National broadband policy must push adoption

The U.S. National Broadband Policy needs to solve the country’s adoption problem, not just its access problem, and do so without unnecessary regulation that would slow down private investment in broadband infrastructure, a crowded panel of industry insiders said Wednesday at Supercomm’s National Broadband Strategy Conference.

“We see towns with 100% coverage and they have a choice between two wireline broadband providers and three 3G providers, and 50% of them don’t choose broadband,” said Bob Udell, senior vice president of Telephone Operations, for independent telco, Consolidated Communications. “For some its economic reasons, for others, lifestyle reasons...”