“No matter who you are, or where you live, or how much money you make … you will need, and you are entitled to have these tools [broadband Internet] available to you, I think, as a civil right,” said FCC commissioner Michael Copps during a Monday appearance at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
With online video, music and other large files increasingly testing the limits of broadband networks, the commission’s five members appeared before a nearly full McConomy Auditorium yesterday afternoon for a public hearing on broadband expansion and regulations.
Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, organized the hearing. Cynics might say the field hearing itself was an exercise in political pacification, opines C/net. Doyle is the vice chairman of the House Commerce Committee’s telecommunications and the Internet panel, which oversees the FCC.
