Good questions and salient points from Bruce Kushnick of the New Network Institute…

What now for broadband and the telecoms?

Will Obama and Congress be satisfied to leave the U.S. as 15th among developed nations in broadband use? Will the FCC under Democratic control be less of a tool for large corporations?

Questions for Obama and Congress:

Q. Will you set the goal of broadband access at 1 gigabit in every American home?

Q. Why aren’t telecom subsidies being directed to cover much-needed infrastructure improvements?

Q. What steps should be taken to democratize the FCC’s decision-making process?

Q. Will you re-introduce and implement the parts of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that promote competition?

Is it time to break up AT&T again? And Verizon, as well?

Telecommunications reform needs to be on President-elect Obama’s agenda and that of the 111th Congress. It is a key aspect of overall infrastructure renewal and will impact the future of the nation’s economic prosperity, educational system and its role in an increasingly globalized world.

January 1, 2008, marks the 25th anniversary of the breakup of the old AT&T after a successful Department of Justice antitrust suit during the Reagan administration. AT&T was broken up because a then-upstart, MCI, wanted to compete to offer long distance service and AT&T did everything in its power to block competition. The case, initiated by the Ford Administration and pursued under Jimmy Carter, showed how the government could help foster fair competition in the telecommunications industry. But thanks to deregulation in the 1990s, we now live in an age of mega-telecoms, including a reconstituted AT&T.

The results have been damaging to Americans’ and widely ignored by the traditional news media. The U.S. share of worldwide Internet traffic has shrunk over the last decade from 70 percent to 25 percent. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks the U.S. 15th out of 30 leading industrial nations in per capita broadband use. And Americans are getting poorer broadband telecommunications services-lower bandwidth-and paying more than citizens in most other advanced industrial countries.

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