tw telecom's Larissa Herda Calls for National Business Broadband Policy

A national broadband policy for businesses is needed to create the growth, efficiency and reduced costs that all American businesses need in order to deal with this recession, said Larissa Herda, CEO of tw telecom, in a keynote address at the COMPTEL Plus conference in Dallas. Herda is calling on competitive business broadband providers to engage Congress and the FCC in establishing a national Broadband Policy.


"The world has changed. The way we interconnect with the incumbent needs to change, because the enterprise customer is changing what they're doing, how they're doing it, and the applications they're developing," Herda said. "A comprehensive broadband policy for business must focus on better, more efficient, more scalable ways to interconnect with the incumbents."


Herda sees a fundamental shift in the strategies enterprise customers are adopting and implementing towards an applications environment that supports initiatives like: Collaboration, Web 2.0 applications, Software as a Service, Ethernet and Storage, Telepresence, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, Green IT and Cloud Computing; all of which require massive amounts of data bandwidth.


Herda believes a national business broadband policy must include three critical points -- effective regulation of Special Access, including Ethernet services, and UNE last-mile facilities; interconnection for IP voice and data services; and a reform or elimination of the forbearance process.

http://www.twtelecom.com