Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) charged the Bush administration is falling behind on the President’s 2004 campaign pledge to make broadband Internet service universally available by 2007.
“Despite the president’s promise of ubiquitous broadband by 2007, we are clearly, now well into 2006, short of that goal,” Kerry said. “Only 40 percent of households in America have it.”
Neither the FCC nor the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration had a response for the charge, according to Reuters.
At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing yesterday Kerry said the Federal Communications Commission was holding up legislation introduced in the Senate that would require the FCC to permit unlicensed use of airwaves between television stations as long as it does not cause harmful interference.
Intel Corp. and its corporate allies are advocating the measure; they are looking to use the spectrum to establish WiMax services.
Broadcasters remain leery of the measure because of concern about the potential for interference of services operating in unlicensed spectrum adjacent to their own, despite the assurance in the bill that that will not be permitted.