their constituents for free, especially something as popular as broadband. But local government broadband projects are proving to be an embarrassing, expensive failure. None of your DAs are unique—stimulus included massive funding for broadband but was insufficient to bridge the divide Budde 9 [Paul Budde, Managing Director of Paul Budde Communication, “To What Extent Will the US Broadband Stimulus Package Provide a… Stimulus?” CircleID Internet Infrastructure, Feb 5, http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090205_us_broadband_stimulus_package_extent/] The story of America's lacklustre broadband performance is relatively well known. Part of that story relates to its low broadband penetration levels when compared with other developed economies. In 2008 the US still languished around the middle of the OECD broadband penetration rankings (at around 15th) having slipped from near the top of the table (4th place) since 2001. Another aspect of the story relates to broadband speeds. For instance, although Japan and the US have similar broadband penetration rates, OECD data indicate that Japan has nearly ten times faster broadband speeds than the US, based on average advertised download speeds. Again, the US ranks around the middle of the OECD rankings (14th place) in terms of average broadband speeds. Thus, in terms of broadband technology levels, the USA still trails behind leading countries such as Japan and Korea, and some European countries such as France and Italy, by a full generation. These and similar figures have been cited in repeated calls for a US national broadband policy to drive a major Witty Quote 23 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 24 1AC—Solvency overhaul of US broadband markets. By the beginning of 2009 any such policy was still merely an aspiration. Indeed, the momentum behind broadband policy development may well have had the wind knocked out of it by the financial crisis. Thus it came as no surprise when, despite the broadband sector calling for government grants or tax credits in the order of tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars, a relatively modest $6 billion was earmarked for the broadband sector in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill 2009. This amount was less than 1% of the total fiscal stimulus package (which broadly comprised $275 billion in tax credits and $550 billion in government investment). The $6 billion was earmarked for "broadband and wireless in underserved areas" which ostensibly goes some way to actioning Obama's election pledge to bring broadband to the entire nation. The latest Senate revision of the Bill increases the amount of grants to $9 billion. Apart from quantum, there are a number of important questions still to be answered before one can better anticipate what the broadband package will ultimately achieve. For instance, to what extent will the open access requirement determine the likely participants? For example, will it deter some private participants because their current models are not open access and they may not want to set a workable precedent. In addition, when the initial draft of the package had the funding in the form of grants rather than tax credits, one expected as much or even greater participation by municipalities compared to the private sector. However the Senate's revision to the package now also provides 10% tax credits which would naturally favour private investment. Furthermore the minimum speed requirement may preclude some technologies and participants that would otherwise be better suited to the target areas. Perhaps the most contentious part of the Senate's revision is the 20% tax cut to companies for bringing next-generation speeds (defined as 100Mbps/200Mbps) to underserved AND EXISTING areas. This would appear to go well beyond the scope of the initial package and would clearly be a massive windfall to Verizon Communications who is in the process of spending billions bringing FttH networks to their footprint. Verizon's upcoming deployments to which it had already committed, in the order of an estimated $4 billion per year over the next two years, would automatically benefit from a tax break under the Senate's version of the package—hardly a stimulus effect. On the other hand, to the extent that DOCSIS 3.0 would achieve speeds that qualify, the tax break could in fact stimulate cable to more quickly deploy these upgrades. Disappointingly, the Senate's criteria for the tax credits do not include any network neutrality or network non-discrimination principles. There is still much wrangling to come between the Senate and the House before the detail of the package is finalised. And the devil may well be in the detail. But one suspects that once the dust settles, the US will still be languishing in broadband penetration and speed levels. Only then perhaps will the Obama administration be pressed to turning to the bigger question of a national broadband policy, one that focuses on encouraging or indeed mandating open-networks (or at the very least network neutrality rules) which would drive competition and innovation in the much bigger sector, the digital economy. Only once the digital economy (e-health, e-education, e-commerce, digital media etc) is allowed to flourish would we expect a truly noticeable stimulus to the broader economy and to living standards. Witty Quote 24 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 25 2AC Add-On—Health IT Plan key to health IT revolution APT 7 [Alliance for Public Technology, “Tele-health Experts Cite Broadband as a Healthcare Solution During Congressional Staff Briefing,” Sep 17, http://www.apt.org/news/apt-press-releases/2007/telehealthbriefing091907.html] Today at a congressional staff briefing pioneers in the tele-health field urged more investment and deployment of universal broadband for better health care. The panel discussion was sponsored by the Alliance for Public Technology (APT), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Center for Tele-Health at the Medical College of Georgia, and the E-Health & Telemedicine Division of the ISIS Center at Georgetown University. To open the briefing, Joy Howell, the moderator and director of APT’s Broadband Changed My Life! Campaign, framed the conversation by saying, “Recently we’ve heard many of the top Presidential candidates lay out plans to get more health care coverage to more people. And at the heart of those plans is the concept of health care savings and greater efficiency of health care service delivery. Some reports have estimated savings of $800 billion in health care costs from increased use of broadband to provide health care services.” Based on their personal experience, practitioners and patients highlighted the power of tele-health systems that utilize broadband Internet connections to enhance and even save lives while cutting medical costs, especially in rural and remote communities. Tele-health “has changed my life as a practitioner,” said panelist Max Stachura, M.D., director of the Center for Tele-health at the Medical College of Georgia. Observing that specialists can be spread out in rural areas, he pointed out that “resource sharing is what makes tele-health work in rural communities.” Several panelists stressed the benefits of remote monitoring for chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension. Betty Levine, Director of E-Health & Telemedicine Division of the ISIS Center at Georgetown University, echoed these themes. Speaking about MyCareTeam, an online application for managing diabetes, she explained that, “For individuals with chronic diseases, self-management is critical if one is to stay healthy and keep their disease well controlled. MyCareTeam is a virtual clinic that provides a person with diabetes the tools necessary to care for their disease while receiving support in between scheduled office visits.” Panelist Cherrel Christian, R.N., a nurse at the Diabetes Center at Prince Georges Hospital Center, gave an example. “When an expectant mother with gestational diabetes moved from the DC area to Arizona, a resident still checked her blood sugar and gave her advice remotely over a three week travel period until she reached her new clinic.” Later, Ken Kelly, Director of the Washington Office of the Children’s Partnership, told congressional staffers about another tele-health success story. According to Kelly, “Telemedicine plays a huge role connecting children to specialty care.” He said, “We met a woman who traveled with her son as far as 320 miles in a day to see various pediatric sub-specialists. Now her son visits a clinic ten minutes from their home to see a neurologist 600 miles away through telemedicine.” Washington is in the unique position of being able to provide incentives for specialists to participate in telemedicine as well as to conduct research for evaluating telemedicine programs. Dr. Jay Sanders, M.D., president and CEO of the Global Telemedicine Group, wrapped up the opening statements. He told staffers that “broadband provides an umbilical cord for information to flow between patients and practitioners. The exam room has to be where the Kelly also urged the federal government to encourage states to use Medicaid funding to pay for care delivered through telemedicine. patient is, not where the doctor is. That’s where we get the true physiological state of a patient.” That solves 98,000 deaths per year Gingrich 6 [Newt, Senior Fellow @ American Enterprise Institute and Former Speaker of the House “The Importance of Health Information Technology,” March 31, 2006, http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24144/pub_detail.asp] Instead of saving lives, our current paper-based health system is taking them. With as many as 98,000 Americans still being killed by medical errors every year, ridding the system of paper-based records and quickly adopting health information technology will save lives and--at the same time--save money. Paper kills. It is that simple. Witty Quote 25 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 26 2AC Add-On—Diseases Low-income broadband solves chronic diseases Ramsey 8 [Rey Ramsey CEO One Economy, “UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE,” CQ Congressional Testimony, June 24, 2008, Lexis] One Economy is a global nonprofit that leverages the power of technology and information to connect lowincome people to the economic mainstream. We bring broadband into the homes of low- income people, produce public-purpose media, and train and employ youth to enhance communities' technology capacity. Our work has taken hold in four continents, from big cities to small rural towns. Since our founding in 2000, our work has reached 15 million people. Today, as we discuss the importance of universal service and universal access to low-income communities, I would like to highlight the challenges we face in encouraging families to adopt that access in their homes. When we look at the data on broadband, we see both good news and bad news. Most Americans have access to broadband service--by which I mean it is available where they live if they want a connection to their home computer. In fact, according to the Federal Communications Commission's zip-code level data, in more than 90 percent of the United States, consumers can choose from three or more broadband providers. Nearly 60 percent of Americans have adopted broadband by paying for a high-speed connection. But those positive trends in broadband availability should not overshadow the significant inequality between rich and poor communities. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, while 76 percent of households earning more than $50,000 per year are connected, only 35 percent of homes with annual income less than $50,000 have adopted broadband in their homes. Universal access is particularly important to these low-income communities. We have seen the power of broadband to give low- income people tools for improving their education, their health, and their economic lives. For example, 70 percent of working families who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) pay for professional help preparing and filing their taxes and as many as 25 percent of families who qualified for the EITC did not receive it. This year, we partnered with H&R Block and E*TRADE to make free tax preparation and filing available online. Families using our site, the Beehive ( ), received nearly $10 million in state and federal refunds. In addition to the $1000 average refund, broadband made possible the education and support these families needed to file for themselves, saving hundreds of dollars in fees. Broadband is also giving low-income people tools to improve their health. Chronic diseases affect millions of Americans and disproportionately impact low-income communities. Broadband can bring into homes the resources people need to handle the day-to- day management of a disease like diabetes. These tools can be accessed by people who may not be able to seek in-person assistance because of their location or the cost of these services. That kills nearly 2 million a year Reed 9 [BY JENNIFER BOOTH REED, “Programs aim to prevent chronic diseases,” May 18, http://www.newspress.com/article/20090518/HEALTH/905180345/1013/LIFESTYLES] Policymakers are eyeing chronic disease management and preventive medicine as significant keys to reining in health care costs and reforming the health system. The seven most common chronic diseases cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion in treatment and lost productivity. Almost half of Americans suffer from one or more chronic conditions, and chronic diseases kill 1.7 million people in the United States every year. Many of the illnesses are preventable. Witty Quote 26 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 27 2AC Add-On—Natives Plan key to Natives Ramsey 8 [Rey Ramsey CEO One Economy, “UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE,” CQ Congressional Testimony, June 24, 2008, Lexis] At One Economy, we have recently begun work with the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon, home to nearly 4,000 members of the Warm Spring, Wasco, and Paiute tribes--thanks in part to the efforts of a former member of this committee, Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse. Broadband access is already available on the reservation; the Warm Springs Tribe built a Motorola canopybased wireless solution to provide broadband to the local government and individuals. But uptake among residents has been slow, in part because the average monthly cost is $50--out of reach for many members of the tribes. In the coming months, we will work with leaders in the reservation to make broadband a relevant and affordable tool. In addition to lowering the cost of home access and creating public access points, we will use broadband and the applications it makes possible to expand tribal member participation in government, support small business development, preserve native culture, and improve members' digital skills. Young people will be trained in technical and leadership skills so they can become cultural bridges between their community and technology. Government can play a role in stimulating demand, as the tribal government in Warm Springs is doing. Creating public-purpose online media--media that puts vital information and tools directly in the hands of citizens--can demonstrate the value proposition of bringing broadband into their lives and homes. For lowincome people, who are often caught in a web of government programs and services, simple and direct online access to those programs can mean the difference between missing a day of work to stand in line at a municipal building and getting help in the comfort of one's home. Witty Quote 27 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 28 2AC Add-On—Freedom of Speech [1/2] Internet technology is key to freedom of speech Shirazi 8 [Prof @ Institute for Research on Innovation and Technology Management @ Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, “THE CONTRIBUTION OF ICT TO FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF A RCHIVAL DATA ON THE MIDDLE EAST,” http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/download/499/255] ICTs provide new tools for efficient public participation in the democratic process in the form of e-democracy, e-government, evoting and the dissemination of opinions, thoughts, ideas, and/or rallying social action about things that concern citizens. Clift (2003) argues that e- democracy is the use of information and communications technologies and strategies by “democratic sectors” within the political processes of local communities, states, regions, and nations, as well as those on the global stage such as the United Nations. Morrisett (2003) points out that ICTs can be used to enhance the democratic process in form of e-government in which citizens are able to effectively impact the decision-making process in a timely manner within and between institutionally, politically or geographically distinct networked communities. Clift (2003) uses the phrase “representative e-government” to describe the e- democracy activities of government institutions whether local or international. Government institutions are making significant investments in the use of ICTs in their work, expressing “democratic intent”. Their efforts make this one of the most dynamic and important areas of e-democracy development. Brinkerhoff (2005) states that the Internet facilitates the expression of liberal values, such as individualism and freedom of speech, either through anonymity or access. Ferdinand (2000) argues that as a means of communication, the Internet has the potential to revolutionize political activity far more profoundly than the telephone or television ever did. This has led to the prediction that it will completely revolutionize government and democracy, to the extent that the outcome will be a new wave of democratization world-wide, as authoritarian regimes will find it increasingly difficult to survive and as established democracies transform. Kalathil et al. (2003) found that some studies have addressed the question of media and democracy, engaging in comparative case studies of the Internet across a variety of developing counties, including many authoritarian regimes. This section addresses the impact of ICT development and, more specifically, the Internet and mobile cell phones on the promotion of freedom of expression in a region that is governed mostly by such regimes. That must be protected at all costs—the alternative is war and genocide D’Souza 96 [Frances D’Souza, Prof of anthropology @ Oxford, European Parliament Hearing on Free Speech, http://www.europarl.eu.int/hearings/speech/freedom_en.htm] In the absence of freedom of expression which includes a free and independent media, it is impossible to protect other rights, including the right to life. Once governments are able to draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions and to remain unaccountable for their actions then massive human rights violations can, and do, take place. For this reason alone the right to freedom of expression, specifically protected in the major international human rights treaties, must be considered to be a primary right. It is significant that one of the first indications of a government’s intention to depart from democratic principles is the ever increasing control of information by means of gagging the media, and preventing the freeflow of information from abroad. At one end of the spectrum there are supposedly minor infringements of this fundamental right which occur daily in Western democracies and would include abuse of national security laws to prevent the publication of information which might be embarrassing to a given government: at the other end of the scale are the regimes of terror which employ the most brutal moves to suppress opposition, information and even the freedom to exercise religious beliefs. It has been argued, and will undoubtedly be discussed at this Hearing, that in the absence of free speech and an independent media, it is relatively easy for governments to capture, as it were, the media and to fashion them into instruments of propaganda, for the promotion of ethnic conflict, war and genocide. 2. Enshrining the right to freedom of expression The right to freedom of expression is formally protected in the major international treaties including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is enshrined in many national constitutions throughout the world, although this does not always guarantee its protection. Furthermore, freedom of expression is, amongst other human rights, upheld, even for those countries which are not signatories to the above international treaties through the concept of customary law which essentially requires that all states respect the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by virtue of the widespread or customary respect which has been built up in the post World War II years. 3. Is free speech absolute? While it is generally accepted that freedom of expression is, and remains the cornerstone of democracy, there are permitted restrictions encoded within the international treaties which in turn allow for a degree Witty Quote 28 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 29 of interpretation of how free free speech should be. Thus, unlike the American First Amendment Rights which allow few, if any, checks on free speech or on the independence of the media, the international treaties are concerned that there should be a balance between competing rights: for example, limiting free speech or media freedom where it impinges on the individual’s right to privacy; where free speech causes insult or injury to the rights and reputation of another; where speech is Witty Quote 29 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 30 2AC Add-On—Freedom of Speech [2/2] construed as incitement to violence or hatred, or where free speech would create a public disturbance. Given that these permitted restrictions are necessarily broad, the limits of free speech are consistently tested in national law courts and, perhaps even more importantly, in the regional courts such as the European Commission and Court of Human Rights. In recent years several landmark cases have helped to define more closely what restrictions may be imposed by government and under what circumstances. In particular, it has been 30ondition30 by the European Court that any restriction must comply with a three-part test which requires that any such restriction should first of all be prescribed by law, and thus not arbitrarily imposed: proportionate to the legitimate aims pursued, and demonstrably necessary in a democratic society in order to protect the individual and/or the state. 4. Who censors what? Despite the rather strict rules which apply to restrictions on free speech that governments may wish to impose, many justifications are nevertheless sought by governments to suppress information which is inimical to their policies or their interests. These justifications include arguments in defence of national and/or state security, the public interst, including the need to protect public morals and public order and perfectly understandable attempts to prevent racism, violence, sexism, religious intolerance and damage to the indi-vidual’s reputation or privacy. The mechanisms employed by governments to restrict the freeflow of information are almost endless and range from subtle economic pressures and devious methods of undermining political opponents and the independent media to the enactment of restrictive press laws and an insist-ence on licensing journalists and eventually to the illegal detention, torture and disappearances of journalists and others associated with the expression of independent views. 5. Examples of censorship To some the right to free speech may appear to be one of the fringe human rights, especially when compared to such violations as torture and extra-judicial killings. It is also sometimes difficult to dissuade the general public that censorship, generally assumed to be something to do with banning obscene books or magazines, is no bad thing! It requires a recognition of some of the fundamental principles of democracy to understand why censorship is so immensely dangerous. The 30ondition of democracy is that people are able to make choices about a wide variety of issues which affect their lives, including what they wish to see, read, hear or discuss. While this may seem a somewhat luxurious distinction preoccupying, perhaps, wealthy Western democracies, it is a comparatively short distance between government censorship of an offensive book to the silencing of political dissidents. And the distance between such silencing and the use of violence to suppress a growing political philosophy which a government finds inconvenient is even shorter. Censorship tends to have small beginnings and to grow rapidly. Allowing a government to have the power to deny people information, however trivial, not only sets in place laws and procedures which can and will be used by those in authority against those with less authority, but it also denies people the information which they must have in order to monitor their governments actions and to ensure accountability. There have been dramatic and terrible examples of the role that censorship has played in international politics in the last few years: to name but a few, the extent to which the media in the republics of former Yugoslavia were manipulated by government for purposes of propaganda; the violent role played by the government associated radio in Rwanda which incited citizens to kill each other in the name of ethnic purity and the continuing threat of murder issued by the Islamic Republic of Iran against a citizen of another country for having written a book which displeased them. 6. The link between poverty, war and denial of free speech There are undoubted connections between access to information, or rather the lack of it, and war, as indeed there are between poverty, the right to freedom of expression and development. One can argue that democracy aims to increase participation in political and other decision-making at all levels. In this sense democracy empowers people. The poor are denied access to information on decisions which deeply affect their lives, are thus powerless and have no voice; the poor are not able to have influence over their own lives, let alone other aspect of society. Because of this essential powerlessness, the poor are unable to influence the ruling elite in whose interests it may be to initiate conflict and wars in order to consolidate their own power and position. Of the 126 developing countries listed in the 1993 Human Development Report, war was ongoing in 30 countries and severe civil conflict in a further 33 countries. Of the total 63 countries in conflict, 55 are towards the bottom scale of the human development index which is an indicator of poverty. There seems to be no doubt that there is a clear association between poverty and war. It is reasonably safe to assume that the vast majority of people do not ever welcome war. They are normally coerced, more often than not by propaganda, into fear, extreme nationalist sentiments and war by their governments. If the majority of people had a democratic voice they would undoubtedly object to war. But voices are silenced. Thus, the freedom to express one’s views and to challenge government decisions and to insist upon political rather than violent solutions, are necessary aspects of democracy which can, and do, avert war. Government sponsored propaganda in Rwanda, as in former Yugoslavia, succeeded because there weren’t the means to challenge it. One has therefore to conclude that it is impossible for a particular government to wage war in the absence of a compliant media willing to indulge in government propaganda. This is because the government needs civilians to fight wars for them and also because the media is needed to re-inforce government policies and intentions at every turn. Witty Quote 30 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 31 2AC Add-On—Global Anti-Poverty Domestic broadband for persons in poverty solves global social services and poverty alleviation Kamarck 8 [Elaine Kamarck, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, “Look to the Internet to fight poverty,” Dec 1 http://www.benton.org/node/19414] In the past decade, information technology has begun to transform anti-poverty efforts and bring to the poverty world some of the increases in productivity that have been common in the private sector. If President-elect Obama can expand on this, the chances for him to make good on a broad social justice agenda will increase in spite of the other challenges he faces. In the past two decades, electronic database and Internet technologies have driven down the cost of government overhead while significantly elevating the productivity of the nation's anti-poverty programs. Fraud has been reduced while the needs of the economically distressed are addressed in a more timely manner. This has freed up money for other pressing anti-poverty needs. Internet innovation has transformed business, entertainment, and even government. In an Obama administration, it can transform approaches to poverty at home and abroad. The government's efforts should be focused on expanding access to Internet and other technologies for as many Americans as possible while continuing to develop our national broadband capacity. That sucks Gilligan 96 [James, professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, p 191-196] The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital . *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly . The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954- even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect. 1973), and Witty Quote 31 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 32 2AC Add-On—Education Broadband is key to low-income education Hesseldahl 8 [Arik Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com, “Bringing Broadband to the Urban Poor,” December 31, 2008, http://www.lisc.org/docs/news/010109_bizweek_nef.pdf] For some people, there's no substitute for having access at home. "It's pathetic trying to research health issues on a computer in a library with a computer at home made all the difference for 17-year-old Christine Davis, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and a regular at a computer clubhouse run by HCCI. Her family bought its first PC this year. "Having it [at home] is a big help with homework," says Davis, a resident of Bradhurst. "When I didn't have it, it was so frustrating, and I can work on college applications late at night." Getting to a computer outside the home can be especially difficult in neighborhoods like Davis's where gangs are active. no privacy and a 30-minute limit," McConnell says. Having OneEconomy also tries to ensure that computer users in low-income areas have useful content, wherever they log on. TheBeehive.org contains articles and demonstrations on such practical matters as writing a check and using a debit card. Another site, Public Internet Channel, hosts video programming, including an upcoming 12-part dramatic series called Diary of a Single Mom that chronicles the lives of three women raising children on their own. It begins Jan. 27. The point, says OneEconomy Chief Executive Officer Rey Ramsey, is to encourage adoption of broadband among low-income people. "You have to give them a reason to think this is something that will help their lives in a meaningful way," he says. Research also points to educational benefits. One study by the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2004 found that nearly half of high school graduates who had computers and Internet access at home went on to college. Among students who didn't have computers and Internet access, the college enrollment rate fell to one in four. "Kids who have access at home can do things like search for scholarships and apply for college and for financial aid more easily than kids who don't," McEwen says. "When kids have access at home it gives them a different outlook on school. It broadens their horizons. They tend to think more about life beyond the neighborhood." Plan solves education Ramsey 8 [Rey Ramsey CEO One Economy, “UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE,” CQ Congressional Testimony, June 24, 2008, Lexis] Perhaps the most dramatic changes we have seen are in the area of education. Greene County, North Carolina--a rural, economically distressed area--struggled with high rates of poverty and low attainment of higher education. Beginning in November 2003, a diverse team of stakeholders, including the Greene County local government, the school system, grassroots leaders, and social service providers, used technology and its tools to positively impact the pressing economic needs in the area. The technology infusion began at the school-level by bringing Apple iBooks to each 6th through 12th grader. The schools and the community quickly realized that without broad- based, affordable access to the Internet, the benefits of technology would be limited. In November 2003, Greene County leaders began working with One Economy to help create Internet tools and content for the community. Since then, Greene County has developed free Internet hotspots at schools and fire stations and a municipal broadband solution for the entire County. Today, Greene County has improved educational outcomes--including higher SAT scores, more students attending college, and dramatically reduced teen pregnancy. These outcomes are detailed in Appendix 1. Witty Quote 32 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 33 2AC Add-On—Obesity Broadband solves obesity Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] America's health care system is in crisis. The cost of health care soars out of control. Nearly 50 million Americans, including 8 million children, live without health insurance.36 In 2006, U.S. health care expenditures grew 6.7 percent to $2.1 trillion, or $7,026 per person, and accounted for 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), greater than that of any other nation. Growth in health care expenditures is projected to rise 6.7 percent per year, far faster than wages, until the year 2017, when it will consume 19.5 percent of GDP.37 Yet Americans are not living as long as citizens of many other developed nations that spend far less on health care. Average life expectancy at birth in the United States is 78.1 years. In Great Britain, where medical costs are just 8.3 percent of GDP and the annual per capita expenditure on health care is slightly over half that in the United States, life expectancy at birth is actually higher - 79 years. In France, life expectancy at birth is now 80.3 years, yet the health care share of GDP is just 11.1 percent. In Japan, health care makes up only 8 percent of GDP and the average life expectancy at birth is 82.1 years.38 Many assert that Americans pay more for health care, yet are in fact less healthy. Consider that: The U.S. infant mortality rate is 6.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, twice as high as Japan or Sweden . About 70 percent of deaths and health costs in the United States are attributable to chronic diseases which are largely preventable. Yet, only half of recommended preventive services are provided to adults. The United States has fewer practicing physicians and nurses per 1,000 people than comparable countries. The obesity rate among adults is 30.6 percent, higher than any other developed nation, and 21 percent higher than second-place Mexico.39 Obesity among young people is near epidemic levels, causing large spikes in the incidence among children of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions, and type 2 diabetes.40 Telecommunications technology such as broadband offers a tremendous opportunity to make America healthier and allow Americans to live longer, while at the same time saving our nation what some have estimated to be as much as $165 billion a year, enough to insure 37 million individuals, more than threequarters of all uninsured Americans.41 Two of the most promising telecommunications applications that are already improving health care while at the same time reducing costs are "telehealth" and digital health information technology. Widespread adoption of these technologies will significantly stimulate both the build-out, and demand, for universal, affordable, and robust broadband. Witty Quote 33 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 34 2AC Add-On—Warming [1/2] Plan solves warming Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] Skyrocketing energy prices, increasing dependence on unreliable foreign sources of energy, and global climate change all increasingly threaten our national security, health, and prosperity. For too many years, America has failed to address these critical challenges. Our nation's "energy policy" has been to have no energy policy. When the federal government's own scientists and experts attempt to write reports on the dangers of atmospheric pollution, elevated ozone levels, and other ecological threats, or draft meaningful rules to deal with those threats, the current Administration rewrites the reports to downplay the problems and waters down the rules.89 By implementing a National Broadband Strategy that includes initiatives to help Americans utilize broadband to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide gas emissions, the new Administration can quickly and meaningfully address the threats that energy insecurity and environmental degradation pose to our nation. Taking strong executive action to deploy universal, affordable, and robust broadband; promote telework; and modernize our existing nationwide electricity system with innovative "Smart Grid" technology could rapidly reap substantial benefits. Universal, Affordable, and Robust Broadband Will Reduce Energy Consumption and Benefit Our Environment Increased utilization of robust broadband and the applications it enables can significantly decrease energy consumption and deliver impressive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. After reviewing the impact that the widespread deployment of robust broadband throughout America would have on our economy and energy usage, a recent study published by the American Consumer Institute concludes that "the wide adoption and use of broadband applications [in the United States] can achieve a net reduction of 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas over 10 years, which, if converted into energy saved, would constitute 11% of annual U.S. oil imports." Specifically, the study finds: Business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce are predicted to reduce greenhouse gases by 206.3 million U.S. tons. Telecommuting will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 247.7 million tons due to less driving, 28.1 million tons due to reduced office construction, and 312.4 million tons because of energy saved by businesses. Teleconferencing could reduce greenhouse emissions by 199.8 million tons, if 10 percent of airline travel could be replaced by teleconferencing over the next 10 years. Reduction in first-class mail, plastics saved from downloading music/video, and office paper from emails and electronic documents could reduce emissions by 67.2 million tons. For example, over the next 10 years, shifting newspaper subscriptions from physical to online media alone will save 57.4 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. In summary, a review of existing literature shows that the potential impact of changes stemming from the delivery of broadband is estimated to be an incremental reduction of more than 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 10 years.90 Similar energy and emission reductions were recently reported in a study conducted for Telstra, the formerly state-owned Australian telecommunications giant. The authors concluded that using telecommunications networks would lower the nation's total emissions by almost 5 percent, "making the use of telecommunication networks one of the most significant opportunities to reduce the national carbon footprint."91 One telling illustration of the power of broadband technology to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is provided by UPS, which uses sophisticated broadband applications to plot delivery routes for its trucks that turn right and not left whenever possible. This enables UPS drivers to take advantage of "right on red" traffic laws and reduce their idling time waiting for oncoming traffic to clear. That not only saves fuel, but it also results in improved safety because drivers are not turning left across traffic. Utilizing this broadband technology, the company estimates that in 2007 it saved 3.1 million gallons of fuel and avoided pumping 32,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.92 Too often, unfortunately, information and communications technologies (ICT) are victims of what researchers at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) call the "ICT energy paradox," in which people tend to think of ICT applications as wasteful of energy rather than energy-efficient in the long run. To the contrary, however, the evidence shows: For every extra kilowatt-hour of electricity that has been demanded by ICT, the U.S. economy increased its overall energy savings by a factor of about 10. These productivity gains have resulted in significant net savings in both energy and economic costs. The extraordinary implication of this finding is that ICT provides a net savings of energy across our economy. Extinction The New York End Times 6 [The New York End Times is a non-partisan, non-religious, non-ideological, free news filter. We monitor world trends and events as they pertain to two vital threats - war and extinction. We use a proprietary methodology to quantify movements between the extremes of war and peace, harmony and extinction. http://newyorkendtimes.com/extinctionscale.asp] Witty Quote 34 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 35 2AC Add-On—Warming [2/2] We rate Global Climate Change as a greater threat for human extinction in this century. Most scientists forecast disruptions and dislocations, if current trends persist. The extinction danger is more likely if we alter an environmental process that causes harmful effects and leads to conditions that make the planet uninhabitable to humans. Considering that there is so much that is unknown about global systems, we consider climate change to be the greatest danger to human extinction. However, there is no evidence of imminent danger. Nuclear war at some point in this century might happen. It is unlikely to cause human extinction though. While several countries have nuclear weapons, there are few with the firepower to annihilate the world. For those nations it would be suicidal to exercise that option. The pattern is that the more destructive technology a nation has, the more it tends towards rational behavior. Sophisticated precision weapons then become better tactical options. The bigger danger comes from nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists with the help of a rogue state, such as North Korea. The size of such an Instead it could trigger a major war or even world war. Under this scenario human extinction would only be possible if other threats were present, such as disease and climate change. We monitor war separately. explosion would not be sufficient to threaten humanity as a whole. However we also need to incorporate the dangers here . Witty Quote 35 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 36 2AC Add-On—Terrorism [1/2] Solves terrorism preparedness Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] One of the highest duties of any nation's government is assuring the public's safety and security. One vital element in providing that safety and security is a strong and resilient communications system. The tragedies of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, however, starkly demonstrated that our nation relies on an uncoordinated, non-interoperable, and outdated emergency communications system that is highly vulnerable to catastrophic disruption and failure. In the 21st century, America's public safety and homeland security require 21st-century communications and information technology that are robust, ubiquitous, interoperable, resilient, and redundant.113 America Needs Modern Telecommunications and Information Technology to Improve Public Safety and Protect Homeland Security Today's communications and information technology (IT) services are too often based on outdated technologies that are too slow to respond to - and recover from emergencies, disasters, and systemic failures. Public safety and recovery efforts are impeded. Citizens who suddenly lose their access to information and first responders are endangered. For example, on 9/11, 95 percent of cell phone calls made at 11 a.m. failed to get through; the central office for the phone system cut off 300,000 landline phones; television stations were knocked off the air; and many first responders' radios failed. Yet only 2 percent of Internet addresses remained offline for an extended period, illustrating the Internet's overall resilience to attacks as a result of its flexibility and adaptability. During Katrina, 38 critical Public Safety Answering Points failed, preventing 911 calls from being answered. Information sharing was impeded by the absence of data sharing standards and systems. Those failures could have been avoided had IP-based voice and data communication services and infrastructure been used, public safety leaders say, citing their demonstrated information sharing value, and their resiliency and redundancy when properly deployed.114 As FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told the panel investigating the performance of the communications infrastructure during Katrina, "I would also like to see a greater use of IP technologies that are capable of changing and rerouting telecommunications traffic. In the event of a systems failure within the traditional network, such IP technologies would enable service to be restored more quickly and would provide the flexibility to initiate service at new locations chosen by consumers."115 As Mark Lloyd has written, the goal of the federal government's broadband policy "should be first and foremost to ensure our ability to respond to threats to our homeland security and to natural disasters. ... Without ubiquitous broadband our first responders could be crippled by the lack of effective communications in the event of a terrorist attack or natural disaster."116 A 21st-century telecommunications infrastructure that is scaled to provide for our national defense would be universal, robust, interoperable, open, resilient, and redundant. Unfortunately, federal communications policy has failed to foster that universal and robust infrastructure because it views broadband and advanced telecommunications services as a consumer service best left to market-driven private business, rather than as critical to national defense, and therefore, a compelling public need.117 Numerous real world examples demonstrate that the universal deployment of robust broadband will improve our nation's homeland security and public safety. The collapse of the Interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis illustrates how broadband can weather a disaster and continue to provide reliable communications for first responders and the public. Craig Settles reported about the performance of that city's municipal Wi-Fi network, which at the time of the tragedy was still under construction: When the concrete and steel span abruptly gave way in rush-hour traffic on Wednesday, August 1 [2007], the city's municipal network was only one quarter completed and that section had only been operational for two months. There were no prior drills by either the city staff, the network vendor (USI Wireless) or the general population for a crisis response involving the technology, though the city had planned to use the network for emergency response.... As news of the bridge collapse spread, two separate response efforts were set in motion and later united: one by the city's CIO Lynn Willenbring, and the other by USI Wireless' CEO Joe Caldwell. Willenbring called her IT team together immediately after hearing about the collapse and they provided basic support and services from their offices for the city's emergency operations command center. The city's GIS (Geographic Information System) staff prepared maps to distribute via the network to the public to use and to send to the disaster site for city staff dealing with traffic and recovery efforts. Caldwell called the City to find out how his company could help, but couldn't get through because the cellular network was jammed. He decided on the spot to open the entire network to be free for 24 hours for any citizen who could use it. Network traffic surged from 1000 subscribers to 6000 concurrent users. People with WiFienabled telephones could make voice calls, and anyone with Wi-Fi devices could send instant messages, video, photos, e-mail or other data. The company also sent crews to install BelAir Networks equipment to cover then undeployed areas around the bridge area and also wireless cameras to help with recovery operations.118 Within 12 hours, using readily available communications equipment, extra access points, and video cameras, emergency workers had audio and visual access to the entire bridge collapse area. Minneapolis's entire municipal Wi-Fi network proved invaluable in the hours, days, and weeks to follow, connecting government officials, emergency workers, families with loved ones lost or injured in the collapse, and ordinary citizens.119 In Hermiston, Oregon, a 700-square-mile wireless broadband cloud around the Umatilla Chemical Depot, a highly dangerous site that is a tempting target for terrorists, allows public safety officials equipped with Wi- Fi-enabled laptop computers to monitor potential chemical leaks and allow first responders to direct evacuees safely from the field during emergencies.120 Witty Quote 36 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 37 2AC Add-On—Terrorism [2/2] Another benefit of the Hermiston wireless broadband cloud is if nerve gas does escape, officers in police cars equipped with laptops and the appropriate software can download data and receive images that display the gas cloud's direction and speed. First responders are able to communicate via Wi-Fi - there's no problem with incompatible radios and frequencies, as happened to the New York City first responders on 9/11. If there's a report of a burglary or a fire, first responders rushing to the scene can download floor plans of the building, live images from video monitors, and information about the alarm system.121 Broadband and broadband-enabled applications can tie together local community firefighters, police officers, ambulance crews, and other emergency workers in a single wireless communications network. In the future, police officers engaged in high-speed chases could get real-time footage from helicopters. Bomb squads would be able to inspect dangerous sites remotely.122 The smallest and most rural public safety agencies stand to benefit the most from broadband access to the Internet because it can give them access to the best information technology applications at a cost far more affordable than those available today. For example, with funding provided by the U.S. Justice Department through the Tribal Rural Law Enforcement Internet Project, a program that has existed in various forms since 1995, the Comanche Nation Police use broadband Internet access to seek help from other law enforcement agencies in preparing search warrants or investigating officers' deaths. The Project's listserv recently helped a Texas law enforcement agency prepare a subpoena and an Alaska agency research model curfew policies. The experiences of these rural public safety bureaus are textbook examples of ways broadband can improve everyday law enforcement performance and efficiency. But, astonishingly, rather than build on this Project's track record of success, the Justice Department recently announced it would not renew the Project's funding. Said one rural police chief whose department was about to lose its broadband Internet access, "I don't know how you replace it."123 Universal, affordable, and robust broadband could bring many benefits in the event of a public safety or homeland security emergency. In the event of a major 9/11-type attack on Washington, or a flu pandemic or other emergency, offices could be inaccessible but employees would still be able to communicate via broadband-based applications. Federal workers using broadband-enabled phones could immediately work from home or other broadbandenabled locations, improving continuity of government. But without broadband at home, workers would remain isolated, unable to connect to each other or the broader network.124 Witty Quote 37 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 38 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity VOIP and broadband together spur AI Allan & Schuman 4 [Gabriel Allan and Evan Schuman, Triangle Publishing Services, 2004 http://www.businessweek.com/adsections/broadband/future/bbtwo.html] Internet Protocol (IP) services, such as Voice-over-IP, rather than Baby Bell connections also might become easier, thereby offering the possibility of radical savings in various telecommunications applications. True ubiquitous broadband likely will spur advances in CPU speeds and artificial intelligence software because the vast speed and bandwidth would open the floodgates of information. Spills over globally Smart 3 [John Smart, Director of the Institute for Accelerating Change, 12/04/03 http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/000386.html] To my mind, the last century's accelerations were driven most significantly by human discovery within the technological hardware and materials science space (and to a much smaller extent, algorithmic discovery in software). In other words, this process has apparently been guided by the special, preexisting, computation-accelerating physics of the microcosm, a very curious feature of the universe we inhabit, as long noted by Richard Feynman, Carver Mead, and several other physical theorists and experimentalists. Secondarily, the advances we have seen have also been driven by human initiative and creativity in all domains, and by the quality of choices we have made in scientific and technological development. We must move beyond our pride to realize that human creativity has played a supporting role to human discovery in this process, but when we do I think great insight can emerge. Where the clock, the telegraph, the engine, the telephone, the nuclear chain reaction, and the television were organizing metaphors for other times, the internet has become the metaphor for ours. It is the central catalyst of human and technological computation for our generation, the leading edge of the present developmental process of accelerating change. The internet, growing before our eyes, will soon become planetnet, a system so rich, ubiquitous, and natural to use that it will be a semi-intelligent extension of ourselves, available to us at every point on this sliver of surface, between magma and vacuum, that we call home. That will be very empowering and liberating, and at the same time, civilizing. The human biology doesn't change, but we are creating an intelligent house for the impulsive human of almost unimaginable subtlety and sophistication. All this said, our goals should try to reflect these natural developmental processes as much as our collective awareness will allow. It is my contention that the internet is territory within which our most achievable and important current great goals lie. A number of technologists have proposed that there are two main bottlenecks to the internet's impending transformation into a permanent, symbiotic appendage to the average citizen. The first is the lack of ubiquitous affordable always on, always accessible broadband connectivity for all users, and the second is the current necessity of a keyboard-dependent interface for the average user's average interaction with the system. In other words, developing cheap, fat data pipes, both wired and wireless, and a growing set of useful Linguistic User Interfaces (LUIs) are obvious candidates for our nation's greatest near term ICT developmental challenges. Just like the transcontinental railroad was a great goal of the late 1800's, getting affordable broadband to everyone in this country by 2010, and a first generation LUI by 2015 appear to be the greatest unsung goals of our generation. Now we just need our national, international, and institutional leaders to start singing this song, in unison. This is a truly global transformation, one dwarfing everything else on the near-term horizon. It is such a planetary issue, in fact, that given the unprecedented human productivities that are already being unleashed by internet-aided manufacturing and services globalization since the mid 1990's, a strong case can be made that we might economically benefit more in the U.S., even today, by getting greater broadband penetration first not to our own citizens, but to the youth of a number of trade-oriented, pro-capitalist countries in the developing world! Unfortunately that level of globally aware, self-interested prioritization is not yet politically salable as a great goal to be funded by U.S. tax dollars. But I predict that it increasingly will be, in a world that already pools its development dollars for a surprising number of transnational projects. Witty Quote 38 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 39 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity That solves everything Howe 2 [Mitchell Howe, high school history teacher, 2002 http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/articles/whataretheodds.htm] Between now and 2029, scientists will work out a functional design for true AI that possesses a core desire to understand and assist humanity (a characteristic called Friendliness by some researchers). While unimpressive at first, the new AI will learn quickly and receive extra computing capacity to increase its capabilities. Once mature, it will assist its programmers in the design of a next-generation AI. This process will be repeated a number of times with considerable improvements in both intelligence and Friendliness, and before too long will produce one or more minds that can only be called superintelligent. Applying phenomenal brilliance to the betterment of the human condition, Friendly superintelligence will ensure that nanotechnology and genetic engineering are quickly mastered to an extent that human scientists alone could never have reached. Technological progress will be so rapid as to fundamentally change our perception of civilization itself. As a consequence of these conditions, you (and everyone else) will enjoy unconditional material prosperity and indefinite lifeexpectancy - with the resulting time and means for pursuits that may include increasing your own intelligence and exploring the galaxy. You will be free to forgo most of the usual misfortunes of illness and injury, and no person close to you will suffer death from disease or old age unless they choose to. The same intelligence that allows for the mastery of genetic engineering and nanotechnology will also work to prevent the possibility of cataclysmic disasters stemming from these technologies. And other potential threats to our planet, such as asteroid strikes and climate change, will be averted or remedied with surprising ease. Witty Quote 39 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 40 2AC Add-On—AI/Singularity Broadband accelerates the transition to the singularity Acceleration Watch, 2003 http://www.accelerationwatch.com/singtimingpredictions.html By contrast, successfully predicting any of the specific singularities that will lead us incrementally closer to the tech singularity, such as the arrival of affordable broadband or a functional conversational user interface, will usually have great economic value in a world where appropriate timing is everything, and while planetary innovation is still largely driven by biological human beings. This said, today's leading tech singularity timing predictions can be usefully grouped into three camps—short-, mid-, and longer-range prediction groups, each representing 30, 50, and 70 year periods respectively. Witty Quote 40 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 41 Ext Digital Divide Now Unemployment is widening the digital divide—spreading internet access is key Graham 9 [Leah, PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery, “Bridging the Digital Divide,” Poverty In America, April 17, http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/bridging_the_digital_divide] The temporary loss of my computer feels like What are these communication devices of which you speak??? I've lost contact with the world. Newspapers and tv and radio and conversation? This reminds me of the issue of the digital divide, which seemed to be a more prominent focus of anti-poverty and equality advocates years ago. Yet, it still exists, particularly in rural and urban poor communities. And it's highly relevant as stimulus money filters down to the local level, given Obama's emphasis on reducing the rural digital divide through these funds. Anti-poverty and racial justice advocates are asking: what about the digital divide in urban poor communities of color? A recent report reveals that poor households in cities often lack the money to pay for monthly web service, whch can run as high as $60/month, and that internet service providers may not offer service in these low-income neighborhoods. In my privileged life, I'm put out when I can't get free internet access in a coffeehouse. Yet, parents and kids in nearby neighborhoods are dependent on libraries, in and expensive internet cafes - an amenity that's never taken off in the US compared to overseas countries - in the worst case. the best case scenario, As states and cities confront record unemployment, African-Americans and Latin@s face disproportionately high unemployment, and more and more households become homeless, we need to increase the access for everyone to the internet to facilitate job searches and social support during these critical times. And by everyone I mean especially low-income and minority households in cities across the U.S. Let's not forget that in this age of Twitter, there are millions of Americans who don't have access to the internet at all. Witty Quote 41 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 42 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy The digital divide is part of a larger breech in democracy that excludes poor communities from democratic participation Kennard 2 [William E. Kennard was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1997 to 2001. He is managing director, telecommunications and media at The Carlyle Group, “Democracy's digital divide,” Christian Science Monitor, March 7, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0307/p11s02-coop.html] The United States Senate is set to pass a comprehensive election reform bill. Although this legislation will go a long way toward correcting the deficiencies in American democratic processes laid bare by the 2000 election, its scope is limited. The bill rightly allocates billions of dollars to set standards, improve voting technology, and bridge a digital divide between voting booths in poor, minority areas and in wealthier, nonminority ones. Yet the differences in access to new technology that persist outside polling places are as much a threat to our democracy as the differences inside them. Indeed, the problems that the Florida recount uncovered were nothing but another manifestation of the digital divide - the discrepancies in access to technology, such as the Internet. Many people, including me, when chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, tried to bridge that gap. Just as Internet use among African-Americans and Hispanics trails that of whites by 20 and 28 percentage points respectively, a congressional study of 40 congressional districts found that voters in high-minority, low-income areas were more than three times as likely to have their votes discarded as voters in more affluent districts. Driving this phenomenon was a difference in voting technology. Voters who used out-dated punch-card machines - like those of hanging-chad fame - were seven times more likely to have their ballots discarded. But when minority voters had access to better technology, their votes were more accurately counted. Consider Alabama's Seventh Congressional District, where one-third of the residents live below the poverty line and more than two-thirds are African-American voters who used modern "optiscan" machines. Consequently, the district had the lowest rate of rejected ballots in the congressional survey. A similar gap is found among the disabled. Just as people with disabilities are less likely than those without to be online, or use computers, they also find it harder to exercise their right to vote. A recent General Accounting Office study found that more than half of the nation's polling places present at least one or more barriers to people with disabilities casting an independent, private vote. The plan before the Senate goes a long way toward correcting Election Day inequalities, yet the digital divide and the challenge it presents to our democracy exist beyond Election Day. And the gains we have made in bridging it are in jeopardy by proposed budget cuts. Earlier this month, the Commerce Department released a report that found that more than half of all Americans now use the Internet, and more than two-thirds - including 90 percent of all children - use computers. These gains, including large increases in Internet use among minority groups, are a result of a sustained federal effort to put technology directly into communities and to empower them to use it for their own needs. This, for instance, was the Clinton administration's rationale behind the successful e-rate program, which funds Internet access to schools and libraries and is the source of much of the increase in technology use among children. Yet President Bush's budget would undermine these proven, effective efforts. It ends the Technology Opportunities Program, which seeded technology access in disadvantaged communities. In addition, his budget shifts the funding to block grants for the Community Technology Centers, an important hub in providing Internet access. But the grants don't specify particular programs. Hence, there's no assurance that money will continue for programs to promote technology in the classroom and the know-how to use it. A fitting follow-up to the election reform bill would be for Congress to resist these cuts and instead propose innovative solutions - such as ensuring that all new public housing is wired to the Internet - to continue the work of bridging the digital divide. We need to recognize that those disconnected from the digital world are alienated from American society. Economically, they are deprived of the skills needed to enjoy the high-paying jobs of the new economy. But more than that, they are also disconnected from our democracy. The online world is essential to making informed choices everywhere, including the voting booth. Simply put, to be logged off is to be shut out from the public square of 21st-century American society. Strengthening our democracy will take more than election reform. It requires a commitment to making sure that the digital divide is bridged not just on Election Day, but every day. Witty Quote 42 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 43 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy [1/2] The digital divide creates a second-class citizenship devastating democracy Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] Only 35 percent of homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have broadband, while 76 percent of households earning more than $50,000 per year are connected. Nearly 20 million Americans live in areas that are not served by a single broadband provider, while tens of millions more live in places where there is only a single provider for high-speed Internet access. Only 40 percent of racial and ethnic minority households subscribe to broadband, while 55 percent of non-Hispanic white households are connected.137 Even more worrisome, the rate of broadband penetration for low-income families has actually dropped since 2007 as many have disconnected their broadband service during these hard economic times. For African-Americans, growth in broadband penetration has slowed dramatically compared to that for all citizens.138 In terms of overall access to the Internet, the data tell a similar story of disparity and digital exclusion. While 73 percent of Americans nationwide have access to and make regular use of the Internet, several key demographic groups significantly lag the average: Only 59 percent of African Americans are online, compared with 79 percent of whites. Only 38 percent of Americans with disabilities are connected. Only 44 percent of people who have not graduated from high school are connected, compared to 91 percent of college graduates. Only 35 percent of people who are over age 65 are online, compared to 90 percent of those aged between 18 and 29. Only 56 percent of all Hispanics, and only 32 percent of those Latinos who speak only Spanish, use the Internet.139 Many years into the oft-marveled "Information Age," the intensity of the digital divide is unmistakable even among our youth. Children with disabilities and those coming from minority and low-income backgrounds still often lack home access to a computer or the Internet. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, the Children's Partnership reports: Children in low-income families are half as likely to have a computer as children in households with annual incomes over $75,000, are a third as likely to have Internet access, and a sixth as likely to have access to broadband. Home Internet access among children ages 7 to 17 varies widely by ethnicity. Only 41 percent of Native American youth, 43 percent of African-American youth, and 44 percent of Latino youth have access; compared to 75 percent of Asian-American youth and 80 percent of white youth. Among people age 15 or older, only 24.3 percent of those with disabilities use the Internet at home, compared to 50.5 percent of those without disabilities. Of school children, ages of 7 to 17, only 29 percent of those in households with annual incomes of less than $15,000 use a home computer to complete school assignments, compared to 77 percent of those in households with annual incomes of $75,000 or more.140 Declares the Children's Partnership, "As the gap between rich and poor in the United States continues to grow, the ability to benefit from the opportunities delivered through computers and the Internet can help a generation of young people move out of poverty. Digital opportunity for kids is the equity issue of the 21st century."141 For children and adults with disabilities, computers and broadband Internet access offer enhanced opportunities to more fully participate in and engage with society. Yet persons with disabilities are actually less likely to own a computer or have access to the Internet. A survey of disabled persons 15 years of age or older showed: Only 44 percent with disabilities had a computer at home, compared to 72 percent of those without disabilities; Only 38 percent of those with disabilities had access to the Internet at home, compared to 64 percent of those without disabilities; and Only 24.3 percent of those with disabilities use the Internet at home, compared to 50.5 percent of those without disabilities.142 With more and more of our society's news, information, cultural, and civic life now taking place online, digital inclusion is increasingly necessary for citizens to fully participate in our democracy. As communities cut back on cable television's public, educational, and government (PEG) local access channels, as Phoenix recently did,143 or push PEG channels into a more expensive and exclusive cable package, as happened to a million households in the Tampa Bay area,144 the Internet is taking on an increasing role and responsibility in engaging citizens in the affairs of their communities. Many localities, for instance, now stream or archive their governmental meetings on the Internet.145 The need for digital inclusion of all our nation's citizens to provide them the opportunity to fully engage in civic affairs was dramatically displayed on July 23, 2007 in Charleston, South Carolina. At The Citadel, the city's military college, the candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination engaged in a first-of-its-kind presidential debate, in which they were questioned not by professional journalists but by members of the public who submitted over 3,000 questions via the video-sharing website YouTube.146 The ability of citizens to use YouTube, and to meaningfully engage in community affairs over the Internet, is entirely dependent on their ability to access the Internet via broadband. But at Cooper River Courts, a public housing project close by The Citadel, few of the residents have access to broadband, or even a computer. "I am low income and computers are not low income," says Marcella Morris, an unemployed Cooper River resident. "I know how to use a computer. I just can't afford one right now." Like most youngsters these days, Cooper River Courts resident Tiara Reid, 14, is web-savvy. She uses her school's Internet access to communicate with her friends and do her homework. But when school is out, without Internet access at home, the distant library is the only place where she can go to get online. Says LaToya Ferguson, one of the few Cooper River Courts residents with Internet access at home, "You're falling behind if you're not online; now that's the truth." Marcella Morris echoes that feeling of digital exclusion. "I could take my kids to other places on the Internet. Sometimes I feel shortchanged." That the broadband-required YouTube debate took place so close to the broadband-denied Cooper River Courts starkly illustrates the very real digital divide that exists not only in Charleston, but across our nation. And, disturbingly, that divide is not closing for many Americans; rather, it's expanding. Witty Quote 43 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 44 Ext Digital Divide Kills Democracy [2/2] "At one level, the YouTube debate shows that the Web has really become a centerpiece of American political culture," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "At another level, it also shows that the debate is not for everybody. It's certainly not available to all Americans." "I would argue that the digital divide is worse than it was 10 years ago," says Andrew Rasiej, the founder of the Personal Democracy Forum website and co-founder of techPresident, a nonpartisan blog that tracks the online campaign. "Back then everyone - schools, businesses - was trying to get online. These days every single Fortune 500 company has its employees, its customers and its suppliers connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the meantime, while our students have online access at school, many of them don't have it at home." 147 As more and more of our civic life takes place on the Internet, failure to close the digital divide will increasingly relegate those unable to participate online to a second-class "separate but equal" citizenship, threatening our democratic values and institutions. In 21st-century America, that is unacceptable. Witty Quote 44 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 45 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness Digital divide crushes competitiveness Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] Broadband is the dominant communications service of the 21st century. America’s place atop the global economy for the remainder of this century requires a comprehensive policy commitment to closing our digital divide. Congress and the Commission must move expeditiously to enact reforms that make open access broadband networks the centerpiece of universal service policy. Ultimately, enacting USF reform under the constraints of the 1996 Act is a challenging endeavor that need not be. The FCC’s willingness to move forward with bold reform may be tempered by the perceived inflexibility of the law. Congress has the ability and the duty to step in and remedy this problem. But the need for congressional action does not preclude the FCC from acting, and should not be an excuse for enacting only moderate changes to the fund. There are no easy solutions to correcting to the problems of the Universal Service Fund. But policymakers must act judiciously, boldly and in a manner that adheres to the Act’s commitment to ensuring universal, affordable access to the most important technologies of the era. Legislation or regulatory policies that try to please all constituencies by simply adding broadband to the already broken support structure won’t solve the underlying problems and are doomed to fail. Congress and the FCC need to implement bold changes, even if this means angering the well-connected rural carrier industry. This is simply not a situation well-suited to compromise. Witty Quote 45 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 46 Ext Broadband KT Democracy Broadband is the bread and butter issue Della Piana 9 [Libero Della Piana is the Communications Director of the Communist Party USA, Political Affairs, “What is the Digital Divide?,” 6/16 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8671/] Internet access may seem like a luxury in a time of global economic crisis, spreading unemployment and systemic poverty in many working-class communities in the US. But access to the Internet and other communications technologies are increasingly vital to everyday life; crucial to economic and social functioning in the 21st Century. Young people today without Internet access in school, libraries or at home are less likely to learn the important skills needed to gain access to competitive colleges or acquire well-paying jobs of the future. Perhaps the greatest innovation of digital communications technology is that it is a two-way medium. New information technologies are not just for receiving information like radio, television and print The Internet and other digital technologies have the potential to push back the trend of passive media and engage the public in social and political dialogue again. A democratic revolution is occurring on-line and we need to participate in it while fighting for equal access to it. technology, but creates ability for anyone to freely or inexpensively create spread their own ideas and opinions. Many in the US are now calling for universal access to the Internet. A Zogby poll in June 2009 reported that 44 percent of Americans said that, “the federal government should guarantee universal Internet access to all Americans, and 20 percent said they believe Washington should provide personal computers to those who do not have one so they can access the Internet.” Advocacy organizations such as Free Press have called for radical reform to US telecommunications policy that would increase broadband access. At the recent Free Press Summit in Washington, DC many participants voiced support for making universal broadband Internet access a basic right guaranteed by the government. Currently the Federal Communications Commission is accepting public input on their broadband plan due to be released in early in 2010. It is important for everyone to voice their support for universal broadband access for all. The new administration in Washington has opened the door to progressive reform of US policy toward the Internet and all telecommunications, but it is up to the democratic movements to enter the door. Witty Quote 46 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 47 Ext Broadband KT Economy Short Term Plan solves economy in short timeframe GovTech 8 [“Broadband Legislation Would Provide Economic Stimulus of $134 Billion Annually, Says Report,” Feb 21 http://www.govtech.com/gt/265318] "Just as the Congress needed to pass the recent economic stimulus package to accelerate the economies of every state," said Brian too does the nation deserve passage of pending legislation that could accelerate access to and use of broadband. The beauty of the broadband legislation currently in play in the midst of Farm Bill negotiations is that it would provide a jolt to the nation's economy in the near term -- to the tune that rivals the recent economic stimulus package." Mefford, Connected Nation's CEO, "so Witty Quote 47 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 48 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Competitiveness Reforming LifeLine and LinkUp is critical to close the digital divide—key to competitiveness Congressional Quarterly 9 [TESTIMONY-BY: DEREK TURNER, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, “UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND; COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE; SUBCOMMITTEE: COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INTERNET,” March 12, Lexis] Though the debate surrounding the Federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF) is often contentious and seemingly intractable, we must not lose sight of a salient fact: the Fund is responsible for delivering essential communications services to low-income households, rural areas, schools, libraries, and rural health clinics -- services that would likely not exist or be prohibitively expensive absent support from the Fund. The goal of universal service is a cornerstone of our nation's communications policy dating back to the 1930's. Though the communications landscape has undergone a series of radical changes since then, the importance of achieving universal service has not. The challenge facing policymakers is determining the mechanisms and policies best suited to achieve this goal in the most efficient and equitable manner possible. There is little doubt that the Fund is in trouble, facing a potential fiscal crisis of falling receipts and expanding expenses for services that are essential but perhaps technologically inferior. But while the Fund's present predicament poses a serious threat, it also presents an opportunity -- an opportunity to modernize the fund and close the digital divide. In 1996 when the current universal service regime was created, there were not many who fully grasped how the phenomenon of convergence would radically transform the underpinnings of all telecommunications regulatory structures. But some in Congress did see change on the horizon, and had the foresight to establish in the law the principle that as communications technologies evolve, universal service must evolve with it. At the time, Internet access was an application that used telephony as an infrastructure. Today, telephony is one of many applications that are supported by broadband infrastructure. Yet tens of millions of Americans cannot purchase a broadband connection at any price, and millions more are only offered third- rate broadband service at exorbitant prices. The staggering rural- urban digital divide, and the lack of affordable broadband offerings is the exact outcome that Congress intended the Act to prevent. This disparity has real world economic and social consequences for millions of American businesses and families. Broadband is the essential communications infrastructure of the 21st century. In this 21st century digital world it makes no sense to support 19th century technology. The principle goal of the USF should be to support the deployment of, and consumer access to, next-generation, future-proof, high-speed Internet infrastructure. But to reach that goal requires the complete upending of the status quo and direct confrontation of difficult and politically challenging choices. The development and administration of universal service policy in the United States is an interest group-driven, politically charged, path-dependent process. The Fund as currently administered inefficiently supports redundant legacy technologies and enables private companies to become wholly dependent on the continuance of the old model. This mix of disparate interests, entrenched business models, outdated legislative directives, arbitrage-creating artificial policy distinctions, and $7 billion annually of funds makes it extremely difficult for legislators and regulators to enact even modest incremental changes, much less large sweeping reform. But it is imperative that policymakers act to change this path- dependent model. The fact that the digital divide persists in the face of a $4.6 billion annual high-cost fund to support telephony is a glaring testimony of the failures of the current universal service model and the need for modernization. However, when reforming the Fund policymakers must also recognize that these billions of dollars are collected for the most part from urban consumers who only realize indirect benefits from the Fund. It is therefore vital that these consumer's monies are spent in the most efficient manner possible, and that the gains in added rural subscribers not come at the expense of losses in urban subscribership. In order to maximize the benefits of universal service policies for all Americans, the size of the Fund must be disciplined through careful oversight and accountability, market incentives, and strategic investment in infrastructure. Since the implementation of the Act we've learned that support for redundant infrastructures, which is intended to promote competition, may in some cases actually be a net harm to consumers. Viewed through this lens, the appropriate role for the Fund is to support a single infrastructure, while using open access policy to promote competition. This approach will ultimately benefit consumers in rural areas by lowering service prices and enticing more customers to subscribe, and in turn will benefit all consumers by lowering the amount of support that is necessary to build and maintain the critical broadband infrastructure. Congress and the FCC must maintain the remarkable and progressive commitment to universal service that is the foundation of U.S. communications policy. Transitioning the Fund to broadband is an essential step on the path to reforming the system by maximizing the return on public investment and regaining America's position as a global leader in technology and communications. Witty Quote 48 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 49 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Competitiveness Expanding USF solves digital divide—makes the US the leader in broadband Congressional Quarterly 9 [TESTIMONY-BY: DEREK TURNER, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, “UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND; COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE; SUBCOMMITTEE: COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY AND THE INTERNET,” March 12, Lexis] In 1996 when the current USF was created, there were not many who fully grasped how the phenomenon of convergence would radically transform the underpinnings of all telecommunications regulatory structures. At the time, Internet access was an application that used telephony as an infrastructure. Today, telephony is one of many applications that are supported by broadband infrastructure. Yet the fundamental need for universal service remains. Millions of American homes cannot purchase a broadband connection at any price, and millions more are only offered third-rate broadband service at exorbitant prices. This is tragic, as broadband is the essential service of the 21st century. The fact that this digital divide persists in the face of a $4.5 billion annual high-cost fund to support telephony is a glaring testimony of the failures of the current universal service model and the need for modernization. Convergence is forcing policymakers to undertake a complete overhaul of our basic conceptions of, justifications for, and administering of universal service. Ultimately, we believe that broadband is the communications infrastructure of the 21st century, and that the principle goal of the USF should be to support the deployment of, and consumer access to, next- generation, future-proof high-speed Internet services. But to reach that goal, we must completely upend the status quo, and confront some difficult, political challenging choices. The Fund as currently administered inefficiently supports redundant legacy technologies and enables private companies to become wholly dependent on the continuance of the old system. It is imperative that Congress and the Commission act to change this path- dependent model. But the upsetting of the status quo must be done in a realistic manner. It is not enough to simply say broadband should be a supported service. A method for reaching universal broadband service must be proposed that does not balloon the size of the Fund, which is already under great strain. While the problems with the current USF are numerous and daunting, they are not insurmountable. Policymakers must take advantage of the window of opportunity created both by the consensus that USF reform is long overdue, and by the recent appropriation of over $7 billion in broadband stimulus funds. Congress and the Commission should avoid the approach of balancing the interests of the various industry factions and instead focus on developing a policy framework that is guided by the principle of serving the public interest and has the best chance of achieving the core outcome goal of universal service: maximizing the availability, affordability, and adoption of communications technology in all regions of the nation. But we must also recognize that these billions of USF dollars are collected for the most part from urban consumers, who only realize indirect benefits from the Fund. It is therefore vital that these consumer's monies are spent in the most efficient manner possible, and that the gains in added rural subscribers not come at the expense of losses in urban subscribership. Witty Quote 49 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 50 Ext Jobs KT Broadband Job training is key Abdullah 9 [By: Khalil Abdullah, New America Media, News Feature, “U.S. Lags in Broadband Impede Economy,” http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=740b41efe70d0e0195f464edecfb2564] Christopher Gaston, legislative director for Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said it was “a different world” when the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 was enacted. Among other things, the act established job training centers across the country, but, “for the most part,” said Gaston, “they’re open 9 to 5… It really doesn’t work for the single mother trying to improve her job skills.” Gaston said the key element of H.R. 145, a bill Rep. Holt introduced in January to amend the act, was “to include workforce investment programs on the Internet.” The bill calls for the appropriation of funds to enable states to develop strategies to improve Internet job training capacities. It also would designate funds for a grant to a postsecondary institution in each state for research and recommendations on best practices that could be implemented. Witty Quote 50 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 51 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp KT Economy Plan spurs national broadband and solves the broadband divide—solves economy PR Newswire 8 [“FCC Technology Report Clears the Path for Nationwide Lifeline Broadband Service; Final Hurdle Passed for Free Wireless Broadband Proposal That Closes the Broadband Divide and Provides a Boost to the U.S. Economy,” Oct 14, Lexis] "These technical findings support the use of this long fallow spectrum for broadband and puts to rest the false technical arguments that were thrown in at the last minute in order to thwart competition," said John Muleta, CEO and founder of M2Z Networks. "All of the policy and technical benchmarks have now been met and all that is needed is an affirmative vote by the FCC Commissioners so that this spectrum can be auctioned and be put into productive use as quickly as possible. The need for more affordable broadband is clear and the time to act is now. American consumers and the public interest should not be held hostage another month or even another day to phone company lobbyists that are now calling for even more delay." The FCC's pending AWS-3 rules would require the auction winner of spectrum to provide free lifeline wireless broadband to 50% of the population in four years and 95 percent of the U.S. within 10 years. The economic benefits of putting in place a nationwide lifeline broadband program are significant. According to the Congressional Research Service, Broadband Internet Access and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs at 4-5 (Jan. 25, 2008) ("CRS Report"), ubiquitous broadband adoption "would result in a cumulative increase in gross domestic product of $179.7 billion, while sustaining an additional 61,000 jobs per year over the next nineteen years" - a total of 1.2 million additional jobs in a single generation. According to a Connected Nation study, The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally (February 21, 2008), a small 7% increase in broadband adoption in the U.S. would lead to a massive $134 billion per year in total direct economic impact. Given the current economic crisis, the need for affordable and widely available broadband to stimulate the economy could not be greater: Prices for broadband in the U.S. are among the highest in the world (the U.S. ranks 24th in the world, just behind Estonia). Most of the 114 million adults in the U.S. who either lack Internet access altogether or rely on dialup connections come from low-income households, or live in rural or inner-city settings where existing providers refuse to serve. The "broadband divide" is greater for students from households that make less than $20,000 a year, who are much less likely to have Internet access. Only 35% of small and independent businesses have company websites and only 59% use the Internet for business related activities. Witty Quote 51 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 52 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp Solves Unemployment Plan solves job growth, economic stability, and US competitiveness CWA 9 [Communications Workers of America Proposals to Stimulate Broadband Investment, January 8, 2009 http://broadbandcensus.com/2009/01/communications-workers-of-america-proposals-to-stimulate-broadband-investment/] Lifeline/Linkup subsidies for broadband access and equipment. The federal Universal Service Fund program of support for telephone service should be expanded to include subsidies for broadband access and equipment. Broadband Investment Creates Jobs Summary: Investment in broadband would create jobs, jumpstart our economy and improve our global competitiveness . For example, every $5 billion invested in broadband infrastructure would create 97,500 new jobs in the telecom, communications investment that leads to a seven percentage point increase in broadband adoption would create or save 2.4 million jobs throughout the economy. Broadband and Job Creation • Multiplier effects. Every $5 billion increase in broadband investment would create 97,500 new jobs in telecom and IT with multiplier effects throughout the economy. Investment in broadband networks is comprised of equipment, IT industries with multiplier effects throughout the economy in the year the investment is made. Broadband network construction, equipment, and software. We use multiplier data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. While the exact “multiplier” effect of increased investment would depend on the precise mix, we estimate an employment multiplier of 19.5 for every $1 million invested.1 • Economic Jobs Impact. A seven percentage point increase in broadband penetration would create or save 2.4 million jobs throughout the economy. The indirect employment effects result from greater availability, increased competition, and lower prices. Based on Brookings Institution research, Connected Nation estimates 2.4 million new or saved jobs from a seven percentage point increase in broadband penetration.2 Additional Research on Broadband Jobs • According to a Department of Commerce study, communities with broadband added one percentage point to the employment growth rate, 0.5 percent to the growth of business establishments, and 0.5 percent to the share of IT establishments. 3 Witty Quote 52 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 53 Ext LifeLine/LinkUp Solve Digital Divide Plan solves digital divide McSlarrow 8 [President & CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association http://www.ncta.com/DocumentBinary.aspx?id=778] Second, broadband stimulus should be technology-neutral. In addition to investment in new broadband plant, cable operators (as discussed above) will need to make expenditures to reclaim analog bandwidth, to split nodes, and to install new electronics at an operator’s head-end and at a customer’s home. All these investments are critical in their own way to the delivery of broadband service, and the government’s efforts to stimulate these types of investments should be flexible enough to ensure that these and other expenditures necessary to provide broadband are covered. Third, we support the appropriation of funds for two new Lifeline and Link Up Programs to make broadband more affordable for low income households and unemployed adults. Expanding these existing low-income universal service programs that are specifically designed to subsidize connectivity for users who need the help would go a long way towards bringing the benefits of broadband to low-income consumers. Given the important social objectives served by expanding these programs to include broadband, funding should come directly from the government and not be offset by an assessment on telecommunications providers or their subscribers. Witty Quote 53 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 54 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness Disparities in broadband destroys economic growth and competitiveness Kruger & Kilroy 8 [*Lennard G. Kruger Specialist in Science and Technology Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, AND ** Angele A. Gilroy Specialist in Telecommunications Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Broadband Internet Access and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs,” June 4, http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL30719.pdf] Some policymakers believe that disparities on those left behind. in broadband access across American society could have adverse consequences While a minority of American homes today subscribe to broadband, many believe that advanced Internet applications of the future — voice over the Internet protocol (VoIP) or high quality video, for example — and the resulting ability for businesses and consumers to engage in e-commerce, may increasingly depend on high speed broadband connections to the Internet. Thus, some say, communities and individuals without access to broadband could be at risk to the extent that e-commerce becomes a critical factor in determining future economic development and prosperity. A 2003 study conducted by Criterion Economics found that ubiquitous adoption of current generation broadband technologies would result in a cumulative increase in gross domestic product of $179.7 billion, while sustaining an additional 61,000 jobs per year over the next nineteen years. The study projected that 1.2 million jobs could be created if next generation broadband technology is rapidly and ubiquitously deployed.21 A February 2006 study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the Economic Development Administration/Department of Commerce marked the first attempt to quantitatively measure the impact of broadband on economic growth. The study found that “between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in employment, the number of businesses overall, and businesses in ITintensive sectors, relative to comparable communities without broadband at that time.”22 Subsequently, a June 2007 report from the Brookings Institution found that for every one percentage point increase in broadband penetration in a state, employment is projected to increase by 0.2 to 0.3% per year. For the entire U.S. private non-farm economy, the study projected an increase of about 300,000 jobs, assuming the economy is not already at full employment.23 Some also argue that broadband is an important contributor to U.S. future economic strength with respect to the rest of the world . According to the International Telecommunications Union, the U.S. ranks 24th worldwide in broadband penetration (subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2007).24 Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found the U.S. ranking 15th among OECD nations in broadband access per 100 inhabitants as of December 2007.25 By contrast, in 2001 an OECD study found the U.S. ranking 4th in broadband subscribership per 100 inhabitants (after Korea, Sweden, and Canada).26 While many argue that the U.S. declining performance in international broadband rankings is a cause for concern,27 others — including the Administration — maintain that the OECD and ITU data undercount U.S. broadband deployment,28 and that cross-country broadband deployment comparisons are not necessarily meaningful and inherently problematic.29 Finally, an issue related to international broadband rankings is the extent to which broadband speeds and prices differ between the U.S. and the rest of the world.30 Witty Quote 54 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 55 Ext Digital Divide Kills Competitiveness/Now Key Digital divide destroys competitiveness—it will be irreversible unless we act now Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] America was an early international leader in information and communications technology precisely because of the basic competitive framework established in U.S. communications law during the last quarter of the 20th century. The undoing of this framework is why America has fallen further and further behind the rest of the world in every index of information and communications technology. And it’s why we’re poised to permanently lose our position as the global leader in economic growth and technological innovation. The American decline is the opposite of the outcome predicted by those who pushed to abolish the pro- competitive framework. In fact, the large incumbent phone and cable companies predicted that jettisoning these regulatory safeguards would “free” American companies from the same “burdens” that saddle our overseas competitors, leading to a period of unprecedented investment and growth. But as we went down the path of “deregulation,” our foreign counterparts maintained their commitment to the very pro-competitive policies pioneered in America. And they saw their broadband Internet markets blossom while ours withered. The most obvious example of this decline is seen in the measurement of broadband penetration, or the number of per capita broadband connections. At the turn of the century, the United States was ranked fifth among the world’s nations in broadband penetration, according to data from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). By 2007, we had dropped precipitously to 22nd place, just barely ahead of isolated island nations such as Barbados and the Faroe Islands (see Figure 1).28 Witty Quote 55 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 56 Ext Digital Divide Kills Economy Lack of broadband destroys the economy Chambers 9 [John T. Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems, “John Chambers: Broadband Speeds Our Economy,” March 3 09, Gigaom, http://gigaom.com/2009/03/03/john-chambers-broadband-speeds-our-economy/] The impact of broadband has been similar to that of the national highway system in the 1950s. Until then, our nation’s roads were slow and the quality was unpredictable, which hindered commerce and travel. The modern highway system made our country accessible and in the process, created new industries — transforming our economy and by extension, our society. That is what ultra high-speed broadband does. Think of how far we’ve come in just the last decade, when dial-up was the norm and the Internet was only used to surf, send an email, or order a product or service. Now the Internet is largely defined by video and various levels of interaction among users, such as through virtual meetings with co-workers located in cities around the world. Increasing our broadband speeds to 100 Mbps from the current U.S. median of 2.3 Mbps will have a transformative effect on our economy and our society. High-speed networking enables new human collaboration at a profound level, and such collaboration will radically change the way we think. In health care, for example, dynamic collaboration by way of ultra high-speed networks will help researchers find cures for diseases faster. On a more personal level, remote consultations with doctors via our HealthPresence system are enabled when life-size, “HD” images and information are transmitted over such networks to doctors who can speak to directly to patients, view the data real-time and help make a diagnosis hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Indeed, as the Baby Boomers place ever-more stress on our health-care system, telemedicine is the next frontier, but it cannot happen unless all of our connections are fast and reliable, be they in the office or at home. If 100 Mbps at home seems ambitious, consider this: Japan and South Korea are already reaching that level. According to a forthcoming research paper by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, South Korea — a country with 1/6th the population of the United States — has almost as much Internet traffic. That’s because they’re already operating at average speeds of 49 Mbps. In the U.S., ITIF projects that high-speed connections to the home would increase the number of telecommuters to 19 million by 2012. That would save 1.5 billion hours of commute time — and reduce gasoline consumption by 5 percent. It is a green technology, one that can help us kick our oil habit. And just as importantly, it would accomplish our goal of creating jobs. Deploying next-generation broadband to 80 percent of U.S. homes would create some 2 million new jobs, according to the upcoming ITIF study. In short, if we invest and build a national broadband infrastructure for the entire country, everybody benefits. As our policymakers work on maintaining U.S. competitiveness, they should keep in mind that broadband is the vehicle by which our citizens can be more productive, health care can be modernized, our economy can become more efficient and innovation can flourish. To continue our nation’s growth, add jobs and drive innovation, we must invest in broadband. Witty Quote 56 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 57 Ext Poor People KT Broadband Social services for the poor are the lynchpin to the broadband superhighway Hesseldahl 8 [Arik Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com, “Bringing Broadband to the Urban Poor,” December 31, 2008, http://www.lisc.org/docs/news/010109_bizweek_nef.pdf] Millions of Americans—many of them also residents of the inner city—remain on the other side of the chasm that separates those who have high-speed Internet access from those who don't. President-elect Barack Obama has taken to delivering a weekly address not only over the radio but also through videos on Google's (GOOG) YouTube. Yet almost half of U.S. adults don't have the necessary broadband connections that make it easy to view those messages, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A survey by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation ranked the U.S. 15th on household broadband penetration, having slipped from fourth place in 2001, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. (Denmark ranked No. 1.) In a Dec. 6 speech, Obama called the current state of U.S. broadband access "unacceptable" and said plans to "renew our Information Superhighway" would be a priority of his Administration. To deliver, Obama will need to address the wide swaths of the U.S. that remain unconnected. In some places—most of them rural areas with low population density— people who are willing to pay for service can't get it because telecom providers can't justify the necessary investment. In the case of the urban poor, service may be readily available, but many families can't afford the $30 to $50 it costs each month to get broadband. Many also lack computers at home. Among households with an annual income of $50,000 or less—about half the country—only 35% have broadband service, according to Free Press, a technology advocacy group. Households with annual incomes above $50,000 are more than twice as likely to have broadband service. Witty Quote 57 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 58 Ext Poor People KT Broadband [1/2] Federal broadband-expansion to poor people is key to national broadband strategy Greenberg 8 [by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director, “Hill Talk On Expanding Broadband,” Dec 5, http://savvyconsumer.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/hill-talk-on-expanding-broadband/] One of the challenges of the modern age is getting the latest and best technology out to the most remote and rural areas of the U.S. This week I was part of a panel that briefed the staffs of members in the House of Representatives on what we call “broadband deployment.” Broadband – or “high-speed internet” is the technology that most of us city dwellers use to connect quickly to the Internet. Cable and DSL service are examples of broadband, and they give us very fast service. Don’t we all remember the days when we were hooked into the telephone jack and could wait 30 minutes for one document to come onto the screen? That was dialup service. Well, broadband brings that document up in seconds today. Unfortunately, the more rural parts of the country cannot get access to broadband for a number of reasons: it’s too expensive for companies to get service out to them, or in the case of many low-income citizens, they cannot afford the monthly broadband charge, which can run over $50. And equally unfortunate, it’s impossible to get businesses to set up in areas where there is no broadband available, nor do residents want to move to areas where they don’t get high-speed Internet. For the United States, increased broadband deployment means better education, more jobs, improved healthcare, more efficient government and a better quality of life accessible for all Americans, regardless of their location or socio-economic circumstances. Our panel, which was co-sponsored with the Alliance for Public Technology and the Communications Workers of America, featured a woman from rural Virginia who had won an essay contest in which she described how broadband had changed her life. She was a bus driver who had lost her job, and while her little town 2 ½ hours from the nation’s capital, had only had broadband access for a few years, this high-speed Internet access enabled her to take college courses and prepare for a new career. In my presentation, I noted the NCL’s history of working on rural electrification and the parallels between getting electricity to farms in the 1930s and getting broadband access to remote areas in the new millennium. The National Consumers League is the nation’s oldest consumer organization and was part of the consumer movement that worked to bring affordable and accessible electricity to rural areas, which was one of the major consumer issues in the first half of the 20th Century. The issue had an important champion. In 1924, a New Yorker who had been a promising national official and an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President went to Warm Springs, Georgia to recover from a polio attack. Years later, in 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described his experience this way to more than 40,000 people during the dedication of a rural electric cooperative in Georgia: Fourteen years ago a Democratic Yankee came to a neighboring county in your state in search of a pool of warm water wherein he might swim his way back to health. There was only one discordant note in that first stay of mine at Warm Springs. When the first-of-the-month bill came for the electric light for my little cottage, I found that the charge was 18 cents a kilowatt-hour – about four times as much as I paid in Hyde Park, New York. That started my long study of proper public utility charges for electric current and the whole subject of getting electricity into farm homes. So it can be said that a little cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia, was the birthplace of the Rural Electrification Administration. When Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, most of the country was frozen in the Great Depression, but the utilities and a few other industries were making unprecedented profits. A lot of this played out during the mid-1930s. Rural electrification was a great grassroots consumer movement; rural people wanted electricity in the 1930 s. Eventually with the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration in 1934 through executive order, and through the use of electric cooperatives and grassroots efforts by rural communities who sent letters to Congress supporting rural electrification, these communities demanded legislative action and asked to borrow money to build their own lines. And eventually legislation passed in 1936 to electrify rural areas. Consumer organizations were very much a part of this campaign. Many experts agree that government should treat Internet access like it did electrical access in the 20th century. As late as the mid-1930s, nine out of 10 rural homes were without electricity. Within four years of the passage of the Rural Electrification Act, the number of rural electric systems doubled, the number of consumers connected more than tripled, and the miles of energized line was five times greater, according to the National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association. Today the challenge of getting broadband access to urban and rural areas persists. The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a survey in July, finding that 55 percent of American adults now have broadband access at home, up from 47 percent a year earlier and 42 percent in March 2007. By contrast, only 10 percent of Americans now have dial-up access. Despite the increase in overall broadband adoption, though, growth has been flat among African-American and low-income Americans. Of the Americans with no Internet access at all, about a third say they have no interest in logging on, even at dial-up speeds. Nearly 20 percent of nonusers had access in the past but dropped it. Older and lower-income offline. Americans are most likely to be Consumer groups are an important voice in demanding that we meet the challenge of providing Internet access to both urban areas and rural areas. Yes, there are those who say they aren’t interested in broadband, but most rural people understand they need it to succeed in the 21st Century. Broadband access has become a necessity for businesses to set up shop in rural communities, for kids to do their schoolwork, to sell homes to newcomers in communities. Today’ farmers are like us. They went to college, they’ve had broadband access for years, and they don’t and cannot do without it. Communities of color are demanding broadband in ever greater numbers: African American access to the Internet has tripled over the last few years 66 percent of Latinos with home access to the Internet now use broadband, President-elect Obama’s technology policy supports this trend. “America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access,” he has said. His technology policy calls for providing “true broadband to every community in America.” Witty Quote 58 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 59 Ext Poor People KT Broadband [2/2] Broadband access is an economic engine for rural and urban areas. Connected Nation, a group promoting Internet access, says in a recent report that “just a 7 percentage point increase in broadband adoption could result in $134 billion per year in total direct economic impact” to the U.S. “Providing remote access to data gives people many more options in terms of where they work and whom they work for,” wrote Ed Felten, a computer scientist and public affairs professor at Princeton University. “Bandwidth makes people more productive,” he wrote. What policies are we recommending? The recent enactment of the S. 1492, the Broadband Data Improvement Act, a few months ago will help greatly, but it needs to be adequately funded. There’s been no commitment to fund it by Congress so far. That bill enjoyed broad bi-partisan support. One could argue that this bill is the broadband counterpart to the 1936 Rural Electrification Act. The Broadband Data Improvement Act creates a national grant program to help states create statewide broadband initiatives, using viability mapping, grassroots demand, extensive research, and efforts to put computers into the hands of disadvantaged communities. This new law also requires a comparison of broadband deployment at home with broadband deployment abroad. Senator Durbin said about the bill: “Broadband has become essential to rural areas which still lack adequate and affordable access to the Internet,” “bill helps close the digital divide, ensuring that no Americans are left behind in the 21st Century’s digital economy.” “If the United States is to remain a world leader in technology, we need a national broadband network that is second-to-none,” said Senator Daniel K. Inouye, a key champion of this bill (because he also chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, all important when it comes to funding). “The federal government has a responsibility to ensure the continued rollout of broadband access, as well as the successful deployment of the next generation of broadband technology. But as I have said before, we cannot manage what we do not measure. This bill will give us the baseline statistics we need in order to eventually achieve the and that this successful deployment of broadband access and services to all Americans.” Witty Quote 59 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 60 Ext Poor People KT Broadband Lynchpin Senate Document 9 [“SCHUMER: NYC AT RISK OF BEING SHUT OUT FROM CRITICAL RECOVERY ACT FUNDING TO EXPAND HI- SPEED BROADBAND SERVICE AND PUBLIC COMPUTERS FOR LOW INCOME AREAS -- ONLY 46% OF NYC RESIDENTS HAVE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET ACCESS; Recovery Act Included Billions to Expand Broadband Service, But NYC At Risk of Not Qualifying for the Program; Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) News Release, June 11, Nexis] It is critical that government promote broadband adoption programs and public computer centers in underserved areas because the availability of broadband, in a world that that is increasingly reliant on highspeed, easily accessible internet, is now more important than ever. Universal high speed internet use enables entrepreneurship to flourish, while also and attracting new types of cutting-edge, high-tech business. And it is not only businesspeople that stand to gain from broadband usage; students greatly benefit from easy access to education materials that are increasingly being converted to electronic format, and broadband helps all levels governments disseminate important documents to residents. Witty Quote 60 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 61 Ext Poor People KT Broadband/AT Rural Low-income users are key—rural users are irrelevant Hesseldahl 9 [Arik Hesseldahl is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com, “As Broadband Expands Rapidly, America's Poor Lag,” June 17, http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090617_659592.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_technology] Recession or no, more Americans are getting online via fast, higher-priced connections, a closely watched study of U.S. Internet use a big jump from a year earlier, when a comparable survey found that only 55% of U.S. adults had broadband access at home. has found. As of April, 63% of U.S. adults had broadband Internet connections in their homes, according to the Pew Research Center. That's Survey participants reported they're paying an average of $39 a month for broadband service, up from $34.50 a year earlier. At $39 per month, the average price is as high as it was in 2004 before it fell for the next four years. More consumers regard a broadband Internet connection as a necessity akin to electricity or water service, says John Horrigan, associate director for the Pew center. "Not very many people said they were cutting back on Internet service," Horrigan says. "They were more likely to be cutting back on their cell-phone plan or their cable TV service plan. It seems like broadband has a special place in the minds of people as something they would prefer not to give up." RURAL NONUSERS: A LESSER ISSUE The fresh research helps outline the challenges facing the Obama Administration as it determines how to distribute $7.2 billion in economic stimulus money for expanding broadband access. Despite deeper penetration and a growing willingness to spend more money on Internet access, 37% of U.S. adults remain without broadband. Income remains one of the largest barriers. Of those respondents classified as non-Internet users, 82% reported incomes of $40,000 a year or less; almost half earn less than $20,000 annually. Only one-quarter live in rural areas, where telecom companies often view low population density as a disincentive to building broadband systems. Pew's findings were presented at the National Broadband Strategy Symposium in Washington, an event held by the Internet Innovation Alliance, a coalition of businesses and nonprofit organizations that advocates the creation of a national broadband strategy. Critics have long charged that the U.S. lags in broadband, citing figures from a study published regularly by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, which places the U.S. 15th among developed countries in broadband deployments per 100 people. Scott Wallsten, vicepresident and research fellow at the nonpartisan Tech Policy Institute in Washington, argued at the symposium that the OECD figures are flawed. He says per capita analysis doesn't account for different household sizes and can unfairly favor nations whose families tend to have fewer members, such as those in northern Europe. Even if "every household in the U.S. [were] connected to broadband, it would rank 18th in the OECD and in the low 20s among the rest of the world," Wallsten says. Witty Quote 61 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 62 Ext LifeLine Solves Fall-Off LifeLine solves low-income people falling off broadband Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] Though we understand the desire by some to target the subsidies only to those low-income homes that would not otherwise subscribe to broadband (and exclude those that currently do or that would subscribe without a subsidy from participating in the program), we feel the administrative complexity of administering such a while adoption of broadband is increasing overall, it is decreasing among low-income households. This suggests that the low-income households with broadband may be highly susceptible to income effects from the current recession, and a Lifeline subsidy may help keep them on the network. program would be great. Further, recent data suggest that Witty Quote 62 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 63 Habermas Advantage [1/3] Our preservation of digital democracy is the cornerstone of the public sphere—the alternative is centered state power divorced of relationships with society Castells 8 [Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks and Global Governance,” 2008 The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/616/1/78] Between the state and society lies the public sphere, “a network for communicating information and points of view” (Habermas 1996, 360). The public sphere is an essential component of sociopolitical organization because it is the space where people come together as citizens and articulate their autonomous views to influence the political institutions of society. Civil society is the organized expression of these views; and the relationship between the state and civil society is the cornerstone of democracy . Without an effective civil society capable of structuring and channeling citizen debates over diverse ideas and conflicting interests, the state drifts away from its subjects. The state’s interaction with its citizenry is reduced to election periods largely shaped by political marketing and special interest groups and characterized by choice within a narrow spectrum of political option. The material expression of the public sphere varies with context, history, and technology, but in its current practice, it is certainly different from the ideal type of eighteenth-century bourgeois public sphere around which Habermas (1989) formulated his theory. Physical space—particularly public space in cities as well as universities—cultural institutions, and informal networks of public opinion formation have always been important elements in shaping the development of the public sphere (Low and Smith 2006). And of course, as John Thompson (2000) has argued, media have become the major component of the public sphere in the industrial society. Furthermore, if communication networks of any kind form the public sphere, then our society, the network society (Castells 1996, 2004a), organizes its public sphere, more than any other historical form of organization, on the basis of media communication networks (Lull 2007; Cardoso 2006; Chester 2007). In the digital era, this includes the diversity of both the mass media and Internet and wireless communication networks (McChesney 2007). However, if the concept of the public sphere has heuristic value, it is because it is inseparable from two other key dimensions of the institutional construction of modern societies: civil society and the state. The public sphere is not just the media or the sociospatial sites of public interaction. It is the cultural/informational repository of the ideas and projects that feed public debate. It is through the public sphere that diverse forms of civil society enact this public debate, ultimately influencing the decisions of the state (Stewart 2001). On the other hand, the political institutions of society set the constitutional rules by which the debate is kept orderly and organizationally productive. It is the interaction between citizens, civil society, and the state, communicating through the public sphere, that ensures that the balance between stability and social change is maintained in the conduct of public affairs. If citizens, civil society, or the state fail to fulfill the demands of this interaction, or if the channels of communication between two or more of the key components of the process are blocked, the whole system of representation and decision making comes to a stalemate. A crisis of legitimacy follows (Habermas 1976) because citizens do not recognize themselves in the institutions of society. This leads to a crisis of authority, which ultimately leads to a redefinition of power relationships embodied in the state (Sassen 2006). As Habermas (1976) himself acknowledged, his theorization of democracy was in fact an idealized situation that never survived capitalism’s penetration of the state. But the terms of the political equation he proposed remain a useful intellectual construct—a way of representing the contradictory relationships between the conflictive interests of social actors, the social construction of cultural meaning, and the institutions of the state. The notion of the public sphere as a neutral space for the production of meaning runs against all historical evidence (Mann 1986, 1993). But we can still emphasize the critical role of the cultural arena in which representations and opinions of society are formed, de-formed, and re-formed to provide the ideational materials that construct the basis upon which politics and policies operate (Giddens 1979). Therefore, the issue that I would like to bring to the forefront of this analysis is that sociopolitical forms and processes are built upon cultural materials and that these materials are either unilaterally produced by political institutions as an expression of domination or, alternatively, are coproduced within the public sphere by individuals, interest groups, civic associations of various kinds (the civil society), and the state. How this public sphere is constituted and how it operates largely defines the structure and dynamics of any given polity. Furthermore, it can be argued that there is a public sphere in the international arena (Volkmer 2003). It exists within the political/institutional space that is not subject to any particular sovereign power but, instead, is shaped by the variable geometry of relationships between states and global nonstate actors (Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald 2000). It is widely recognized that a variety of social interests express themselves in this international arena: multinational business, world religions, cultural creators, public intellectuals, and self-defined global cosmopolitans (Beck 2006). There is also a global civil society (Kaldor 2003), as I will try to argue below, and ad hoc forms of global governance enacted by international, conational, and supranational political institutions (Nye and Donahue 2000; Keohane 2002). For all these actors and institutions to interact in a nondisruptive manner, the same kind of common ideational ground that developed in the national public sphere should emerge. Otherwise, codestruction substitutes for cooperation, and sheer domination takes precedence over governance. However, the forms and processes of construction of the international public sphere are far from clear. This is because a number of simultaneous crises have blurred the relationships between national public spheres and the state, between states and civil society, between states and their citizens, and between the states themselves Witty Quote 63 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 64 Habermas Advantage [2/3] (Bauman 1999; Caputo 2004; Arsenault 2007). The crisis of the national public sphere makes the emergence of an international public sphere particularly relevant. Without a flourishing international public sphere, the global sociopolitical order becomes defined by the realpolitik of nation-states that cling to the illusion of sovereignty despite the realities wrought by globalization (Held 2004). Our broadband expansion is the only route to sustainable social order—preservation of the public sphere fosters the ONLY meaningful social change Castells 8 [Manuel Castells is University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, “The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks and Global Governance,” 2008 The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/616/1/78] The new political system in a globalized world emerges from the processes of the formation of a global civil society and a global network state that supersedes and integrates the preexisting nation-states without dissolving them into a global government. There is a process of the emergence of de facto global governance without a global government. The transition from these pragmatic forms of sociopolitical organization and decision making to a more elaborate global institutional system requires the coproduction of meaning and the sharing of values between global civil society and the global network state. This transformation is influenced and fought over by cultural/ideational materials through which the political and social interests work to enact the transformation of the state. In the last analysis, the will of the people emerges from people’s minds. And people make up their minds on the issues that affect their lives, as well as the future of humankind, from the messages and debates that take place in the public sphere. The contemporary global public sphere is largely dependent on the global/local communication media system. This media system includes television, radio, and the print press, as well as a variety of multimedia and communications systems, among which the Internet and horizontal networks of communication now play a decisive role (Bennett 2004; Dahlgren 2005; Tremayne 2007). There is a shift from a public sphere anchored around the national institutions of territorially bound societies to a public sphere constituted around the media system (Volkmer 1999; El-Nawawy and Iskander 2002; Paterson and Sreberny 2004). This media system includes what I have conceptualized as mass self-communication, that is, networks of communication that relate many-to-many in the sending and receiving of messages in a multimodal form of communication that bypasses mass media and often escapes government control (Castells 2007). The current media system is local and global at the same time. It is organized around a core formed by media business groups with global reach and their networks (Arsenault and Castells forthcoming). But at the same time, it is dependent on state regulations and focused on narrowcasting to specific audiences (Price 2002). By acting on the media system, particularly by creating events that send powerful images and messages, transnational activists induce a debate on the hows, whys, and whats of globalization and on related societal choices (Juris forthcoming). It is through the media, both mass media and horizontal networks of communication, that nonstate actors influence people’s minds and foster social change. Ultimately, the transformation of consciousness does have consequences on political behavior, on voting patterns, and on the decisions of governments. It is at the level of media politics where it appears that societies can be moved in a direction that diverges from the values and interests it is essential for state actors , and for intergovernmental institutions, such as the United Nations, to relate to civil society not only around institutional mechanisms and procedures of political representation but in public debates in the global public sphere. That global public sphere is built around the media communication system and Internet networks, particularly in the social spaces of the Web 2.0, as exemplified by YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and the growing blogosphere that by mid-2007 counted 70 million blogs and was doubling in size every six months (Tremayne 2007). A series of major conferences was organized by the UN during the 1990s on issues pertinent to humankind (from the condition of women to environmental conservation). While not very effective in terms of designing policy, these conferences were essential in fostering a global dialogue, in raising public awareness, and in providing the platform on which the global civil society could move to the forefront of the policy debate . Therefore, stimulating the consolidation of this communication-based public sphere is one key mechanism with which states and international institutions can engage with the demands and projects of the global civil society. This can take place by institutionalized in the political system. Thus, stimulating dialogue regarding specific initiatives and recording, on an ongoing basis, the contributions of this dialogue so that it can inform policy making in the international arena. To Witty Quote harness the power of the world’s public opinion through global media and Internet networks 64 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 65 Habermas Advantage [3/3] is the most effective form of broadening political participation on a global scale, by inducing a fruitful, synergistic connection between the government-based international institutions and the global civil society. This multimodal communication space is what constitutes the new global public sphere. Public diplomacy is not propaganda. And it is not government diplomacy. We do not need to use a new concept to designate the traditional practices of diplomacy. Public diplomacy is the diplomacy of the public, that is, the projection in the international arena of the values and ideas of the public. The public is not the government because it is not formalized in the institutions of the state. By the public, we usually mean what is common to a given social organization that transcends the private. The private is the domain of self-defined interests and values, while the public is the domain of the shared interests and values (Dewey 1954). The implicit project behind the idea of public diplomacy is not to assert the power of a state or of a social actor in the form of “soft power.” It is, instead, to harness the dialogue between different social collectives and their cultures in the hope of sharing meaning and understanding. The aim of the practice of public diplomacy is not to convince but to communicate, not to declare but to listen. Public diplomacy seeks to build a public sphere in which diverse voices can be heard in spite of their various origins, distinct values, and often contradictory interests. The goal of public diplomacy, in contrast to government diplomacy, is not to assert power or to negotiate a rearrangement of power relationships. It is to induce a communication space in which a new, common language could emerge as a precondition for diplomacy, so that when the time for diplomacy comes, it reflects not only interests and power making but also meaning and sharing. In this sense, public diplomacy intervenes in the global space equivalent to what has been traditionally conceived as the public sphere in the national system. It is a terrain of cultural engagement in which ideational materials are produced and confronted by various social actors, creating the conditions under which different projects can be channeled by the global civil society and the political institutions of global governance toward an informed process of decision making that respects the differences and weighs policy alternatives. Because we live in a globalized, interdependent world, the space of political codecision is necessarily global. And the choice that we face is either to construct the global political system as an expression of power relationships without cultural mediation or else to develop a global public sphere around the global networks of communication, from which the public debate could inform the emergence of a new form of consensual global governance. If the choice is the latter, public diplomacy, understood as networked communication and shared meaning, becomes a decisive tool for the attainment of a sustainable world order. Witty Quote 65 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 66 AT LifeLine/LinkUp Fails Infrastructure is in place and it’s empirically successful—no risk of a solvency deficit Cox Communications 9 [“Before the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Washington, D.C. 20230,” April 13, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/7B38.doc] Likewise, the Lifeline and Link-Up programs, targeted at low-income customers who are underserved by broadband today, easily could be expanded to provide connectivity and related equipment at reduced cost and efficiently fulfill the statutory goal of increasing access to underserved populations and stimulating broadband demand. These programs easily could be extended to include all facilities-based broadband service providers regardless of whether these providers have been designated as eligible telecommunications services providers Service providers are familiar with the Lifeline and Link-Up programs, and, as with the Schools and Libraries program, an administrative infrastructure is already in place, allowing for rapid distribution of funding and ensuring that enhanced Lifeline/Link-Up benefits, like current benefits, are appropriately targeted. Indeed, as the FCC noted in its recent notice of inquiry on the national broadband plan, the FCC already has asked for comment on Lifeline/Link-Up broadband pilot program and the notice for inquiry asks for comment on how the schools and libraries program can be used to advance broadband deployment.7 for other Lifeline and Link-Up eligible services. Witty Quote 66 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 67 AT States Federal action key to broadband leadership—only way to access competitiveness Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] Persuasive research indicates that connecting our nation to broadband will bring remarkable economic, social, cultural, personal, and other benefits to our citizens. Citing this research, a bipartisan chorus of America's leaders has for years advocated the deployment across our nation of robust and affordable broadband access to the Internet. Taken together, the rhetoric and research tell a compelling story; that in the Digital Age, universal, affordable, and robust broadband is the key to our nation's citizens reaching for - and achieving - the American Dream. Yet, America has failed to deploy universal, affordable, and robust broadband. Compared to many of the other industrialized nations against which we compete in the increasingly interconnected global economy, our nation has steadily declined in rankings of broadband quality, availability, and price. This failure is the result of a clear absence of strong federal leadership . "Broadband is no one's responsibility," Tim Wu has observed, "and the buck keeps getting passed between industry, Congress, the White House, and the [Federal Communications Commission]."6 Illustrating the lack of federal leadership, President George W. Bush in 2004 established as one of his Administration's goals "universal, affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007," citing such significant benefits as a stronger, more competitive, and efficient economy; better pay and productivity for America's workers; improved health care; more educational and training opportunities; enhanced homeland security; and other benefits, noting that "[t]he spread of broadband will not only help industry, it'll help the quality of life of our citizens."7 As the year 2007 came to a close, the Bush Administration announced that the President's goal had been accomplished - all Americans had access to affordable broadband. Unfortunately, however, the Administration's claim turned out to be hollow and disingenuous; based on the near-universal availability of the same slow, expensive, and weather-dependent satellite "broadband"8 that had already been available back in 2004 when the President established his goal.9 The bottom line is that without strong federal leadership, deployment of robust and affordable broadband that would help all Americans realize the American Dream remains just that - a dream. Our New Sputnik Moment In October 1957, as the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite sailed across the night sky, America suddenly realized it was no longer the unchallenged global leader in science and telecommunications. Strong federal leadership answered this challenge. A post-Sputnik sense of urgency resulted in stunning technological achievements - from landing a man on the moon, to building up the nation's nascent semiconductor and computer industries, to laying the foundations for what we know today as the Internet. Today, no new satellite orbits the earth to sound the alarm to Americans. But our nation is once again facing a serious challenge to its global technological leadership, as well as its economic competitiveness . In an interconnected world made "flat," in Thomas Friedman's well-turned phrase,10 by broadband, America's competitors are executing well-conceived and -financed national strategies to dramatically increase their competitive advantage in broadband over the United States, which has no national broadband strategy. A comprehensive review of the relative ranking of the United States versus the rest of the developed world concludes concludes unequivocally that "[t]he United States is behind in broadband deployment, speed and price. Despite what some advocates and analysts claim, the United States is behind in broadband performance and its rank has been falling since 2001."11 From a ranking of 4th in 2001 among the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in broadband penetration, the United States has "steadily fallen" to 15th in 2007. America also ranks 15th among OECD countries in broadband speed, averaging 4.9 Mbps, and 11th in the cost of broadband per Mbps.12 Most of the leading nations of Asia and Europe have adopted their own national broadband strategies and are aggressively building out their broadband, often utilizing ultra-fast 100 Mbps fiber-to-the-home connections that are over 100 times faster than the FCC's newly revised classification of "basic broadband" speed. Such fiber connections, similar to Verizon's FiOS project now being deployed in many cities in its service area, render obsolete the cable and DSL broadband connections that provide an average speed of 4.9 Mbps and dominate broadband service in the United States. Faster broadband in other nations is "pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States." In Japan, most citizens have access to broadband connections that are 8 to 30 times as fast as those available in the United States, yet cost less per month. Broadcastquality TV over the Internet, high-definition teleconferencing, remote telemedicine, and advanced telecommuting are all not merely possible, but commonplace in many other countries today.13 In the United States, however, the widespread availability of broadband robust enough to power these applications is years away. Indeed, what many Americans think of as "broadband" is in many other countries too slow and feeble to even be called "broadband."14 And, Witty Quote 67 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 68 AT States ominously, "the United States is likely to fall farther and farther behind the leading Asian and European countries on most key measures of success in broadband deployment."15 Adding to concerns over the state of broadband in America is the fact that our nation's growth rate in broadband adoption has tapered off to near zero, likely due to the nation's faltering economy and the high cost of broadband. For Americans who live in households with incomes under $20,000 annually, broadband penetration has actually fallen to 25 percent in early 2008 compared to 28 percent a year earlier.16 These are households that could benefit dramatically from the continuing education, job training, and jobsearch opportunities that access to broadband provides, as is described below. The bottom line is that our nation is far from the goal of universal deployment of robust and affordable broadband that would enhance our competitiveness versus many other industrialized nations. As many nations boldly strategize their rapid advance into the Digital Age by energetically embracing and exploiting the potential of broadband, America is being left behind. This is our nation's new Sputnik moment. It demands strong federal leadership. Witty Quote 68 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 69 AT States Federal leadership solves terrorism and natural disaster preparedness Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] Professor Jon M. Peha of Carnegie Mellon University, an expert on public safety communications systems, recently testified before Congress about the compelling public safety and homeland security rationale for a national broadband infrastructure: When public safety communication systems fail, people can die. We had seen this occur after the 9/11 attacks, after Hurricane Katrina, and in countless large and small emergencies throughout the country. Many of these tragic failures are avoidable. In addition to suffering from much-discussed interoperability problems, the communication systems used by public safety are less dependable than they should be, less secure than they should be, and less spectrally efficient than they should be. Ironically, they are also more expensive than they should be, which means taxpayers pay extra for systems that are unnecessarily prone to failure.125 Instead, Peha told Congress: "First responders should have a single nationwide broadband communications system with technology that is based on open standards. This requires federal leadership ."126 The kind of leadership needed today was on display in 1956 when the federal government, in the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, signed enthusiastically into law by President Eisenhower, committed to building a nationwide network of world-class, high-speed interstate superhighways to better provide for public safety and homeland security.127 Today, in the Digital Age, for those same reasons, the federal government must exert that same kind of leadership to ensure the standards, shared services, and connections to a new worldclass infrastructure of 21st-century telecommunications networks. "All Americans need access to advanced telecommunications services in the 21st century," Lloyd writes, "just as they needed access to an advanced highway system in the 20th century." This is particularly true for all emergency organizations meeting critical public needs. Just as we connected schools to broadband at the end of the last century, we need to hook up the more than 100,000 emergency agencies in the nation. "Katrina and 9/11 remind us that access to advanced telecommunications service is a public need. We need national leadership to remind us of this, and insist on policies that address public needs."128 That prevents nuclear attack Bush 1 [“President Bush on Domestic Preparedness Against Weapons of Mass Destruction,” May 8, http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=6166] Protecting America's homeland and citizens from the threat of weapons of mass destruction is one of our Nation's important national security challenges. Today, more nations possess chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons than ever before. Still others seek to join them. Most troubling of all, the list of these countries includes some of the world's least-responsible states -- states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. Some non-state terrorist groups have also demonstrated an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Against this backdrop, it is clear that the threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States -- while not immediate -- is very real. That is why our Nation actively seeks to deny chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to those seeking to acquire them. That is why, together with our allies, we seek to deter anyone who would contemplate their use. And that is also why we must ensure that our Nation is prepared to defend against the harm they can inflict. Should our efforts to reduce the threat to our country from weapons of mass destruction be less than fully successful, prudence dictates that the United States be fully prepared to deal effectively with the consequences of such a weapon being used here on our soil. NEXT PAGE Witty Quote 69 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 70 AT States Terrorism causes extinction Sid-Ahmed 4 [Mohamed, Managing Editor for Al-Ahali, “Extinction!” August 26-September 1, Issue no. 705, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm] A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be unfounded. a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war , from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers What would be the consequences of Witty Quote 70 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 71 AT States CP links to ptx—normal means is getting federal money UPI 9 [“California seeks $1 billion for broadband,” May 5 Lexis] California wants $1 billion in federal stimulus money to bring high-speed Internet access to every household in the state, officials said. The Sacramento Bee reported Tuesday that 45 percent of California residents lack broadband connections in their homes because of geography, disabilities, poor English language skills or poverty. Proponents of the plan say the money will help close the digital divide in the nation's most populous state. States pay for it by obtaining federal money TMC News 9 [Broadband growth gets support from state government: High-speed Internet means more than just surfing Web, June 1, http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/06/01/4204451.htm] So the grants offered through the stimulus funds can give providers incentives to run their lines. Two West Virginia lawmakers, Irving said, have been key in obtaining federal funding for broadband access: Rep. Alan Mollohan and Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Witty Quote 71 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 72 AT States LinkUp is under federal jurisdiction—CP links to NB or they don’t solve Newman 3 [ABRAHAM, Prof Political Science @ UCBerk, “When Opportunity Knocks: Economic Liberalisation and Stealth Welfare in the United States,” Jnl Soc. Pol., 32, 2, 179–197, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=148278&jid=JSP&volumeId=32&issueId=02&aid=148277] The ten years following the initial adoption of Lifeline service proved quite eventful in terms of telecommunications social policy. Lifeline was repeatedly extended as service line charges rose, even though no evidence existed that access was threatened by price increases. In addition to the amount of benefits, the types of services covered expanded. By 1996, over 5 million households participated in the original Lifeline assistance program. Two evolutions were particularly important to support consolidation. First, benefits were given to new populations in 1987 and 1996 that broadened the constituencies of universal service. Second, the technology A major innovation in universal service occurred in 1987. Under pressure from consumer and poverty groups asserting that installment costs constituted a serious barrier to access and labor mobility, the FCC created Link-up which pays for half of initial service fees up to $30. Between 1987 and 1996, 4.6 million connections had been made. A unique feature of Link-up, paid through surcharges on long-distance services, was that it was not contingent on state participation. Unlike Lifeline, Link-up created a federal entitlement independent of state action(Eriksson,1998). considered vital under universal service evolved from minimal access to progressively more advanced technology. Witty Quote 72 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 73 AT States States suck Scott & Turner 9 [Ben Scott, Policy Director, Derek Turner, Research Director of Free Press, “In the Matter of A National Broadband Plan for Our Future,” June 8 http://www.freepress.net/files/FP_National_broadband_plan.pdf] Finally, the FCC must use the national broadband plan to establish the agency as the pre-eminent authority and resource for all broadband market data. States all over the country have undertaken efforts to map out broadband deployment and adoption, often at great and unnecessary expense. In many cases, these publicprivate efforts are conducted in a manner that places more focus on private, rather than public, concerns. The data generated from these efforts is often nontransparent and nonverifiable. The FCC should conclude efforts begun in 2008 to reform its own data gathering practices, so it has the information needed to make the right policy decisions. But just as good data enables the FCC to make informed decisions, so too can it empower consumers to make smart decisions. Thus the FCC should make as much of its broadband data publicly accessible as possible. Witty Quote 73 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 74 AT States/Federalism—States Fail State governments will fail—federal broadband is key Brennan 2k [Tim Brennan Professor, Policy Sciences and EconomicsUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County Senior Fellow Resources for the Future, “Policy Federalism and Regulating Broadband Internet Access,” 10/19/00 http://www.icfc.ilstu.edu/icfcpapers00/brennan1.PDF] But just as market failures may warrant government restriction of individual decisions, so too might similar failures warrant having central governments preempt local government authority. The preceding discussion suggests three factors to consider: • Inefficiently low information: Weighing the costs and benefits of open access in one lo- cality may involve duplicating costs associated with similar analyses in other localities. The benefits to any one locality of developing its analysis may understate the social bene-fits of the associated informational “public goods.” Hence, left to their own devices, lo-cal governments might do a less effective job than a central government that perhaps has better incentives to weigh properly the pros and cons of a particular policy. In effect, in-formation may create a scale economy in governance, in that the average costs of analyz-ing policies may fall as the size of the jurisdiction increases. Transborder inefficiencies: The costs and benefits of a local government’s actions may fall not on solely on those within its jurisdiction. As the Parker “raisin cartel” case above shows, a state may be able to exercise monopoly power against those outside its jurisdic-tion. In addition, it may be able to impose external costs outside its boundaries, e.g., by siting polluting power plants just upwind from adjoining states. 63 In thinking about these transborder effects, it is important here as in other policy settings to distinguish efficiency effects from “pecuniary externalities.” A local policy choice may make one firm better off and another worse off, just as purchasing decisions do in the market. But only if there is market power or an unpriced cost or benefit is there an opportunity to realize a net eco-nomic gain through a policy intervention. 64 • Political failure: A third justification for federal preemption of local authority is if there is some reason toe believe that the local decision did not adequately reflect the views of its constituents. Defining “adequately” here is not easy, particularly if we want to restrict our attention to process rather than substance. 65 One could justify federal laws against local corruption. More broadly would be requirements, akin to those in the Midcal case discussed above, that the local action be “clearly articulated and actively supervised,” in order to instill confidence that the local government is doing what its constituents want. Reluctance to defer to local authorities may well be the result of beliefs that local gov-ernments are more prone to nepotism or back-room bargaining than the federal govern-ment. Witty Quote 74 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 75 AT States/Federalism—Preemption Feds preempt broadband policy Brennan 2k [Tim Brennan Professor, Policy Sciences and EconomicsUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County Senior Fellow Resources for the Future, “Policy Federalism and Regulating Broadband Internet Access,” 10/19/00 http://www.icfc.ilstu.edu/icfcpapers00/brennan1.PDF] Much of this local authority has been preempted by federal legislation, especially the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 (Pub. L. 98-549, known also as the 1984 Cable Act), that stripped localities of the ability to “regulate” cable rates or, viewed another way, to hold winners of franchise competitions to the terms of their bids. Federal legislation also limits how much lo-cal governments can collect from cable systems via “franchise fees.” However, and perhaps partly because of this loss of direct authority over rates, the localities have attempted to exercise their authority over cable in other ways. Most notable here is the exercise of their authority over whether a cable franchise can be transferred from its current owner to a different company fol-lowing an acquisition of the former by the latter, e.g., AT&T’s takeover of TCI. Witty Quote 75 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 76 AT Federalism N/U—federalist conflict over broadband inevitable Brennan 2k [Tim Brennan Professor, Policy Sciences and EconomicsUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County Senior Fellow Resources for the Future, “Policy Federalism and Regulating Broadband Internet Access,” 10/19/00 http://www.icfc.ilstu.edu/icfcpapers00/brennan1.PDF] Constitutionally, the boundaries between federal and state power are set in balancing the in-terpretation of two clauses. Article I, Section 8 sets out the “commerce clause,” stating that “[t]he Congress shall have Power … [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the sev-eral States ….” Depending on the interpretation of “interstate commerce,” this clause can, and arguably has, granted considerably authority to Congress over a wide range of conduct, even where the connections to “interstate commerce” may be tenuous. 41 On the other side of the coin is the Tenth Amendment, which says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the peo-ple.” Strictly construed, this clause leaves restricts the federal role and leaves considerable power to the states.In competition policy settings, conflict between federal and state authority is neither new nor unusual. Witty Quote 76 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 77 AT Free Market Free market will inevitably fail—national expansion is key to broadband Rintels 8 [Jonathan, President and Executive Director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, “USING TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION TO ADDRESS OUR NATION’S CRITICAL CHALLENGES,” Benton Foundation, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/1EA6.pdf] Relying too heavily on the marketplace alone to deploy universal, affordable, and robust broadband has left millions of Americans without a robust and affordable connection to the Internet, denying them the opportunity to fully participate in - and take advantage of - the vast benefits and advances of the Digital Age. To provide this opportunity, and to answer the challenge of our nation's new Sputnik moment, the new Administration must launch a well-planned, concerted national effort to deploy robust and affordable broadband to every corner of the nation. Without such an effort, paralleling that which deployed telephone service, electricity, and interstate highways across the nation, our citizens will fail to reap broadband's tremendous benefits and our nation will fall further behind its global competitors. Starting on his first day in office, the new President should declare that the deployment of universal, affordable, and robust broadband Internet access to every American household is one of his Administration's top priorities. His Administration should then immediately begin the process of designing and successfully executing a coordinated and effective National Broadband Strategy (NBS), a "coherent roadmap of policies and goals that complement and accelerate efforts in the marketplace to achieve universal adoption of affordable high-speed Internet connections."17 It is vital to the success of the NBS that it include initiatives to eliminate the digital divide, and promote the adoption of transforming broadband technologies to address the difficult challenges faced by our nation in the areas of economic growth, job creation, health care, education, public safety, energy consumption and climate change, and others, as will be described later in this paper. When massive and wide-ranging solutions to these pressing national problems can be delivered to digitally-connected and Internet-savvy citizens, demand for robust broadband will increase substantially. By promoting both the supply of and the demand for broadband, the NBS will establish a "virtuous circle" in which an increased supply of robust and affordable broadband stimulates creation of applications that produce wide-ranging, valuable social benefits that then causes citizens to demand even more robust and affordable broadband; which in turn stimulates greater investment in more robust broadband; which then stimulates the creation of even more beneficial applications that cause citizens to demand even more robust and affordable broadband. Strong federal leadership, expressed in a comprehensive NBS, is crucial to ending the stand-off between those ready to invest in the deployment of robust broadband once great technologies and applications emerge to take advantage of it, and those ready to invest in transforming technologies and applications and who are waiting for robust broadband to be built out. By adopting a bold and imaginative action plan on Day One of his Administration to connect all of our citizens to robust and affordable broadband, the new President will enable America to catch up to and surpass our global competitors on broadband, while at the same time using technology and innovation to address our nation's critical challenges. He will deliver to all our citizens the opportunity they seek for their children and themselves: to reach for the American Dream in the Digital Age. Witty Quote 77 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 78 AT Free Market Free market kills competitiveness Scott & Turner 9 [Ben Scott, Policy Director, Derek Turner, Research Director of Free Press, “In the Matter of A National Broadband Plan for Our Future,” June 8 http://www.freepress.net/files/FP_National_broadband_plan.pdf] With this frame in mind, in these comments we undertake an analysis of the U.S. broadband and Internet access market, with an eye on the FCC and Congressional policies that lead us to where we are today. From this analysis we can trace a path of promise turned to peril. We find that the Commission over the past decade has been on a reckless and mindless deregulatory path, eager to toss aside successful policy frameworks, consumer protections, pro- competition rules, and Congressional directives -- all in the name of the “free market.” This path, which indicates a shocking indifference to the plight of Consumers on the part of the Commission, has taken this country from a global leader to global follower in the communications market, and has jeopardized our economic and social growth. The blame for the failure to bring the benefits of the Internet to all Americans falls squarely on the shoulders of the Federal Communications Commission. With the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress gave the FCC a blueprint for achieving universal access, openness and competition. But the FCC quickly abandoned this “mission accomplished” on the goal of competition before the mission had even begun. It dismantled the basic legal framework responsible for creating the open Internet and left nothing in its place but thin assurances that what once was would always be. And as the digital divide grew wider, the FCC sat idle. America’s broadband failures are the result of policy failures. They are the predictable outcome of a regulatory agency that always places private interests above the public interest. Over the past decade, while other countries developed and path. It chose to follow the wishes of the industries it regulates rather than the deliberative judgment of our elected representatives. It declared properly implemented national broadband polices, America’s policy was just to cross our fingers and hope for the best. Hope that new platforms would emerge and compete with the duopoly phone and cable providers. Hope that providers wouldn’t abuse their market power to raise barriers to entry for new competitors. These hopes were based on the belief that the invisible hand would work its magic if the agency got out of the way. But our broadband policies have actually stifled, not freed, the forces of the free market. What our regulators forgot was that market forces do not work properly when markets are highly concentrated. They failed to grasp the basic idea that failed markets just won’t fix themselves without any intervention. They watched as America fell further and further behind the rest of the world. They ignored history. Witty Quote 78 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 79 AT Free Market/National Investment Key US leadership and investment are key—solves economy, healthcare, and national security Irons 8 [John Irons is the Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute and an advisory board member of Science Progress. “Investing in U.S. infrastructure: Promoting economic stimulus and growth,” Apr 29, http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp217.html] The United States currently ranks 15th of 30 developed countries in overall broadband penetration as measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.12 Nations that have prioritized broadband infrastructure have already seen improvements. For example, Denmark's broadband penetration reached 34 connections per 100 inhabitants in 2007, while the United States had just 22 per 100. Expanding broadband infrastructure in the United States would not simply improve the speed of our connections for entertainment purposes, but it would also bring a wealth of knowledge to more citizens in more areas. With greater reach, the United States could see improvements in education, health care, and first-responder capabilities as communications become faster, more efficient, and more effective. More extensive broadband might also allow for greater telecommuting and teleconferencing, and thus also help to reduce travel and energy demands. The United States has also fallen behind in the deployment of new broadband technologies. Fiber optic broadband has been blended into the telecomm systems of Japan, South Korea, and other countries, giving them a huge lead in this newest, fastest connection: over 35% of Japan's Internet connections are fiber optic whereas only 3% of U.S. connections are. This failure to lead in broadband expansion has consequences beyond the narrowly economic. Internet connectivity is becoming increasingly important for national security, responding to natural disasters, health care communications, and educational uses. Given these overarching concerns there is a strong national interest in promoting broadband infrastructure. As noted by Mark Lloyd, redundancy is key: We have a wide-range of technologies available to communicate effectively. We should not choose between satellite broadband, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max, wireless broadband, power-line communications, and optical fiber networks—all of these technologies should be invested in along with new developing technologies to protect our defense and emergency needs at home.3 The national response cannot be to simply leave it to the private market—national leadership is essential. Network externalities and market spillovers may lead to private under-investment generally. Private companies will have incentives to build out to targeted communities with high densities and high incomes; however, they too often leave out low-income neighborhoods and rural locations. Specific policies to address this shortfall might include: loan guarantees and grants to states for public/private partnerships to accelerate broadband deployment and adoption, especially in rural and underserved areas; funding for technology demonstration projects that might yield social value; and augmenting universal service programs to incorporate the support of broadband in high-cost and underserved areas. Witty Quote 79 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 80 AT Net Neutrality Net neutrality is counterproductive—USF change is key to broadband Kennard 6 [William E. Kennard, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1997 to 2001, is on the board of The New York Times, “Spreading the Broadband Revolution,” Oct 21, NYT] Any serious discussion of the future of the Internet should start with a basic fact: broadband is transforming every facet of communications, from entertainment and telephone services to delivery of vital services like health care. But this also means that the digital divide, once defined as the chasm separating those who had access to narrowband dial-up Internet and those who didn’t, has become a broadband digital divide. The nation should have a full-scale policy debate about the direction of the broadband Internet, especially about how to make sure that all Americans get access to broadband connections. Unfortunately, the current debate in Washington is over “net neutrality” — that is, should network providers be able to charge some companies special fees for faster bandwidth. This is essentially a battle between the extremely wealthy (Google, Amazon and other high-tech giants, which oppose such a move) and the merely rich (the telephone and cable industries). In the past year, collectively they have spent $50 million on lobbying and advertising, effectively preventing Congress and the public from dealing with more pressing issues. As chairman of the F.C.C., I put into place many policies to bridge the narrowband digital divide. The broadband revolution poses similar challenges for policymakers. America should be a world leader in broadband technology and deployment, and we must ensure that no group or region in America is denied access to high-speed connections. We are falling short in both areas. Since 2000, the United States has slipped from second to 19th in the world in broadband penetration, with Slovenia threatening to push us into 20th. Studies by the federal government conclude that our rural and low-income areas trail urban and high-income areas in the rate of broadband use. Indeed, this year the Government Accountability Office found that 42 percent of households have either no computer or a computer with no Internet connection. Two promising policies in particular would significantly expand broadband access. First, to ensure that broadband reaches into rural, low income and other underserved communities, Congress should reform the Universal Service Fund, the federal subsidy paid to companies that provide telephone service to rural areas. For decades, the fund has been financed by a federal fee or surcharge that consumers pay on interstate phone calls. But the fund in its current form is not an effective way to support expanded broadband access. It is not fair to expect telephone consumers to bear the sole burden of the subsidy, and the decline in revenue from traditional long-distance calling is shrinking the base for contributions to the fund. We must find a new source of revenue for the fund that does not exclusively tax users of the phone network. And we should adopt a much more efficient way to distribute precious fund dollars. All communications companies — telephone, cable TV or wireless network operators — that want government financing to provide broadband services to specific underserved communities should submit competitive bids to the fund. The F.C.C.’s chairman, Kevin Martin, has opened the debate on this proposal, called a reverse auction, which would ensure that only the most efficient companies would be granted subsidies to provide service to rural areas. This is a step in the right direction. Second, Congress should put all broadband providers on a level playing field. Both the cable and telephone industries are racing to provide a bundle of services to consumers. Each wants to be the consumer’s one-stop shop for video, voice and data services. Unfortunately, the legacy of historic regulation puts the telephone companies at a serious regulatory disadvantage in quickly deploying video services. Both industries could benefit from national franchising legislation that would streamline the franchising process and promote innovation and competition. (Disclosure: Some companies in which I invest at The Carlyle Group could also benefit from the wave of investment that would result from such legislation.) Congress punted on both of these issues this year in large part because of the polarizing net neutrality debate. Now the combatants are set to throw millions more dollars into the fray when Congress revisits new telecommunications legislation. Policymakers should rise above the net neutrality debate and focus on what America truly requires from the Internet: getting affordable broadband access to those who need it. Witty Quote 80 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 81 AT Net Neutrality—Links to Ptx CP links harder to politics Jones 7 [K. C. Jones, Information Week, “Net Neutrality Debate Remains Contentious,” March 16, 2007, http://www.c3.ucla.edu/newsstand/media/netneutrality-debate-remains-contentious/] Net neutrality is so contentious that many people debating it cannot even agree on a definition. Traditional allies and foes have rearranged themselves to form strange new alliances and divisions. Even the founders of the Internet and the World Wide Web — including some who worked alongside each other — are at odds over how to move forward. The Gun Owners of America and the Christian Coalition have lined up next to MoveOn, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democratic presidential candidates to support what they describe as a federal anti-discrimination measure. Telecommunications and cable companies competing for Internet subscribers are on the other team in the fight against net neutrality, which they argue is a biased and unclear term for laws that would stifle innovation. Columbia University Law Professor Timothy Wu is widely credited with coining the term net neutrality in a paper he published in 2002. He describes it as a network design issue based on the idea that "information networks are often more valuable when they are less specialized — when they are a platform for multiple uses, present and future." "A useful way to understand this principle is to look at other networks, like the electric grid, which are implicitly built on a neutrality theory," Wu explains on a site he created to explain the concept. "The general purpose and neutral nature of the electric grid is one of the things that make it extremely useful. The electric grid does not care if you plug in a toaster, an iron, or a computer. Consequently, it has survived and supported giant waves of innovation in the appliance market. The electric grid worked for the radios of the 1930s works for the flat screen TVs of the 2000s. For that reason the electric grid is a model of a neutral, innovation-driving network." The Internet now allows information to move in data packets through networks of computers and routers on a "best efforts basis." In other words, the system routes packets with little regard for what type of information or applications they contain or who created them. Proponents of net neutrality argue that cable and telecommunications form a duopoly that threatens the current system. They say that, without some type of anti-discrimination law or standards, cable and telecommunications companies could control users' access by blocking content from competitors, favoring certain applications, charging higher rates to deliver information into people's homes and offices and failing to inform people of their capacity. Since cable companies act both as Internet service providers and content creators, net neutrality proponents argue that they have a financial interest in prioritizing their own content and threatening online speech and democracy. Likewise, telecommunications companies acting as service providers could degrade Voice over Internet Protocol, which in many cases allows people to make phone calls cheaper over the Internet than over traditional phone lines. Some telecommunications executives have argued that they should be able to prioritize information from sources paying higher fees or serving higher purposes. A prioritized system, which would create an Internet fast lane for higher-paying content providers, would help fund network improvements, according to Internet service providers. Net neutrality opponents, including President Bill Clinton's former press secretary Mike McCurry, also argue that Internet service providers should be able to direct heavy traffic and screen out some material, like viruses and spam. They say some content, like medical information, is more important — and therefore should take priority over — other information. They argue that innovative applications in medicine and other fields will spring from improved services levels guaranteed through higher premiums and government regulation would kill the freedom that has allowed the Internet to flourish. Both sides look to the origins of the Internet and its founders to support their points. In a piece published in The Washington Post, Michael Katz, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and David Farber, a computer science and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University, put it this way: "No one would propose that the US Postal Service not be permitted to offer Express Mail because a "fast lane" mail service is "undemocratic," yet some current proposals would do exactly this for Internet services," they Katx and Farber wrote. "For this reason, foreclosing the emergence of alternative pricing regimes for innovative services would be ill advised." Katz and Farber met with other computer science, economics and law experts at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie-Mellon University, to conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of network neutrality. They concluded that federal agencies should enforce antitrust laws to address problems after they arise. In a speech at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., earlier this year, IP protocol inventor Robert Kahn said net neutrality is a slogan for a mandate that would prevent innovation on the networks. He and other engineers argue that legislation could restrict developments that would improve data delivery and alleviate traffic burdens. Net elder-statesman Vinton Cerf submitted written comments on net neutrality to Congress last year, when he was unable to attend a hearing while he and Kahn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom that day for creating the Internet protocol. "The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design," he wrote. "The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings — from VOIP to 802.11x wi-fi to blogging — that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design. Witty Quote 81 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 82 "Many people will have little or no choice among broadband operators for the foreseeable future, implying that such we move to a broadband environment and eliminate century-old non-discrimination requirements, a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive. Telephone companies cannot tell operators will have the power to exercise a great deal of control over any applications placed on the network," he continued. "As consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online." Google joins Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon.com and World Wide Web inventor Sir Timothy Berners-Lee in promoting network neutrality. The Dynamic Platform Standards Project proposes that Congress clarify the meaning of offering Internet connectivity and set up rules for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce them. "We recommend the prosecution of distorted offerings of Internet connectivity as "deceptive practice," the group explains in a petition." We believe the gut feeling — that one cannot discriminate and still call the service "Internet" — is founded in reality. The very term "Internet" suggests that participants assume their traffic will be passed without interference; the concept is backed up by over thirty years of standards and ISP behavior." The group agrees with Cerf, as well as telecommunications and cable companies, in stating that Congress should be cautious about regulating something that works so well. Measures legislating net neutrality died in Congress last year after heated debate, but proponents managed to stall an entire communications overhaul by tying a net neutrality amendment to the bill. U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who championed the cause, now heads the House committee in charge of the Internet. That committee has begun holding a series of hearings on the digital future of America. Democrats, who supported net neutrality in greater numbers than Republicans did, increased their power during the November elections. They have teamed up with Republicans to reintroduce net neutrality legislation. In the meantime, both sides are lobbying members of Congress and both sides have announced studies that purport to show their recommendations would promote innovation, while the other side's would stifle it. Researchers at the University of Florida's department of decision and information sciences analyzed the issue using game theory. The researchers found that improving the infrastructure would reduce the need to pay for preferential treatment but the incentive for broadband service providers to expand and upgrade would decline if net neutrality ended. Japan and Korea have net neutrality, greater competition among broadband providers, and higher broadband speeds, than the United States, they said The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies announced recently that their model, rooted in "transaction cost" economics, found that network neutrality would prevent cost-saving measures for services like streaming video. They said it could also shift sales from independent content providers to the broadband network's content affiliate, defeating the purpose of anti-competitive rules. "The growing capacity demands of video on the Internet, coupled with the pernicious increase of spam and viruses, threaten an on-line traffic jam," Phoenix Center President Lawrence Spiwak said. "To maximize bandwidth, operators need the flexibility to meet the different needs with different types of services, but many network neutrality proposals mandate rigidity. Such flexibility will likely be crucial for mobile broadband content, where content and applications may need to be customized for particular customer equipment, carriers, and service packages." The FTC recently began workshops on the issue and commissioners have pointed out just how polarized the arguments have been. They are suggesting compromise. One commissioner suggested using language in the AT&T BellSouth merger agreement as a starting point. It states that the companies will continue providing the same level of support in operating the core, or backbone, of the Internet and maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service. The agreement lasts for two years or until Congress passes legislation on network neutrality. Lower levels of government are also jumping into the fray. Last month, Maryland lawmakers introduced legislation that would require broadband providers to report on their offerings. The bill aims to protect net neutrality but could stall because of arguments over whether it threatens protections on federal commerce, according to an article in the National Journal. New York City Council Member Gale Brewer, who heads a local government technology committee, introduced a resolution supporting federal net neutrality legislation. In statements supporting net neutrality as the best path for preserving an affordable, accessible and free Internet, Brewer warned that extra charges could destroy it. She also summed up the one point on which both sides agree: "Competition to provide the best and fastest access to the Internet helps everyone." Witty Quote 82 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 83 AT Stimulus Solved Didn’t bridge the digital divide—key to US broadband leadership Windhausen 9 [Telepoly Consulting President John Windhausen Jr., Funding for High-Speed Broadband Networks in Stimulus Bill May Fall Short, Jan 30 http://blog.thehill.com/2009/01/30/funding-for-high-speed-broadband-networks-in-stimulus-bill-may-fall-short/] Both the House and Senate “stimulus” bills propose funding for high-speed broadband networks. Is such funding necessary? far short of what the country really needs. I recently published a report sponsored by The Century Foundation to make the point that broadband networks provide the foundation for our future. By providing high-speed connections to the Internet, broadband connections improve business productivity, reduce healthcare costs (e.g. through telemedicine), expand educational opportunities (e.g. through distance learning), generate innovate on-line services and applications, reduce pollution (e.g. through telecommuting) and enhance our national security. The problem is that we do not have enough broadband capacity to provide these services to all Americans. The prior Absolutely. In fact, the funding may fall Administration largely deregulated broadband services, relied on the private sector to build them, and resisted calls to adopt a national broadband policy. As a result, most Americans, especially low-income people, rural residents, and minorities, do not have access to high-speed broadband Internet connections today. Admittedly, the cost of digging trenches and putting up wireless antennas is expensive, especially to build the so-called “last mile” connection to the home. The private sector simply cannot raise the capital in today’s restricted financial markets to make these investments. Their commercial caution is our societal loss. Sweden, Japan, Korea, Australia and the European Union have all decided to invest several billion dollars in their broadband infrastructure to expand access to rural and underserved areas. As a result, the U.S. has fallen behind its international rivals in most international broadband rankings. The U.S. now has an important opportunity to provide the “seed” capital needed to catch up to, and perhaps leapfrog, the competition. Providing a significant government investment in the construction of these networks will generate thousands of jobs, directly through the construction and maintenance of these networks and indirectly through the resulting economic growth. Furthermore, an upfront investment would not lock the Government into long-term subsidies. The U.S. government would not own these networks; it would just provide the initial capital and turn the network over to the private sector or, in some cases, municipalities. Funding can be awarded through a competitive grant process to encourage efficiency and avoid duplication. Recipients of funding should be required to demonstrate how the funds were used and should maintain open networks and affordable rates, so that all Americans may use these networks for lawful purposes. The Senate ($9 billion) and House ($6 billion) both propose modest amounts of funding, but much more may be needed. According to some estimates, it will cost $100 billion to bring high-speed broadband to every home and business. Providing less than one-tenth of that amount (as in the current bills) will likely start, but not finish, the process. Congress should instead appropriate $33 Billion to make sure that broadband networks are built to every community and meet the needs of ALL Americans. Witty Quote 83 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 84 T Social Services [1/2] 1. We meet—[ ] 2. We meet—Broadband access is a social service HSE 8 [Health & Safety Executive, “Horizon Scanning – Pervasive computing” 12/5/09, http://www.hse.gov.uk/horizons/computing.htm] This describes the concept of embedding or integrating computers into the environment with a view to enabling people to interact with them in a more “natural” way. Also referred to amongst other descriptions as “ubiquitous computing” or “ambient intelligence”, current examples include the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and GPS systems in vehicles. Wireless networking technology (WiFi) is a key enabler for many of the applications and there is a growing trend towards greater connectivity through the use of broadband. For example in Philadelphia, “officials view broadband as an essential social service ” and plan to introduce web access for all their citizens via a city-wide wireless network by the end of 2006. 3. C/I—Social services include telecommunications UNESCO 2k [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_c/mod13/www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/modules/glossary.htm] Social services: Services generally provided by the government that help improve people's standard of living; examples are public hospitals and clinics, good roads, clean water supply, garbage collection, electricity, and telecommunications. 4. C/I—social services must be means-tested—plan does this Unicom 8 [“$1 A MONTH TELEPHONE SERVICES Discounted Service for Low-Income Consumers,” http://www.unicomalaska.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=131&Itemid=224] The Low-Income programs provide discounts on telephone installation and monthly telephone service to qualifying consumers. Current information and guidelines are also available at www.lifelinesupport.org. There are two programs available to qualified low-income consumers: Lifeline - The federal Lifeline Program gives income-eligible consumers landline or wireless line service purchased from an authorized landline or wireless service provider. Link-Up - The federal Link-Up Program covers a portion of new consumers and allows consumers to finance connection or activation fees on consumer. a discount on monthly charges for basic local service installation or activation fees for eligible How do I know if I am eligible? To be eligible of these programs, you must meet the following criteria: The applicant must reside at a location for which residential telephone or wireless service is available from United Utilities, Inc., United-KUC, Inc., or Unicom, Inc. Lifeline wireless service is available in Bethel only. The applicant must be the subscriber and the subscriber(s) applying for discounts must sign the local telephone application or the wireless application for service. The assistance applies to only one single-line residential local telephone service or residential wireless service (Bethel only), at the subscriber's principal residence. Only one Lifeline service line per household is allowed. The applicant must meet the eligibility requirements established by the Federal Communications Commission and the Regulatory Commission of Alaska (see Part A and Part B below). The applicant will self certify to complete Part A. To complete Part B, the applicant must supply the requested documentation showing that his/her household income is at or below 135 percent or the current official Federal Poverty Income Guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The current guidelines in Part B are also available at http://www.universalservice.org/li/low-income/eligibility/federal-criteria.aspx. The applicant must advise United Utilities, Inc./United-KUC. When public assistance benefits have terminated or if income exceeds 135 percent of the current official Federal Poverty Income Guidelines. Part A. Eligible Federal or State Programs: - Alaska Adult Public Assistance Program (APA) - Alaska Temporary Assistance Program (ATAP) - Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) General Assistance - Federal Public Housing Assistance Program - Federal Stamp Program - Head Start (complete income qualifying standards-Part B) - Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) - Medicaid Program - National School Lunch Program - Free Lunch Program only - Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program (Disability) - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF Witty Quote 84 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 85 T Social Services [2/2] - Any other means test social service program administered by state or federal government identity program. 5. That’s a key limit COONTZ ET AL 99 [American families By Stephanie Coontz, Maya Parson, Gabrielle Raley Author Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.] 6. Precision—only our evidence defines social services contextually as a mass-noun. Means-testing is the federal determinate of what a social service is 7. Functional limits solve—err aff on T b/c the topic is so neg biased a. States CP b. Poverty key warrants c. Sustainable advantage areas 8. We’re reasonable—competing interpretations overincentivizes going for T and cause a race to the bottom. Witty Quote 85 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 86 T Means Tested Evidence We’re means tested. Suck it OUCC 9 [Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor “Lifeline / Link-Up Telephone Assistance,” 3/5, http://www.in.gov/oucc/2383.htm] Consumers enrolled in one or more of the following assistance programs may qualify for Lifeline and Link-Up benefits: Medicaid Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) Food Stamps National School Free Lunch Program Federal Public Housing Assistance or Section 8 A consumer also qualifies for Lifeline/Link-Up if his or her household income is at or below 135% of the federal poverty guidelines. Information regarding the poverty guidelines is available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at http://www.hhs.gov/ or 1-877696-6775. Witty Quote 86 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 87 T Persons In Poverty LifeLine is for low-income people Benton Foundation 8 [“Enhancing Awareness of Lifeline/Link-Up,” Feb 20 http://www.benton.org/node/210] On July 25, 2005, a nationwide initiative "Lifeline Across America" was launched to enhance consumer awareness of federal and state Lifeline and Link-Up programs. The initiative includes the formation of a joint Working Group to develop best practices and outreach materials to support Lifeline and Link-Up services. On Wednesday the FCC named the members of the Working Group and advised the public of the opportunity to provide input to the Working Group. Over the next several months, the Working Group will gather input to support the development of best practices to ensure the eligible consumers are aware of Lifeline and Link-Up and develop outreach and training materials. Parties interested in providing input to the Working Group may contact a member of the Working Group, or alternatively, may provide input or arrange to provide input by sending an email to lifeline@fcc.gov. Lifeline and Link-Up are low-income support mechanisms, which ensure that quality telecommunications services are available to low-income consumers at just, reasonable, and affordable rates. Since its inception, Lifeline/Link-Up has provided support for telephone service to millions of low-income consumers. These programs provide for discounts to low-income households for both the initial installation of phone service (Link-Up) and monthly phone bills (Lifeline). National statistics, however, reveal that citizens who qualify for Lifeline and Link-Up may not be aware of the benefits of the programs. Witty Quote 87 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 88 AT Don’t Target CP Targeting key—cp alone doesn’t address the divide Ramsey 8 [Rey Ramsey CEO One Economy, “UNIVERSAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE,” CQ Congressional Testimony, June 24, 2008, Lexis] These opportunities to improve health, education, and economic livelihood in low-income communities demonstrate that while universal access is an important goal, it is only a starting point. Our experience has shown that additional steps--efforts that are less about a specific technology and more about education and creating a culture of use--are needed to ensure that the benefits of the Digital Age are reaching the communities that need them most. CP doesn’t solve Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] Subsidies alone may only play a small role in closing the digital divide. Policymakers should therefore work to support programs — particularly work to improve digital literacy and increase exposure to emerging technologies. Efforts targeting low-income families with children should be a top priority. But the most effective policies may be those that those at a community level — that increase marketplace competition, which in turn would lead to lower prices and greater adoption among all populations. Witty Quote 88 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 89 AT Competitiveness Adv CPs Broadband is THE ONLY WAY. EVERY part of economic infrastructure is dependent on it Scott & Turner 9 [Ben Scott, Policy Director, Derek Turner, Research Director of Free Press, “In the Matter of A National Broadband Plan for Our Future,” June 8 http://www.freepress.net/files/FP_National_broadband_plan.pdf] Congress and the Obama administration have already moved well down the path of broadband policy as infrastructure policy. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) explicitly directs multiple agencies to address broadband networks as infrastructure. We can see this in the commitment of $7.2 billion in direct investment programs for broadband infrastructure. But we can see it throughout many other areas of the recovery package as well -- as an assumption that lies beneath several programs that received tens of billions of dollars. Many of these investments rely upon a robust, ubiquitous broadband infrastructure to be effective -- including the initiatives in health-related information technology, improvements in education, smart-grids and next generation energy policy, as well as programs to promote civic engagement and streamline government services. Just as transportation networks are central to economic growth, so are broadband networks -- the infrastructure of our information society. Consequently, the FCC must take the mandate provided by the Recovery Act to chart a course that reflects these priorities and expectations. Failure to do so will prove disastrous not only for broadband markets, but for the success of all of the initiatives that depend upon these underlying networks. What does it mean to make the shift from viewing broadband as a commercial service to a critical infrastructure? It means primarily that the statutory goal ofmaximizing the public interest now includes not simply what is best for a single market for commercial services in Internet It may well necessitate a more comprehensive role for government to ensure that commercial market failures do not result in weakening the nation’s economic foundations. It means access policy is aggressive commitment to universal service at affordable rates and comparable speeds. It means the access, but what is best for the country. reinvigoration of a competition policy that can generate market forces that work in tandem with government policy to achieve the best outcome for our broadband infrastructure. And it means a commitment to open architecture in broadband networks such that all applications and services from across the sectors that rely upon this common infrastructure are available, interoperable, and operational on the network without the interference from the parochial commercial interests of various network owners. With this frame in mind, in these comments we undertake an analysis of the U.S. broadband and Internet access market, with an eye on the FCC and Congressional policies that lead us to where we are today. From this analysis we can trace a path of promise turned to peril. We find that the Commission over the past decade has been on a reckless and mindless deregulatory path, eager to toss aside successful policy frameworks, consumer protections, pro- competition rules, and Congressional directives -- all in the name of the “free market.” This path, which indicates a shocking indifference to the plight of Consumers on the part of the Commission, has taken this country from a global leader to global follower in the communications market, and has jeopardized our economic and social growth. The blame for the failure to bring the benefits of the Internet to all Americans falls squarely on the shoulders of the Federal Communications Commission. With the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Congress gave the FCC a blueprint for achieving universal access, openness and competition. But the FCC quickly abandoned this “mission accomplished” on the goal of competition before the mission had even begun. It dismantled the basic legal framework responsible for creating the open Internet and left nothing in its place but thin assurances that what once was would always be. And as the digital divide grew wider, the FCC sat idle. path. It chose to follow the wishes of the industries it regulates rather than the deliberative judgment of our elected representatives. It declared Witty Quote 89 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 90 AT Low Income Not Key Low income people are the LYNCHPIN Scott & Turner 9 [Ben Scott, Policy Director, Derek Turner, Research Director of Free Press, “In the Matter of A National Broadband Plan for Our Future,” June 8 http://www.freepress.net/files/FP_National_broadband_plan.pdf] The national broadband plan must also address the most difficult issue plaguing our country’s broadband markets -- the fact that 50 million low-income Americans still lack access to this essential technology. FCC policy can play a role in bridging this divide, for example, by extending the Lifeline/Linkup low-income program to broadband and by expanding the “e-rate” program to ensure American students receive the benefits of broadband both in school and at home. Witty Quote 90 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 91 Politics—Plan Partisan Broadband is highly contentious and destructively partisan Atkinson 8 [Robert D., president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation “Time for a Post-Partisan Broadband Debate,” Sept 08, http://www.itif.org/files/Post-PartisanBroadbandDebate.pdf] Whatever one thinks about either presidential candidate this year, one thing is striking; they both are talking about the importance of ending the bitter and destructive partisan battles in Washington. Regardless of who wins in November, there is no better place to start this task than with broadband policy, for the current broadband debate has degenerated into a highly partisan, ideological, and bitter battle increasingly devoid of real analysis and lacking in any measure of civility. To say the least, this is certainly troubling, for it’s extremely difficult to make good public policy in an environment like this. This partisan debate plays itself out in at least four areas: Witty Quote 91 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 92 Politics—GOP Hate the Plan GOP hate the plan Anderson 9 [Nate, “Republicans, wireless companies object to broadband package,” 1/22, http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/republicanswireless-companies-object-to-broadband-package.ars] Republican leaders in the House aren't thrilled with the $6 billion broadband stimulus package currently being debated. Joe Barton (R-TX) is the ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and he set the tone at today's bill markup hearing by saying, "I wish I could say I was looking forward to it." He's definitely not looking forward to it, complaining that the process is moving too quickly to make good law; the committee has only a single day to markup the broadband, energy, and health care portions of the bill. "That’s because the speaker wants the entire stimulus package on the House floor next week," Barton continued. "We all understand that if we don't accommodate her timetable, she'll yank the bill away and handle it herself, and the decline of our committee's status and influence will accelerate." Despite his unhappiness with the process, Barton did muster up a host of specific complaints, pledging to do what he could to make the bill better in the limited time provided. When it controversial provisions on network neutrality, open access, minimum speeds, and build-out requirements" are not bipartisan and should therefore be scrapped in their entirety. comes to broadband, Barton wants a fully bipartisan proposal and says that " Witty Quote 92 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 93 Politics—McConnell Link [1/2] McConnell backlashes Dannen 9 [Chris, Fast Company, Feb 6 “Which Senators Are Fighting Broadband Funding?,” http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chrisdannen/techwatch/which-senators-are-fighting-broadband-funding] As the President's stimulus package approaches $1 trillion, the Senate is looking to cut the fat. In the senators' sights: about $6 billion in funding for expanded broadband access, much of it for wireless access in rural areas, among $90 billion of total cuts (as of Thursday night). Depending on your political allegiances, here are the people to whom you can direct your letters of fury, or your calls of thanks, for trying to cut out Internet access as a priority in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hasn't decried broadband funding specifically, but he said yesterday he and his Republican contingent would fight against “an aimless spending spree that masks as a stimulus.” The Kentucky senator supported an amendment to the bill that was heard earlier this week, which replaced a substantial block of spending programs with expanded tax cuts. Convinced that only consumer spending--not federal--can serve as a workable economic stimulus, the Senate minority leader has set the tone of resistance adopted by many of his party-mates. He’s key to CTBT Isaacs 9 [Executive Director of the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation where his work focuses on national security issues in Congress “A strategy for achieving Senate approval of the CTBT,” Apiril 15 http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/strategy-achieving-senate-approval-of-the-ctbt] Today, Biden again will be in a pivotal position to win approval of a controversial treaty. This time, to secure enough votes for passage of the CTBT, he will need to sit down and work out an arrangement with Kyl and Sessions, House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and other key Republicans such as McCain and Lugar. What compromises and agreements will be necessary are anybody's guess. But the key will likely not be facts or persuasive arguments, but rather a painstakingly and carefully negotiated deal. And, he’s key to the overall agenda and hates the plan Cheves 6 [By John Cheves, HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER, “Senator's pet issue: money and the power it buys,” http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t65150.html] McConnell's rise to the top of Congress is testament to the power of money in modern politics. He has raised nearly $220 million over his Senate career; he spent the majority not on his own campaigns but on those of his GOP colleagues, who have rewarded him with power. "He's completely dogged in his pursuit of money. That's his great love, above everything else," said Marshall Whitman, who watched McConnell as an aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and as a Christian Coalition lobbyist. A leader in the field of tapping the wealthy for campaign cash, McConnell also led the opposition against efforts to rein in such donations through campaign-finance reform -- a fight that has taken him to the U.S. Supreme Court and put him toe-to-toe against another emerging Republican leader, presidential hopeful McCain. A six-month examination of McConnell's career, based on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, shows the nexus between his actions and his donors' He pushes the government to help cigarette makers, Las Vegas casinos, the pharmaceutical industry, credit card lenders, coal mine owners and others. Critics, including anti-poverty groups and labor unions, complain that McConnell has come to represent his affluent donors at the expense of Kentucky, the relatively poor state he is supposed to represent. They point, for agendas. example, to his support last year for a tough bankruptcy law, backed by New York banks that support him. McConnell waves away all criticism of his fund-raising. In a recent interview, he said he never allows money to influence him. His donors support him because they like his pro-business, conservative philosophy, he said, so it's hardly proof of corruption when he does what they want. Supporters say, furthermore, that Kentucky benefits from having McConnell at the top, regardless of criticism over how he got there. McConnell uses his clout to steer millions of dollars to projects back home, said Steven Law, the senator's former fund-raising aide, now top deputy to McConnell's wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Once he secured his own Senate seat, McConnell skillfully forwarded money to GOP senators who needed it, building a path to what he truly wanted -- the No. 1 job. McConnell is hardly alone in his quest for cash. Money cascades into politics these days. Senate races burned through $543 million in 2004, up nearly 50 percent from the previous election cycle. And although some argue that the power of political money can be corrupting -- witness this year's imprisonment of former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., for bribery -- McConnell has raised his millions without any evidence of improper personal benefit. Witty Quote 93 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 94 Politics—McConnell Link [2/2] But someone who can raise more than $90 million for his allies -- as McConnell did twice, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- is golden when it comes time for GOP senators to elect a majority leader. That's not counting the millions McConnell sends to GOP colleagues from his own political-action committee and campaign fund. Some senators shy away from fund-raising duties because of ethical concerns. Top donors tell senators what they want from upcoming votes, and top donors get special treatment, said retired Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo. Their calls to Senate offices are returned first, Simpson said, and their wishes are a priority when action is taken. "I didn't enjoy it at all," Simpson said. "I just felt uncomfortable." Yet McConnell never blinks, Simpson said. "When he asked for money, his eyes would shine like diamonds," Simpson said. "He obviously loved it." McConnell denied that he's more devoted to money than anyone else "in my line of work." "Building up your finances so you can amplify your voice is critical to any successful political activity," McConnell said. "It's a central part of the process." Still, the symbiosis between McConnell and his donors raises questions about who's really in charge. 'A choking sensation' Take his longtime friendship with cigarette-maker lobbyists, revealed in hundreds of corporate documents made public during litigation. Records suggest a close working relationship behind the scenes. They instructed him on smoking-related legislation. He offered to amend bills on the Senate floor at their direction. During the 1990s, when he attacked the Food and Drug Administration for its anti-smoking efforts, he followed talking points they fed him. Their attorneys helped draft a bill he filed to protect their companies from lawsuits, as well as his correspondence to the White House to oppose federal smoking-prevention programs. In turn, they gave him gifts, including Washington Redskins football tickets and many thousands of dollars in speaking fees to supplement his Senate salary. They paid for their own voter polls in his 1996 Senate race, to monitor his progress. But their real support -- millions of dollars in donations -- came between important Senate votes. The lobbyists assured him: "We will provide maximum help very early." In 1998, McConnell helped to kill a proposal to curb youth smoking. About four months later, he called lobbyists at R.J. Reynolds Co. and asked for $200,000 in corporate "soft money" that he could pass to Republican senators in elections. In an e-mail exchange, the lobbyists settled on "doing an additional 100,000 to him immediately and then seeing what we have left at end of next week." The $200,000 was more than their company could swallow at once. "Are you feeling a choking sensation?" Tommy Payne, vice president of external relations, asked John Fish, senior director of federal government affairs, in the final email. Three months later, rival Philip Morris Cos. sent McConnell $150,000 to distribute to GOP Senate campaigns and $100,000 for his pet non-profit program, the McConnell Center for Political Leadership at the University of Louisville, according to industry and college documents. McConnell helps people who help him, inside and outside Kentucky. Consider Guardsmark, a Memphis, Tenn., security firm with clients nationwide. Guardsmark founder Ira Lipman and his employees have given more than $66,000 to McConnell's campaigns. McConnell has described Lipman as a friend whom he calls to arrange Tennessee fund-raisers. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, demand for private security boomed. Lipman thought it would be useful for his employees to have access to the FBI fingerprint database, then available only to law-enforcement agencies. McConnell co-sponsored the necessary legislation. "Today our nation is on its way to becoming safer and more secure," Lipman said in a press release after President Bush signed the bill into law in 2004. And Lipman credited McConnell. The Inner Circle Unlike other senators, McConnell, 64, typically avoids the mass fund-raising that brings small donations of less than $200 from working-class Americans through direct mail, phone banks and the Internet. His donors are likely to start at $1,000. He favors intimate receptions where he can offer them his full attention, leaning in to listen, saying little, holding a glass of wine without paying much attention to it. His Rolodex is one of the best . He is president of the century-old Alfalfa Club, which gathers the nation's richest and most powerful on the birthday of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, for cocktails and filet mignon. McConnell seldom opens his own wallet. In the past decade, he has given only $10,000 of his personal funds for campaign donations. Asked to explain that, he pleaded poverty. In his view, it's wealthier people who support campaigns. "I don't have a whole lot of money to contribute," said McConnell, whose Senate salary is $165,200, and who has homes in Louisville and Washington -- the latter a handsome Capitol Hill townhouse assessed at $1.3 million. McConnell's invitations to the wealthy to become lifetime members of the "Senate Republican Inner Circle" ($15,000 for life or $2,000 a year) guarantee private dinners and valuable briefings with "the men who are shaping the Senate agenda," including himself, caucus leaders and committee chairmen. "Americans are big on rewards these days. Financial rewards in the stock market -- cash rewards on your credit cards -- luxurious rewards in the travel industry," McConnell wrote in one invitation. "But a special group of Americans is experiencing one of the greatest reward programs ever, because they took the initiative to become a Life Member of the Inner Circle." Those rewards are greatly anticipated by corporate leaders who want a say in Senate decisions. After the Inner Circle welcomed Geoffrey Bible, chief executive at Philip Morris, he sent a copy of the announcement to his aides. "So now I'm in," Bible wrote in the margin. "See if we can make the most of it." In an interview, McConnell said his invitations exaggerate the intimacy at some events in order to get people to write him a check. A major GOP Senate fund-raiser can draw 1,000 people, he said. No donor ever uses social time with senators to influence Senate business, he said. "They want their picture taken with you; that's all it amounts to," he said. As McConnell's influence grows, so does the value of his company. Witty Quote 94 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 95 Politics—Plan Bipartisan Universal service is bipartisan Rockefeller 7 [By Senator Jay Rockefeller of W. VA, “Floor Statement: Antideficiency Act,” Feb 15, http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=283892&] Mr. President, today I join with my colleagues, Senator OLYMPIA SNOWE and Vice-Chairman TED STEVENS, to re-introduce the Antideficiency Act to protect the Universal Service Program. This is a bipartisan effort to ensure that all of the fundamental universal service program can continue to operate smoothly and effectively. Last year, this legislation garnered the support of 55 members, and I hope that it will gain additional support in the 110th Congress. It is also important to note that the House also has a similar bipartisan legislation. LifeLine is bipart Newman 3 [ABRAHAM, Prof Political Science @ UCBerk, “When Opportunity Knocks: Economic Liberalisation and Stealth Welfare in the United States,” Jnl Soc. Pol., 32, 2, 179–197, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=148278&jid=JSP&volumeId=32&issueId=02&aid=148277] The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was essential in the transformation of Lifeline from a residual program to a significant social policy. The 1996 Act attempted to infuse competition in to the local telephone market. The process of deregulation once again created an opportunity point for interest groups to redefine universal service. Rallying around the threat of increased prices, the AARP and CFA found new allies in urban, rural, and middle-class constituentsthatsawanimportantopportunitytoexpandtheprogram’sbenefits. An interesting coalition formed between rural Republicans and urban liberals making possible broad expansion of universal service to new populations and new types of telecommunications services. Urban liberals saw the chance to increase the income-testing caps of Life line to win benefits for low-middle-class urban workers and urban schools. Rural Republicans sought the roll-out of advanced technologies to low-population-density areas that they feared would be left out of an overly market driven telecommunications market. Witty Quote 95 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 96 Politics—Plan Bipartisan Bipartisan support Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] But this story actually begins long before the 1996 Act came into being. It begins nearly half a century ago, during a time when the network computing industry was in its infancy and the nation’s communications market was still a government-sanctioned monopoly. In the 1960s, the Federal Communications Commission began to craft a regulatory structure that would allow the Internet to grow and thrive as an open and competitive communications platform. The FCC established a bold series of safeguards through the so-called Computer Inquiries that would protect competition on the Internet from the monopoly whims of the phone companies that owned and controlled the Internet’s infrastructure. This regulatory structure was remarkably successful and became the foundation of the 1996 Act’s procompetition legal framework.5 Not only was this structure successful, it had broad bipartisan support . From the 1960s through 1996, Democratic and Republican administrations alike replaced policies of regulated monopoly with policies of competition in market after market. The Reagan administration, with a Democratic Congress, broke up AT&T to increase competition in longdistance, device and computer markets. The Clinton administration worked with a Republican Congress to increase competition in local networks. Both parties shared the principle that meaningful competition — not regulated monopolies or unregulated market concentration — best serves innovation and consumer freedom. In 2001, however, without congressional approval, President George W. Bush’s administration unilaterally reversed course and abandoned this core bipartisan principle. For a brief period in the late 1990s, following the first efforts to implement the 1996 Act, the law appeared to be working. Local and long-distance competition increased and monthly charges began to fall. Dial-up Internet went from a novelty to being available to almost every American household. Even those in remote rural areas had access to multiple, highly competitive Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by the end of the decade.6 The number of ISPs more than doubled in the few short years after the Act became law.7 And the United States was an early global leader in broadband deployment, with new startup companies like Earthlink, @Home Network and Covad bringing broadband into the living rooms of ordinary Americans. Witty Quote 96 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 97 Politics—Plan Bipartisan Plan popular—07 Farm Bill proves GovTech 8 [“Broadband Legislation Would Provide Economic Stimulus of $134 Billion Annually, Says Report,” Feb 21 http://www.govtech.com/gt/265318] In 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass such legislation, and the U.S. Senate passed a similar proposal as part of a renewal of the Farm Bill. The Senate and the House are working to complete negotiations on the Farm Bill, including rural development and broadband elements, this month. However, in the result of a broadband stalemate during Farm Bill discussions, the country's unserved areas would likely see little help in the near term. "Connected Nation provides convincing evidence that the benefits of broadband adoption spill over to society as a whole," said Dr. Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. "Moreover, the report rightly concludes that public policies to spur broadband are critical to ensure the best possible broadband future for the United States." Witty Quote 97 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 98 Politics—Plan Popular (Telecomm) Telecomm loves the plan AT&T et al 8 [“Telcos: Use USF, Not Free Broadband Plan, to Address Digital Divide,” Dec 11, http://www.benton.org/node/19794] AT&T leads a list of group of eighteen telecommunications companies and organizations that wrote the Federal Communications Commission in support of using existing Lifeline and Link Up universal service programs to make broadband access more affordable for low income households. They contrast this proposal with the FCC Chairman Martin's proposal to auction of some spectrum will a requirement to provide nationwide, free, wireless broadband. That proposal, they write, "would not be meanstested or in any way limited to low-income users, and in fact would impose substantial up-front equipment costs on end-users." They’re key Labaton 2k [Stephen, “Communications Lobby Puts Full-Court Press on Congress,” Oct 23, http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/LIS/archive/barbecue/24LOBB.html] As Congress nears adjournment, some of the nation's most powerful corporations have enlisted important lawmakers to tuck provisions into spending bills that could reshape the balance of power among telephone companies, Internet companies, broadcasters and cable operators. The measures would relax restrictions that have made it impossible for AT&T to expand further in the cable industry. They would save the regional Bell companies billions paid to local carriers that some rivals and groups say would be shifted to Internet users. And they would kill a plan to create hundreds of new low- power FM stations for churches, schools and community groups. It is, of course, unknown which provisions will survive the horse- trading, but if some are adopted, the legislation would be among the most important for the telecommunications industry since a landmark measure that began deregulation four years ago. While it has become a fall tradition for special interests to extract favors from Congress in a session's final days, some officials, consumer groups and lawmakers expressed alarm at the unusually large number of "riders" — narrowly focused attachments to broad spending bills. Lawmakers sponsoring the measures defended the practice, saying that Congress had failed to have them adopted in other bills and that there was a need to have the issues addressed. Although some riders have received the support of a committee or a chamber of Congress, supporters feared that by themselves they might be rejected by the White House, and they therefore stand a better chance of becoming law attached to spending bills. "One of the reasons for accomplishing these items in riders is that they have a chance of surviving in the end because the bills they are on may not be vetoed," said Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who is hoping that two measures he has supported — killing the FM proposal and changing the Bell access charges — are attached to the spending bills. "As a stand- alone proposition, they might be the subject of a veto. These are issues that begged to get settled as rapidly as possible." The White House has publicly criticized two riders, saying it opposed an attempt to kill the low- power FM plan and another that would kill Deutsche Telekom's proposed acquisition of Voice Stream. But officials have not expressed their views on many of the other riders. Mr. Tauzin, likely to be the next head of the Commerce Committee if Republicans retain control of the House, said the process was so secretive, involving the Congressional leadership and the leaders of the appropriations committees, that he did not even know what riders the House and Senate negotiators planned to attach, or what they would look like. Some officials and consumer groups criticized a legislative process that they said leaves the public in the dark over so many important issues, and that is so beholden to campaign contributions. "This is the special interest money grab," said Gene Kimmelman, co- director of the Washington office of Consumers Union, which has waged a last-ditch effort to get the riders killed. "It is AT&T seeking to protect its cable profits and not be forced to divest. It's the Bell telephone companies seeking millions of dollars from Internet providers and their customers who use the Internet . It's the broadcasters trying to block community radio stations to enhance their dominant position in the market. And it's cable companies seeking taxpayer support to provide local channels in the communities that they are already supposed to wire." William E. Kennard, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said that in his seven years at the agency, he had never seen so many riders still in play this late in the session. "This is a process where lots of work gets done in the dead of night in the back rooms and in many cases, on issues that have already been resolved on the basis of a full and public record," Mr. Kennard said. "At appropriations time, lobbyists work like ninjas, doing their work under cover of darkness. At the end of the legislative season, there is no time when special interest money is so powerful." Witty Quote 98 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 99 Politics—AT Tech Lobby Turn Tech lobby has no power or influence The Hill 9 [By Kevin Bogardus, Tech lobby ramps up battle against Obama tax proposal, June 8, http://thehill.com/business--lobby/tech-lobby-ramps-upbattle--against-obama-tax-proposal-2009-06-08.html] But despite a good relationship with Democrats, lobbyists for the tech industry have lost similar battles over taxes in the recent past. They unsuccessfully lobbied for a tax break on overseas earnings generated by companies coming back into the United States. They argued that the tax break, called repatriation, would stimulate the economy. Senators tried to attach the repatriation tax break to the stimulus package, but the Witty Quote amendment failed on a 42-55 vote. 99 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 100 NEGATIVE Witty Quote 100 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 101 SQ Solves Poor people are getting broadband—SQ solves Aun 7 [Fred, “Study: As Broadband Adoption Slows, Lower-Income and Rural Users Grow,” Jul 3, http://www.clickz.com/3626330] The rate of high-speed Internet adoption in American homes declined dramatically during the past year. But a new survey shows strong broadband adoption growth among blacks, low-income households, rural residents, and people who have not graduated from college. The research, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that 47 percent of Americans now have broadband in their houses. That's 5 percent more than Pew found in 2006 and represents a growth rate of 12 percent. While that's a healthy rate, it pales in comparison to growth between 2005 and 2006, when Pew found a 40 percent increase in the number of homes connected to cable, DSL or other broadband networks. In early 2005, only 30 percent of American homes were broadband-enabled, said Pew. The latest survey, conducted in February, found that 40 percent of African American homes are now connecting at high-speed, an 8 percent increase over 2006. "Since 2005, the percentage of African American adults with a home broadband connection has nearly tripled, from 14 percent in early 2005 to 40 in early 2007," says the report. It also found that 31 percent of homes in rural America now use broadband, 6 percent more than last year. The survey found a 9 percent increase in broadband adoption in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000. Thirty percent of those homes now have high-speed Internet access, according to Pew. "There is, from '06 to '07, fairly moderate growth, but you do have some segments showing fairly strong growth, particularly lower income households," said Pew Associate Director of Research John Horrigan, the report's author. "It might not be a red letter day for advertisers when one of the growth segments is low-income. But as a friend of mine says, `It's not that poor people don't have money. They just don't hold onto it.' So there is an opportunity to reach other segments of the population who do have some spending power." Additionally, Pew found a 24 percent rate of adoption growth among people with less than a high school education and a 23 percent rate among those who attended college but haven't graduated. The survey found that, of all the homes reporting Internet access, 70 percent said they were doing so via broadband. Horrigan said the fact that nearly half of all American homes are now using broadband could explain the recently-declining rate of adoption, since the "low-hanging fruit" was picked in prior years. Low rates of broadband adoption growth (less than 3 percent) were found among households with incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, among senior citizens and among people between the ages of 50 and 64. Witty Quote 101 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 102 SQ Solves SQ solves—digital divide no longer exists PR Newswire 7 [“New Study Funded by U.S. Department of Education Shows Digital Divide Is No Longer as Prevalent,” October 23, 2007, Lexis] research funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement and conducted by the Michael Cohen Group LLC, under the auspices reveals that many children from low income families now have access to a variety of technology to help aid in learning. Specifically, nearly 75 percent of caregivers at the federal poverty level (annual household income of less than $25,000) report they subscribe to cable television, two-thirds have DVD players, more than half have mobile telephones, more than onethird have computers and more than one-quarter have home access to the Internet. Most notably, while television took nearly three decades to become universal, nearly 40 percent of low income families now have computers and almost a third have Internet access at home in just the last five to seven years. This new research suggests that given the proliferation of media across the socioeconomic spectrum, although significant differences do exist by income level, a stark digital divide no longer captures the relationship between income and technology ownership and that technology is integrated into children's lives, regardless of their families' income. New of a grant to the Ready to Learn Partnership (RTLP), Widespread internet and computer access in poor communities now PR Newswire 7 [“New Study Funded by U.S. Department of Education Shows Digital Divide Is No Longer as Prevalent,” October 23, 2007, Lexis] The majority of computer owners have Internet access at home, with little variation by income -- meaning, home computer ownership tends to equate with home online access, regardless of income . Ninety-three percent of online households with income levels of $75,000 and higher have high speed access, compared to 65 percent of households with an income of $25 - $75,000 and 58 percent of households at $25,000 or less. About 65 percent of the children who use the home computer go online. About one-third (36 percent) of kids ages five and younger who use computers have spent time online, while 75 percent of six- to eight-year-old children go online while using their home computer. And, mobile phone use is skyrocketing in poor households PR Newswire 7 [“New Study Funded by U.S. Department of Education Shows Digital Divide Is No Longer as Prevalent,” October 23, 2007, Lexis] Eighty-six percent of mobile telephone owners say they frequently use their mobile phones to make and receive calls, compared with 19 percent who use them frequently to send and receive text messages, 12 percent who use them frequently to take and store photographs and six percent who use them frequently to read or send email. As with computer and Internet usage, lower-income caregivers are less likely to own the technology, but if they own a mobile telephone, they use it in ways that are quite similar to the rest of the population. As with computers, the ability to use a mobile phone among children is strongly correlated with age. While virtually no two- and three-year-olds have ever used a mobile phone, this increases to 12 percent of four-year-olds, 29 percent of five-year-olds and 39 percent of six-year-olds. Mobile phone use is much more common among seven- and eight-year-old children (66 percent and 70 percent, respectively). About The Department of Education Survey As part of the RTLP's Ready to Learn grant with the U.S. Department of Education, the Michael Cohen Group, LLC conducted a national telephone survey of 1,601 parents of caregivers of children ages two to eight from September to October 2006. Half of the interviews focused on caregivers with annual household incomes at or below the federal poverty level. About the Ready to Learn Partnership The RTLP is a unique, forward thinking coalition of public and private sector professionals dedicated to leveraging federal funds with for-profit and not-for-profit resources to create highly engaging media products and sustainable outreach services designed to develop young children's emergent literacy pre-reading and reading skills, with a primary emphasis on serving the needs of children from low income families. Further information can be found at http://www.rtlp.org/ . About Michael Cohen Group, LLC The Michael Cohen Group, LLC, (MCG) is internationally recognized as a leader in evaluation and innovative education, market, public opinion, media research. MCG specializes in conducting studies with children and youth, their teachers and their families in order to understand all social and psychic dimensions of young peoples' lives -- as students, family members, peers and consumers. MCG evaluators, representing a variety of disciplines including education, child development and media have earned the trust of clients such as The College Board, Sesame Workshop, PBS, Disney, Nickelodeon, Girls Scouts of America USA, The European Commission, The World Bank and the U.S. Department of Education. Further information can be found at http://www.mcgrc.com/ . "The contents of this press release were developed under a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government." Witty Quote 102 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 103 LifeLine/LinkUp Fails No solvency—plan only affects 15% Turner 9 [S. Derek Turner is the research director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), a national, nonpartisan media policy group, Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a NaTioNal BroadBaNd STraTegy,” http://www.freepress.net/files/Dismantling_Digital_Deregulation.pdf] So what is the likely response to a low-income broadband subsidy, and will the take-rate be lower or higher than the current Lifeline subsidy for telephone service? Also, how large should the subsidy be to encourage the highest level of participation at the lowest cost? To answer the latter question, we must start with an estimate of the current effective subsidy level for Lifeline telephone service. The average total monthly Lifeline support in 2007 was $11.23, while the average monthly basic local residential telephone rate was $24.80.305 Thus, the effective Lifeline subsidy is approximately 45 percent. The current average monthly cost of broadband service is approximately $35. Thus, a 45 percent subsidy would be $15.75. We will base our estimates on a $15 monthly use subsidy, as we feel that a higher subsidy will not produce appreciably higher levels of participation, but will only increase the overall size of the program. Based on current data, the take-rates for a broadband Lifeline subsidy can be expected to be below that of the telephone subsidy. First, it is unlikely that the program would fully subsidize the cost of a broadband Internet access device, reducing potential program participation. Second, the overall demand for broadband among low-income households, and the perceived value of broadband, is not as strong as it is for basic telephone connectivity. Third, the various factors that keep participation low in the telephone Lifeline program (awareness, transient nature of the population, perceived costs of qualifying, etc.) would also affect a broadband subsidy program. Fourth, we expect interest in participating in the broadband program would be low among low-income elderly households, decreasing overall participation. Fifth, it is unlikely that all ETCs will be required to offer broadband Lifeline service, reducing the availability of the program. Participation by qualifying households would thus likely be less than 15 percent. Participation among households that currently have no Internet service will be very low, maybe 10 percent of such homes. Participation by households that currently have dial-up or broadband service can be expected to be somewhat higher, though still quite low. Witty Quote 103 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 104 LifeLine/LinkUp Fails They fail Holt & Jamison 7 [Lynne Holt, University of Florida - Public Utility Research Center, AND, Mark A. Jamison, University of Florida - Warrington College of Business Administration, Public Utility Research Center, “Re-Evaluating FCC Policies Concerning the Lifeline & Link-Up Programs,” Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 393-412, 2007] We examine low participation rates in the Lifeline assistance program in the United States. Lifeline provides a discount to for lowincome households off of their basic telephone service. Despite numerous efforts by regulators and industry to encourage participation, only about 1/3 of the eligible households nationwide participate. We find that lack of awareness, distrust of assistance programs, and stigma play significant roles in discouraging participation. We also find that the most low-income households have telephone service - approximately 90 percent in Florida - despite these low participation rates. We conclude that a more general lowincome assistance program that lets consumers use the subsidy for whatever communications services they most value, might improve participation and would make it more economical for low-income households to migrate to more advanced technologies. Witty Quote 104 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 105 Free Market Solves Free market solves the digital divide Sachs 8 [Jeff, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, “The digital war on poverty,” Aug 21 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/21/digitalmedia.mobilephones] The digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information – through mobile phones, text messaging, and the internet – is now reaching the world's masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society. Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time. The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces. Mobile phone technology is so powerful, and costs so little per unit of data transmission, that it has proved possible to sell mobile phone access to the poor. There are now more than 3.3 billion subscribers in the world, roughly one for every two people on the planet. Moreover, market penetration in poor countries is rising sharply. India has around 300 million subscribers, with subscriptions rising by a stunning eight million or more per month. Brazil now has more than 130 million subscribers, and Indonesia was estimated to reach 120 million. In Africa, which contains the world's poorest countries, the market is soaring, with more than 280 million subscribers. Mobile phones are now ubiquitous in villages as well as cities. If an individual does not have a cell phone, they almost certainly know someone who does. Probably a significant majority of Africans have at least emergency access to a cell phone, either their own, a neighbour's, or one at a commercial kiosk. Even more remarkable is the continuing "convergence" of digital information: wireless systems increasingly link mobile phones with the internet, personal computers, and information services of all kinds. The array of benefits is stunning. The rural poor in more and more of the world now have access to wireless banking and payment systems, such as Kenya's famous M-Pesa system, which allows money transfers over the phone. The information carried on the new networks spans public health, medical care, education, banking, commerce, and entertainment, in addition to communications among family and friends. India, home to world-leading software engineers, hi-tech companies, and a vast and densely populated rural economy of some 700 million poor people in need of connectivity of all kinds, has naturally been a pioneer of digital-led economic development. Government and business have increasingly teamed up in public-private partnerships to provide crucial services on the digital network. In the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, for example, emergency ambulance services are now within reach of tens of millions of people, supported by cell phones, sophisticated computer systems, and increased public investments in rural health. Several large-scale telemedicine systems are now providing primary health and even cardiac care to rural populations. Moreover, India's new rural employment guarantee scheme, just two years old, is not only employing millions of the poorest through public financing, but also is bringing tens of millions of them into the formal banking system, building on India's digital networks. On the fully commercial side, the mobile revolution is creating a logistics revolution in farm-to-retail marketing. Farmers and food retailers can connect directly through mobile phones and distribution hubs, enabling farmers to sell their crops at higher "farm-gate" prices and without delay, while buyers can move those crops to markets with minimum spoilage and lower prices for final consumers. The strengthening of the value chain not only raises farmers' incomes, but also empowers crop diversification and farm upgrading more generally. Similarly, world- leading software firms are bringing information technology jobs, including business process outsourcing, right into the villages through digital networks. Education will be similarly transformed. Throughout the world, schools at all levels will go global, joining together in worldwide digital education networks. Children in the United States will learn about Africa, China, and India not only from books and videos, but also through direct links across classrooms in different parts of the world. Students will share ideas through live chats, shared curricula, joint projects, and videos, photos, and text sent over the digital network. Universities, too, will have global classes, with students joining lectures, discussion groups, and research teams from a dozen or more universities at a time. This past year, my own university – Columbia University in New York City – teamed up with universities in Ecuador, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, France, Ethiopia, Malaysia, India, Canada, Singapore, and China in a "global classroom" that simultaneously connected hundreds of students on more than a dozen campuses in an exciting course on global sustainable development. In my book The End of Poverty, I wrote that extreme poverty can be ended by the year 2025. A rash predication, perhaps, given global violence, climate change, and threats to food, energy, and water supplies. But digital information technologies, if deployed cooperatively and globally, will be our most important us to join together globally in markets, social networks, and cooperative efforts to solve our common problems. new tools, because they will enable Witty Quote 105 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 106 Free Market Solves/Deregulation CP The aff distorts the broadband market through bureaucratic market intervention, turning case Crandell et al 4 [*Robert W. Crandall, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND **Robert Hahn, senior fellow and director of communications policy studies for The Progress &. Freedom Foundation, AND ***Robert E. Litan, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND ****Scott Wallsten, executive director of the Reg-Markets Center and a senior fellow at AEI, and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings, May 04, “Bandwidth for the People, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2004/05_bandwidth_litan.aspx] PUBLIC POLICIES TOWARD the Internet are important in helping to achieve the goal of greater broadband access, but those policies should be of a deregulatory, not interventionist, nature as this competitive market undergoes rapid growth and technological change. Completing recent deregulatory efforts initiated by the FCC last year — that is, removing price and unbundling regulations — could help increase the diffusion of broadband by increasing investment incentives. Indeed, this is probably the best thing that regulators can do to promote the economic rollout of broadband. There is an important distinction between the economical and the uneconomical provision of broadband. The U.S. could, in theory, heavily subsidize broadband service to ensure that every home and business has it. But this would be a mistake: There is little economic reason to believe that such an approach would yield net benefits. It could, ironically, even block future innovation by distorting the market’s development. The right approach is to remove artificial regulatory barriers and allow the market to work to provide broadband as consumers demand it. Witty Quote 106 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 107 Free Market Solves/Deregulation CP Government intervention fails—free market fosters innovation in broadband Crandell et al 4 [*Robert W. Crandall, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND **Robert Hahn, senior fellow and director of communications policy studies for The Progress &. Freedom Foundation, AND ***Robert E. Litan, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND ****Scott Wallsten, executive director of the Reg-Markets Center and a senior fellow at AEI, and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings, May 04, “Bandwidth for the People, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2004/05_bandwidth_litan.aspx] We believe, however, that robust competition is the essential engine for delivering the menu of broadband services and prices that consumers and businesses want. While positive externalities clearly exist, similar issues arise in many information technology contexts. Many of these markets, however, work quite well without government intervention. Take, for example, the online auction market or the market for online gaming. These markets also demonstrate externalities: The benefits generated by an additional user are larger than those that accrue to the user himself. Even so, few would seriously argue that the government should subsidize eBay or fund the next generation of Doom. In other words, the existence of externalities by itself does not necessarily mean that government subsidies are warranted. Likewise, there appears to be little need for government to provide subsidies to specific users to adopt broadband technology, and the cost to the economy of funding such subsidies would likely exceed any benefits they create. Witty Quote 107 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 108 States Solvency States solve the aff—uniformity not key Feser 7 [Edward Feser, Prof of state and local economic development policy @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “Encouraging Broadband Deployment from the Bottom Up,” The Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy 37(1):69-72, http://www.ace.uiuc.edu/Reap/Feser_JRAP.pdf] State governments that have elected to make investments to increase the availability of affordable broadband service in rural areas and low income urban neighborhoods should organize their efforts around a strategy that encourages and leverages locally-driven initiatives, rather than follow a top-down approach that seeks to identify and close all broadband service gaps in a comprehensive fashion. A bottom-up approach to state broadband policy has three major advantages. First, it is a conservative policy response in an economic arena in which the appropriate role of the public sector is highly contested and in which private sector deployment is proceeding rapidly, even as gaps in service in rural and poorer communities remain. Second, it acknowledges the extraordinary practical difficulty of identifying and addressing all broadband infrastructure and service gaps at any point in time, given data limitations and the rapid pace at which technologies, services and the telecommunications industry itself are evolving. Third, it facilitates the design of solutions that are unique to the local conditions in places where gaps exist and where local commitment to policy action is clearly demonstrated. Today a growing number of states are debating whether to develop programs or enact legislation designed to encourage faster deployment of broadband infrastructure to rural areas and lower income urban neighborhoods (Brennan Center 2006). With the Internet becoming the means of delivery of an ever broader array of information products and services in education, health, entertainment and government, the need for faster broadband is increasing. Broadband, a term often used to refer to high-speed, always-on connectivity to the Internet, may be defined generally as a transmission channel of sufficient capacity to effectively deliver advanced information services. Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines “high speed” broadband as facilitating the transfer of data at a rate of 200 kilobits per second in either the downstream (provider to customer) or upstream (customer to provider) direction, a growing slate of applications require the size of the information “pipe” to be much larger than 200 kbps to function optimally. Some technology specialists argue that true broadband is between 30 and 100 megabits per second (Mbps). The most common current forms of consumer broadband provisioning in the U.S.—digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable—typically offer speeds of between 1.0 and 6.0 Mbps (Gillett and Lehr 1999). Debates around broadband deployment as a subnational policy issue generally center on two related questions. The first is whether broadband is an increasingly critical infrastructure for economic development at the state and local levels. While careful empirical studies of the link between broadband and local and/or rural development are few, a recent study commissioned by the U.S. Economic Development Administration finds higher rates of economic growth in zip codes served by broadband, versus a matched sample of zip codes unserved by broadband (Gillett et al, 2006). Other studies have focused on the substantial economic impact of broadband (Crandall and Jackson 2001), potential U.S. productivity losses from a failure to improve broadband networks and performance (Ferguson 2002), and case studies of positive impacts from deployment efforts in specific communities (e.g., DTI 2003). Such evidence, together with the fact that a number of countries in Europe and Asia have implemented significant broadband deployment strategies in recent years, has convinced some state leaders that U.S. telecommunications policy is too passive and that state governments should step in to ensure their own infrastructures are globally competitive (Bleha 2005). May 2005 statistics compiled by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) show the U.S. ranking 16th in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants (often referred to as “broadband penetration”). Leading the U.S. are countries such as South Korea (1st), the Netherlands (3rd), Canada (5th) and Japan (13th). Of more concern to observers is the precipitous decline of the U.S. ranking. The U.S. ranked fourth in ITU’s survey in 2001. Witty Quote 108 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 109 States Solvency States are empirically successful—NC proves Feser 7 [Edward Feser, Prof of state and local economic development policy @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “Encouraging Broadband Deployment from the Bottom Up,” The Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy 37(1):69-72, http://www.ace.uiuc.edu/Reap/Feser_JRAP.pdf] The bottom-up strategy is being implemented successfully in some states. The leader is probably North Carolina, which describes its broadband policy explicitly as a “grassroots” effort with a state-designated “echampion” organization acting as a catalyst and resource for locally driven initiatives (E-NC 2003). North Carolina’s broadband authority is a lean organization, operating with a permanent staff of six people and an annual operating budget of $1.8 million. It reports leveraging over $206 million in federal, community and business support for local projects between its founding in 2000 and the end of 2005 (ENC 2005). While North Carolina has developed perhaps the most complete infrastructure mapping system to aid its decision making, many of its efforts could have been implemented without a detailed statewide infrastructure catalog. Kentucky has also established an initiative designed to encourage decentralized solutions, patterned closely after the North Carolina model, though Kentucky’s is more limited in its scope. Witty Quote 109 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 110 State Deregulation CP State deregulation of broadband solves the case Crandell et al 4 [*Robert W. Crandall, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND **Robert Hahn, senior fellow and director of communications policy studies for The Progress &. Freedom Foundation, AND ***Robert E. Litan, Senior Fellow of Economic Studies @ Brookings, AND ****Scott Wallsten, executive director of the Reg-Markets Center and a senior fellow at AEI, and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings, May 04, “Bandwidth for the People, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2004/05_bandwidth_litan.aspx] Removal of state barriers to deployment. Several states are implementing policies designed to promote broadband deployment. These include making it easier to get right- of-way access, reducing the direct cost of right-of-way access, removing regulation of retail broadband prices, and providing financial incentives to broadband providers and end users. The effects of state efforts to promote broadband have not been analyzed rigorously, and we therefore have little information on their likely impact. In general, states should remove regulatory burdens that do not have an economic justification. Thus, for example, reducing the regulatory burden associated with right-of-way access and removing retail price regulation would appear to be worthwhile from an economic standpoint. Witty Quote 110 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 111 AT 50 State Fiat Bad States discuss broadband in the NCSL Kruger & Kilroy 8 [*Lennard G. Kruger Specialist in Science and Technology Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, AND ** Angele A. Gilroy Specialist in Telecommunications Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Broadband Internet Access and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs,” June 4, http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RL30719.pdf] In addition to federal support for broadband deployment, there are programs and activities ongoing at the state and local level. Surveys, assessments, and reports from the American Electronics Association,50 Technet,51 the Alliance for Public Technology,52 the California Public Utilities Commission,53 the AEI-Brookings JointCenter, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Governors Association56 have explored state and local broadband programs. A related issue is the emergence of municipal broadband networks (primarily wireless and fiber based) and the debate over whether such networks constitute unfair competition with the private sector (for more information on municipal broadband, see CRS Report RS20993, Wireless Technology and Spectrum Demand: Advanced Wireless Services, by Linda K. Moore). And, that’s cooperative 50 state broadband policy CSG National Committee and Task Force Meeting 5 [Council of State Governors Statement of Policy for Communications, “Statement of Intergovernmental Policy: Communications,” June 8, http://www.csg.org/policy/documents/Statement.pdf] As an organization that represents all three branches of state government, The Council of State Governments has a strong interest in the modernization of this nation’s communications infrastructure and services. As elected state leaders, we are committed to the reorganization of the communications infrastructure that provides affordable, high-quality services to citizens in all fifty states and the U.S. territories . Moreover, we are committed to ensuring that state government has a significant and consistent role in the modernization and/or reorganization of the regulatory and taxation structure of the communications industry. Witty Quote 111 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 112 AT Commerce Clause Nope Teske & Kuljiev 2k [*Paul, Paul Teske is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at SUNY, AND, **Andrey, Ph.D. in economics at SUNY Stony Brook “Federalism, Preemption, and Implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act,” http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/30/1/53.pdf] As a form of social policy, the FTA established the basis for a reduced rate for Internet connections for schools and libraries, the so-called "E-rate," in Section 254 (h). To help pay for that subsidy, the FCC decided to apply a universal service charge or tax. The Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel challenged the application of universal service contributions for the E-rate to carriers' intrastate revenues, which it argued falls under state regulatory jurisdiction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, while upholding the E-rate in general, held that the FCC exceeded its jurisdictional authority in assessing fees on intrastate revenues. In a separate case, but one related to this issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. District upheld an FCC ruling that a Texas law requiring wireless carriers to contribute to the state's universal service and school and libraries funds is not preempted by Section 332(c) (3) of the Communications Act.40 States have authority over the plan Teske & Kuljiev 2k [*Paul, Paul Teske is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at SUNY, AND, **Andrey, Ph.D. in economics at SUNY Stony Brook “Federalism, Preemption, and Implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act,” http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/30/1/53.pdf] Both federal and state policies continue to utilize some elements of cross-subsidies to help achieve universal service objectives, particularly to support low-income and rural consumers. Recendy, die fifth circuit court issued a decision that the states do have the right to impose eligibility requirements beyond those imposed by the FCC on carriers, in order to receive federal universal service support. The court overturned the FCC's previous decision to require the universal service contributions of incumbent firms to be recovered through access charges. Witty Quote 112 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 113 AT Health Add-On Massive alt causes West 9 [Darrell M. West is Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of Digital Medicine: Health Care in the Internet Era, published by Brookings Institution Press, “Expanding Health Information Technology,” May 20, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darrellwest/expanding-health-informat_b_205858.html] What is needed to move forward is improved training of medical professionals. Orientation is crucial because surveys indicate that health providers find digital systems difficult to use initially. Most professional systems have multiple screens, varied options, and a variety of navigational approaches. Learning these systems involves considerable up-front time. In an industry with extensive time and cost pressures, these barriers make it difficult to implement this kind of digital improvement. One case study of an internist practice that implemented electronic medical records found that the total cost of the new system was $140,000. Both staff and doctors had to undergone detailed training on data entry and system maintenance. Midway through implementation, their system was attacked by a virus that led to extensive time drains on the staff. Moving to the electronic system required a redesign of office work flow and daily routines. Although all concluded that the record-keeping transition was worthwhile, the doctors felt that small medical offices would not be able to adopt an electronic system unless financial assistance was provided. The federal government has provided new incentives for doctors to adopt electronic medical records. In 2008, the Medicare program announced a trial program in which those providers who move from paper to electronic systems of record-keeping would receive higher Medicare payments to compensate for extra time taken to complete online prescriptions or test results. Individual physicians will receive up to $58,000 over five years to participate in the program. Those who have joined the program say they feel it has improved the quality of health care and helped them avoid treatment or prescription errors. Even with $19 billion in new federal resources, the obstacles limiting the utilization of health information technology will not improve unless financial, organizational, and technological barriers are addressed. The federal government needs to take a more active role in supporting technology innovation and broadband development. Market forces fragment the medical system and accentuate connection problems between doctors and patients. Witty Quote 113 Georgetown Debate Kirshon Broadband Aff Page 114 AT Broadband KT Competitiveness US broadband leader now—OECD rankings are flawed Gross 9 [By Grant Gross, Computerworld, “U.S. broadband ranking: Does it matter?,” June 5 http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134031] Statistics that show the U.S. behind many other countries in broadband deployment don't tell the whole story and may not be as important as some critics suggest, a group of broadband experts said Friday. In December, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the U.S. 15th among its 30 member nations in broadband adoption per capita. But the OECD statistics might give a better picture if they reflected broadband adoption for households, because families often share a connection and the OECD numbers have largely ignored broadband on smartphones and other wireless devices, said panelists at a broadband forum hosted by the Free State Foundation, a conservative think tank. And the statistics may not matter much, said David Gross, former coordinator of international communications and information policy at the U.S Department of State. Gross, who worked in former President George W. Bush's administration, called the OECD statistics "deeply flawed," but also acknowledged that the organization is working to improve its broadband reports. " It is not a zero-sum game ," Gross said. "Rather, we all benefit from the more who are on it. The more people in the world who have broadband, who have access to the Internet, the better it is for all who already have it." Witty Quote 114 Georgetown Debate Broadband Aff Kirshon Page 115 T Means Tested NOTE – This doesn’t apply to the LifeLine program, just to universal service Plan’s not means-tested and blatantly extra T AT&T et al 8 [“Telcos: Use USF, Not Free Broadband Plan, to Address Digital Divide,” Dec 11, http://www.benton.org/node/19794] AT&T leads a list of group of eighteen telecommunications companies and organizations that wrote the Federal Communications Commission in support of using existing Lifeline and Link Up universal service programs to make broadband access more affordable for low income households. They contrast this proposal with the FCC Chairman Martin's proposal to auction of some spectrum will a requirement to provide nationwide, free, wireless broadband. That proposal, they write, "would not be means-tested or in any way limited to low-income users, and in fact would impose substantial up-front equipment costs on end-users." Witty Quote 115
