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Broadband Plan Countdown

February 17th, 2010 by Eric Garr - General Manager, Omnibus Broadband Initiative

In less than a month, the FCC will send the National Broadband Plan to Congress.  Earlier this week, Chairman Genachowski kicked off a countdown to that day by outlining some of the plan’s highlights.  Over the next 27 days, Chairman Genachowski, other Commissioners, and the broadband team members will continue to talk about how the plan is shaping up and the direction it’s heading.  Why start talking about it now? One reason is that the plan is so sweeping and so comprehensive that it makes sense to begin to familiarize the public with some of the concepts behind it. How are we thinking about the plan? What are some of the tools it will use to help make broadband universal and affordable? How can the plan make broadband an integral tool for addressing the nation’s priorities? We’ll keep you up to date on this blog, on twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube and on the web as we prepare to culminate our year-long dialogue on broadband with the release of a plan.

 

New Staff Bring Deep Experience to National Broadband Plan

November 10th, 2009 by Eric Garr - General Manager, Omnibus Broadband Initiative

I’d like to take a few minutes to introduce Blogband readers to some of the great leaders we’ve hired for the broadband team in recent weeks.
 
Dr. David S. Isenberg has joined the broadband team as an Expert Advisor, and will be working on how physical infrastructure choices facilitate or impede policy options.  David is best known to the telecom policy world as the author of the 1997 essay, The Rise of the Stupid Network.  When Dale Hatfield was Chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, he called The Rise of the Stupid Network “one of three works that changed my perception of the telecommunications industry."
 
David wrote The Rise of the Stupid Network during his 12 years at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs, where he was named "Distinguished Member of Technical Staff."  He holds a Ph.D. from Cal Tech in Biology.  For the past five years he's produced a Washington, D.C. technology policy conference called F2C: Freedom to Connect. He lives in Cos Cob, Connecticut and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and he'll be helping us look into the future in terms of next generation architectures.
 
Dr. Mohit Kaushaul joined the FCC over a month ago to head up the newly formed digital healthcare team.  He was previously at a venture capital fund in Boston focusing on the healthcare sector, and back in the day was an ER physician.
 
At the FCC, he will direct a team that is focusing on the convergence of connectivity, technology and healthcare. He will be looking at the potential promise of broadband to both cut costs out of the health care system and improve outcomes for people. He is also focusing on analyzing the current connectivity of healthcare in the US, covering both wired and wireless infrastructure. In addition, his team is also evaluating the current and future healthcare applications that run on the connectivity infrastructure.

Mohit is excited about the vision of a world where much more data in healthcare is captured, which, when coupled with novel applications, could result in better health care outcomes at a fraction of the cost.
 
Also joining the task force is Dr. Douglas C. Sicker, who will be Expert Advisor to the task force on Research and Development issues. His team will develop a set of research recommendations to enable the United States to be a global leader in broadband networking in the years 2020 and beyond, as well as to further broadband R and D in the US over the next decade. 
 
Doug is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and in the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program within the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is a highly respected tenured professor engaged in network systems research and writing. Previously, Doug was previously Director of Global Architecture at Level 3 Communications and served as Division Chief in the Network Technology Division of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh. We’re glad to have Doug back at the FCC.
 
Finally, Carol Mattey also returns to the FCC as Senior Policy Advisor to the team, focusing on Universal Service issues.  Until recently, Carol was a director in Deloitte & Touche LLP’s Regulatory & Capital Markets consulting practice, providing a wide range of consulting and regulatory compliance services to clients in the technology, media and telecommunications industries. She came to Deloitte in 2005 after over 10 years at the FCC, where she was Deputy Bureau Chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau from 2000-2005, and Chief of the Policy and Program Planning Division before that.  As Deputy Chief of the Wireline Bureau, Carol managed the ongoing administration of the Universal Service Fund, managed rulemaking proceedings to promote investment and innovation in broadband, and led initiatives to coordinate public policy with state regulators.  She holds a J.D. and M.A. in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Pennsylvania, and B.A. from the University of Virginia.  We welcome Carol’s return; her experience will be invaluable to the team.
 
 



Capture The Phone Numbers Using Your Camera Phone

If you have a camera and a 2D matrix code reader on your mobile phone, you can capture the FCC Phone numbers right to your phone by following these three easy steps:
Step 1: Take a photograph of one of the codes below using the camera on your mobile phone.
Step 2: Use your phone's Datamatrix or QR Code reader to decode the information on the photograph. Please note, these code readers are device specific and are available to download on the internet.
Step 3: Store the decoded address information to your phone's address book and use it with your Maps or GPS application.

Datamatrix and QR FCC Phones