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COMPTELPlus
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Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Beka Publishing,
www.bekapublishing.com4
DAY 2
Nelson said Thune and he work together to bridge
the partisan divide. The Florida Senator said Thune has
a lot of common sense, and “we get a long.”
Together, Nelson said he and Thune have created
in the Commerce Committee a “template for how to
get things done,” taking pride that 15 measures have
received unanimous support at the committee level
and have moved on to the full Senate.
“And this is a committee that has some really
strong personalities, including two Republicans who
are running for president,” Nelson said. “But one thing
we all agree on is to look for common ground on Net
Neutrality. And we hope this committee will remain
bipartisan, because Net Neutrality is the most signifi-
cant telecommunications issue facing this Congress.”
Noting that the FCC’s ruling in February to keep
the Internet open was in response to court rulings
and the appeals of more than 4 million Americans,
he added that ruling still will result in a lot of discus-
sion, scrutiny and legal scrutiny in the Commerce
Committee, the Senate, the House and industry.
“I want to remain bipartisan on Net Neutrality,”
Nelson said, adding that whatever Congress does,” it
must protect consumers, provide the FCC with flex-
ibility, cannot undermine the FCC’s authority and be
forward looking for broadband.”
He emphasized the look into the future, saying
what the 114th Congress does likely will no longer
pertain to how the world is in a decade, because tech-
nology changes so rapidly.
Nelson called the FCC’s Open Internet action a
step in the right direction, because it has provided
“certainty and predictability.”
To emphasize this need for certainty and predict-
ability, Nelson invoked the administration’s nego-
tiations with Iran regarding that nation’s nuclear
capabilities. He said he is supportive of the effort to
lift sanctions on Iran for that nation’s 10-year promise
that it would not develop nuclear weapons. And the
agreement gives the United States an additional one-
year warning, should Iran decide it wishes to begin its
nuclear weapon program.
Nelson explained that in 10 years, the world will
have changed so much, the entire matter with Iran
could be moot, so “I am willing to take that risk.”
That is why the Senator said he will implore
members of Congress to ensure that when it acts on
Net Neutrality it will craft legislation that gives the FCC
flexibility. “It must be flexible enough to respond to the
changing world,” he said. “We cannot have a regulator
that is frozen in time. If we put a straight jacket on the
FCC, we could very well harm consumers.”
Nelson also said that any statutory changes
written to affect the way the FCC operates are “criti-
cally important to everyone in this room.”
But Net Neutrality is only one issue the FCC and
members of Congress are reviewing, Nelson said,
reminding COMPTEL PLUS attendees the commis-
sion recently concluded the largest public spectrum
auction in U.S. history, raising more than $40 billion.
And Nelson predicted that the nation will continue
to face spectrum challenges going forward, which
requires the establishment of a “smart, forward-
thinking spectrum policy.”
A rewrite of the Communications Act also is on
tap in Congress, Nelson acknowledged, and whatever
goes into the bill has to consider the changes since
1996 as well as what is on the horizon in the future.
“We, as a Congress, need to know what role the
Internet plays in our lives on a daily basis,” Nelson
said. “And as this industry evolves at a blistering pace,
it is exciting to think about what happens in the next
few years.”
o
W
ith video streaming, gaming and all
kinds of applications needing band-
width, “scarcity has returned” and
the competitive telecommunications
industry needs to act to create an agenda for band-
width abundance, Google’s Vice President of Access
Services Milo Medin said Monday.
Medin was the keynote speaker during Monday’s
general session of the 2015 Spring COMPTEL PLUS
Business Expo here at the Gaylord Palms.
“Today in broadband, we are not seeing the kind of
abundance that the technology can deliver,” Medin said,
and he proceeded to explain what has happened since the
industry believed it was flush, less than two decades ago.
“Internet traffic has been growing 20 to 40 percent
each year for more than decade,” Medin said.
During that time, prices have been declining,
because technological innovation has empowered more
capacity to be delivered at lower prices, he explained,
adding that streaming video, cloud services and app
ecosystems depend on broadband abundance.
“I’d like talk about what it takes to create an
agenda for bandwidth abundance,” Medin said. “All of
us love abundance. It means we can use something
and not worry about it costing a fortune or running
out and doing without.”
Medin said copper wires that go into people’s
homes used to be thought of as a natural monopoly.
But since the rise of cable, copper wire
has lost some of its tarnish.
“The cable networks had a physics
advantage, and could run a lot faster
than those old copper networks could
go,” Medin explained. “But that only
mattered if someone delivered a service
to users that exploited that advantage.”
And at that time, cable broadband
was offering speeds at 5 or 10 Mbps,
which was 100 times faster than dial up.
“You had so much bandwidth, you
never worried about running out, and
over time, all sorts of applications sprung
up to use that bandwidth,” Medin said.
As years went by, computers and the
home networks got faster and caught
up to the bandwidth. And today, the bottleneck lies
with Internet service to the home, Medin said, as he
added multiple devices fight for the bandwidth.
“At Google, we have tried to restore abundance in
bandwidth,” Medin said, citing the company’s use of
fiber optic networks running into the home.
Since Google entered the fiber market in Kansas
City, Kan., and expands to new markets, he said other
providers are stepping up to begin delivering gigabit
fiber in their communities.
“It’s important to point out that no one company,
and no one model is going to fix our problem with
scarcity in the U.S.,” Medin said. “It’s really a team
effort. Public and private, rural and urban, big compa-
nies, and small companies, old companies and new
companies, all working to deliver new choices to
consumers is what it’s going to take.”
But Medin said roadblocks appear almost every-
where. He said the United States is not been focused
on bandwidth abundance, it’s been focused instead on
Net Neutrality.
Medin Explores Broadband Abundance
(Nelson, continued from page 1)
(See Medin, page 6)
Milo Medin