Obama technology advisor Blair Levin predicts that privacy and Network Neutrality will be huge issues for the FCC and the Obama administration. The focus likely will shift of telecom policy away from traditional phone companies to “Internet/edge” players. Levin and his collaborators Rebecca Arbogast and David Kaut suggest that the biggest “sleeper” issue will be privacy. With a major overhaul of healthcare records to the Web, the rise in behavioral advertising and cloud computing, where information is stored in computers strung across many geographies, consumer, business and government advertising will lead to privacy disputes at the FCC and courts.

Levin downplayed the immediate success of Obama’s push for high-speed Internet in every American household. He said the initial $8 billion in stimulus funds for constructing new high-speed Internet
lines and other programs was modest and just a start. The FCC’s mandate in the stimulus plan to come up with a broadband strategy for the country within one year will be “more likely to produce a volley of targeted recommendations than a silver bullet.” Levin added that the FCC probably wouldn’t quickly overhaul a $7 billion phone subsidy program to also include broadband Internet networks.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2009/03/an_obama_tech_advisor_ lays_out. html? wprss= posttech

Drawn from David Farber’s blog

http://fcc-reform.org/response/notes-reforming-federal-communications-commission

Record of a conference held by Public Knowledge and Silicon Flatirons 5th January 2009 on the occasion of Phil Weiser’s paper “FCC Reform and the Future of Telecommunications Policy”