Telecom News: Speed Matters - CWA's Key Principles

The United States — the country that invented the Internet — has fallen from 1st to 16th in high speed Internet penetration. To assure economic growth, we must reverse that trend.

1. Speed and universality matter for Internet access.
   High-tech innovation, job growth, telemedicine, distance learning, rural development, public safety, and e-government require truly high speed, universal networks.
   
   
2. U.S "high speed" definition is too slow.
   FCC defines "high speed" as 200 kilobits per second (kbps) downstream. Government policies should immediately set "high speed" definition at 2 megabits per second (mbps) downstream, 1 upstream.
   
   
3. U.S. needs a national High-Speed Internet for All policy.
   The U.S. must adopt policies for universal access and set deployment timetables: 10 mbps down, 1 mbps up by 2010; with new benchmarks set for succeeding years.
   
   
4. Open Internet.
   High speed, high-capacity networks will eliminate bandwidth scarcity and will promote an open Internet. Consumers are entitled to an open Internet allowing them to go where they want when they want. Nothing should be done to degrade or block access to any websites. Reserving proprietary video bandwidth is essential to finance the build-out of high-speed networks.
   
   
5. Consumer and worker protections.
   Public policies should support growth of good, career jobs as a key to providing quality service. Government should require public reporting of deployment, actual speed, and price.