Egads. Can't this sorry bunch of incompetents get ANYTHING right? Please remember "President BPL" in November.
73, Don Merz, N3RHT -------------------------- President Bush has personally thrown his backing behind BPL technology in a speech he delivered Monday, April 26th supporting an accelerated rollout of all forms of broadband by 2007 nationwide. The relevant paragraphs from the broad-ranging speech are below, edited for space. The full speech is somewhat lengthy and can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040426-6.html. The BPL comments are towards the very end. ===quote=== Now, the use of broadband has tripled since 2000 from 7 million subscriber lines to 24 million. That's good. But that's way short of the goal for 2007. And so -- by the way, we rank 10th amongst the industrialized world in broadband technology and its availability. That's not good enough for America. Tenth is 10 spots too low as far as I'm concerned. (Applause.) Broadband technology must be affordable. In order to make sure it gets spread to all corners of the country, it must be affordable. We must not tax broadband access. If you want broadband access throughout the society, Congress must ban taxes on access. (Applause.) Secondly, a proper role for the government is to clear regulatory hurdles so those who are going to make investments do so. Broadband is going to spread because it's going to make sense for private sector companies to spread it so long as the regulatory burden is reduced -- in other words, so long as policy at the government level encourages people to invest, not discourages investment. And so here are some smart things to do: One, increase access to federal land for fiber optic cables and transmission towers. That makes sense. As you're trying to get broadband spread throughout the company, make sure it's easy to build across federal lands. One sure way to hold things up is that the federal lands say, you can't build on us. So how is some guy in remote Wyoming going to get any broadband technology? Regulatory policy has got to be wise and smart as we encourage the spread of this important technology. There needs to be technical standards to make possible new broadband technologies, such as the use of high-speed communication directly over power lines. Power lines were for electricity; power lines can be used for broadband technology. So the technical standards need to be changed to encourage that. <snip> And we're going to continue to support the Federal Communications Commission. Michael Powell -- Chairman Michael Powell, under his leadership, his decision to eliminate burdensome regulations on new broadband networks availability to homes. In other words, clearing out the underbrush of regulation, and we'll get the spread of broadband technology, and America will be better for it. (Applause.) ===end quote=== The information contained in this e-mail may be confidential and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorized. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator.(A)
