FCC Creating National Broadband Plan With Plenty of Input from Industry

Tue, September 15, 2009 | Posted by christopher

This is a slightly older story, but I wanted to make sure it made the rounds.

In "FCC Hires Industry Shill to Develop US National Broadband Plan," OpenLeft.com's Chris Bowers details the shady history of Scott Wallstein, the economics director of the FCC broadband task force.

His past affiliations and quotes regarding the state of broadband in the U.S. are quite troubling. He has said that the U.S. does not have a broadband problem and has a long history of working with "coin operated" think tanks like Progress and Freedom Foundation (so named because they tend to produce reports justifying whatever their corporate funders desire).

This is deeply troubling as his past positions run directly counter to many of the values espoused by President Obama and his FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski - particularly on the important issues of open access and network neutrality.

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