On the panel were moderator Seth Cooper (Senior Fellow, The Free State Foundation) and panelists James Assey (Executive Vice President, NCTA), John Jones (Senior Vice President of Public Policy & Government Relations, CenturyLink), Tom Power (Senior Vice President & General Counsel, CTIA), and Nicol Turner-Lee (Fellow, Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings).
Some key takeaways:
- Cooper: "What is the future of rural America?"
- Turner-Lee: Yet despite all of these obstacles, and many of you have heard me say this, they are still Americans and they still deserve to be connected in a way that is meaningful or they risk the chance of becoming digitally invisible. And for those of us that have been in this debate, that invisibility has consequences over the long run if we do not get this right."
- Turner-Lee: "And we don't want to find ourselves in a situation, particularly when we talk about closing the digital divide. The digital divide, yes, it is about deployment, my friends. It is about infrastructure. But it's about people. People stand at the heart of what we're trying to solve."
You can watch the video on C-SPAN (start at 00:29:00).
The Free State Foundation:
is a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank. Its purpose is to promote, through research and educational activities, understanding of free market, limited government, and rule of law principles at the federal level and in Maryland.
