Bush Renews Call for Broadband

In his second such public address in the past few weeks, President George Bush renewed his call to make broadband available to all Americans by 2007. At an event hosted by the Department of Commerce, Bush noted that the U.S. now has some 28 million broadband subscribers, ranking 10th in per capita terms in the industrialized world. Bush said an important policy goal should be to make sure that broadband access is affordable and, therefore, it should not be taxed. He said government should remove burdensome regulations that would otherwise slow the spread of Internet technologies. Bush has signed orders to reduce the regulatory red tape for laying fiber optic cables and putting up transmission towers on federal lands.



Bush expressed support for broadband over powerline technology -- the Commerce Department is developing technical standards that will make sure that broadband can go across power lines without unnecessary interference.



Bush also said that a better wireless spectrum policy could help the economy grow and that Congress needs to make the spectrum available. Specifically, he voiced support for the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act, which would take spectrum that is currently allocated to the government and auction it off to the private sector.