April 12, 2017 – In November 2016, the Knight Foundation and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society’s Responsive Communities initiative, under the auspices of the NetGain Partnership, brought together city officials from around the world who are working on the frontlines of urban IoT. Together with representatives of nonprofit, philanthropic, and research institutions, these officials offered candid assessments of their accomplishments and the challenges that still lie ahead. Today, we are releasing the report of this discussion, available here.
Author: Susan Crawford
Susan Crawford’s Road Trip – Community Broadband Bits Podcast 242
March 1, 2017 – Susan Crawford has come back to the podcast to tell us about her recent travels in North Carolina and Tennessee, talking to people on the ground that have already built fiber-optic networks or are in the midst of figuring out how to get them deployed.
Adam Ruins Everything – Susan Crawford On Investing in Internet Infrastructure
March 29, 2017 – On the podcast Susan tells us why the internet in the U.S. isn’t as good as it should be; it’s much slower than many other countries around the world because our cable conglomerates can control markets around the country. And unfortunately, these are leaving many of our communities in the technology dark ages. Susan tells Adam what we can do to promote internet infrastructure and how she’s already seen that activism first-hand around the country.
San Francisco reveals latest #Resist effort – resisting sub-gigabit internet access
March 15, 2017 – This Tuesday, almost a year to the day later, Crawford attempted a little bit of history rewriting when she wrote that “Google Fiber was doomed from the start.” She outlined her view that the answer was never going to be a for-profit company but will require local, state and eventually federal policies and massive investment to install a whole new infrastructure akin to subway systems, railways, and telephone networks.
Advisory panel revives San Francisco’s citywide gigabit fiber plans
March 14, 2017 – “Without local government involvement, no private company is going to find it in its interest to provide, to sell internet access in a way that promotes economic development and social justice for any city,” Crawford told StateScoop. The city has been too “politically hamstrung” during past efforts to launch this infrastructure, she said, but the national attitude toward fiber has matured.
Panel to study wiring San Francisco with high-speed Internet
March 14, 2017 – Crawford called Internet access the “the key economic and social justice issue of the 21st century. Whether it’s educating kids, providing advanced health care, moderating our use of energy and making it possible for people to work where they live — all of that is going to be helped by a better, faster and far cheaper data network,” she said.
What could happen to net neutrality under the new FCC?
March 9, 2017 – Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, says it’s “extremely unlikely” that freeing internet providers from Title II regulation will spur more competition. “We have a very broken marketplace in the United States, and absent government intervention, there’s no reason that would change,” she explains. “There’s no real competition to the local cable actor in most American places.”
Science Friday – How Will Internet Access and Security Fare Under the New Administration?
February 17, 2017 – Susan Crawford and Jon Brodkin, a tech policy reporter for Ars Technica, discuss how the open internet, broadband expansion, and security regulations will fare under the new administration.
Former FCC Chair Warns of Trump Team Plan to ‘Modernize’ FCC
January 24, 2017-Tom Wheeler, the recently departed chairman of the FCC, took aim at an idea to streamline the agency, saying that it was a “fraud” to say that it was “modernizing” the agency and suggested that it is really a way for major internet service providers to escape substantive oversight. “It makes no sense,” Wheeler said at the event, moderated by Susan Crawford. “We are talking about 1/6 of the economy, but more importantly, we are talking about the networks that connect 6/6 of the economy.”
Interview on Marketplace Tech
January 23, 2017-During his time as head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler pushed for internet providers to deliver information at equal speeds. But companies have pushed back against this idea of net neutrality. Wheeler joined us to talk about the telecom industry, his successor, and his plans for the future. Afterwards, we’ll hear from Harvard professor Susan Crawford about what telecom policy might look like under President Trump.
This is the Year Donald Trump Kills Net Neutrality
January 2, 2017- Predicting exactly what sort of telecommunications policy the next administration will pursue is tricky. The main clues we have thus far are the writings of Trump’s transition team. But transition teams don’t actually make policy, so they’re an imprecise indication of what will follow.
NYT: Expect a Cozy Trump-Telecom Alliance
Early next year, Senate Democrats will get to choose a new commissioner for the F.C.C. Democrats ought to pick a strong consumer advocate who will use the position to speak out forcefully for more competition in the industry and common-sense approaches like net neutrality rules. Susan Crawford, of Harvard Law School, and Tim Wu, of Columbia Law School, are two experts who specialize in telecommunication issues and fit that bill.