EDUCAUSE Live! April 24, 2009 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT)

Stimulating Big Broadband Deployment

Special Guests

John Windhausen Jr.
President
Telepoly Consulting

John Windhausen Jr. has worked in the communications policy arena in Washington, D.C., for over 20 years. He began his career as a staff attorney at the Federal Communications Commission in 1984. He moved to Capitol Hill in 1987, serving as counsel and then senior counsel to Senator Hollings, Senator Inouye, and the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee for nine years. He participated actively in the drafting and passage of the 1992 Cable Act, the 1993 Spectrum Auction Act, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 1996, he joined the Competition Policy Institute as general counsel. In 1999, he became the president of ALTS, the Association for Local Telecommunications Services, where he led the facilities-based competitive local telecom industry in its efforts to provide consumers with a choice of local telecom providers. In 2004, he opened his own consulting practice, Telepoly Consulting.

Wendy Wigen
Government Relations Officer
EDUCAUSE

Wendy Wigen is a government relations officer at EDUCAUSE, where she covers Internet and telecommunications policy issues that impact the higher education community. Depending on the issue, she works directly with the relevant committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. She works to educate federal policymakers on the needs of the EDUCAUSE community and to position EDUCAUSE as a trusted resource for technological expertise. Broadband availability, net neutrality, CALEA, and peer-to-peer file sharing are some of the issues she has worked on. Wigen received her undergraduate degree from the University of Puget Sound and her master's from Syracuse University.

Summary

Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by John Windhausen Jr. and Wendy Wigen, and the topic will be "Stimulating Big Broadband Deployment."

For a number of years, EDUCAUSE has been arguing for an aggressive national policy to promote universal deployment of high-speed networks for the benefit of education, health care, and the economy in general. In January 2008, EDUCAUSE published "A Blueprint for Big Broadband" suggesting federal funding of $33 billion to build 100 Mbps last-mile connections to homes and businesses. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes many of the key themes promoted by EDUCAUSE and provides $7.2 billion for broadband deployment. These funds will now be distributed by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture over the next year and a half. So where are we now? What projects will best promote the needs of education? Who is most likely to obtain funding, and for what purposes? And is more funding necessary? In this presentation, we'll review the pending proposals and the politics surrounding big broadband, and we'll follow the money—past, present, and future—required to meet our goals.

Related EDUCAUSE Resources

• Economic Stimulus
• Federal Funding for IT
• National Broadband Policy
• Archives of past EDUCAUSE Live! seminars

Additional Resources

• A Blueprint for Big Broadband