A Silver Lining?
Steve Goodman has been practicing telecommunications law since 1983, when he began working at the Federal Communications Commission. He now represents a wide variety of clients, including telecommunications equipment manufacturers, satellite service providers and international carriers.
I recently had the opportunity to organize and moderate a panel discussion on the tenth anniversary of the release of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. For those unfamiliar with the National Broadband Plan, it was an extensive effort by the FCC to respond to a Congressional directive to develop a detailed strategy for spurring broadband deployment and adoption.
The FCC was also tasked in developing the plan with understanding how broadband affects a wide swath of the American economy and government, including civic participation, public safety, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, employee training, entrepreneurial activity, job creation, and economic growth.
There is a lot of good information included in the National Broadband Plan, and I commend it highly. It should not be viewed as merely a relic gathering dust on a shelf.
Very presciently, the conclusions of that 2010 document included the recognition of the importance of telehealth during pandemics, and that "[d]isasters and pandemics can lead to sudden disruptions of normal IP traffic flows." Somewhat ironically, the original September date for the brown bag lunch on this topic morphed into a June on-line videoconference due to COVID-19.