Reforming the regulatory morass in Washington DC is critical, and nowhere is that more true than in the tech and telecom sectors. There seems to be near unanimous agreement among the policy set that a 1934 law is ill-equipped to address modern-day realities of the broadband world. One of the key policy topics attracting a lot of attention now is what sort of regulatory policies make sense in an all-IP networked world. Pulling from various perspectives, this panel will discuss whether the concept of “common carriage” — as embodied in the Communications Act of 1934 – has gone the way of the horse and buggy or still remains relevant in the modern era. Panelists will also discuss why the answer to this policy question can determine the sort of future a broadband consumer will have in the next decades.
Featured Event Speakers
- Michelle Connolly, Professor of the Practice in the Economics Department, Duke University; former chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
- Thomas Jones, Partner in the Communications, Media & Privacy Department of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in Washington, DC. He has testified on common carrier regulation of broadband before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
- Hal Singer, Managing Director and Principal at Navigant Economics; Senior Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown McDonough School of Business. Singer is the co-author of The Need For Speed: A New Framework for Telecommunications Policy for the 21st Century (Brookings Press, 2013)
- Christopher Yoo, Professor of Law, Communication and Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania Law School; founding director of the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition. Yoo is the author of The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network (AEI Press, 2012)
- Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist, Progressive Policy Institute (moderator)
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