Benton Foundation Delivers Broadband Action Plan to Obama Administration

The Benton Foundation has released a detailed set of recommendations to guide the Obama administration's media policy making, entitled An Action Plan for America: Using Technology and Innovation to Address Our Nation's Critical Challenges. The document urges the new President to take immediate action to ensure every U.S. resident is connected to broadband, which will unleash billions of dollars in economic development, create over a million jobs, enhance America's global competitiveness, enhance health care and education, reduce energy consumption, improve public safety and homeland security, and reinvigorate democracy.

"On January 20, 2009, Americans will turn to President Barack Obama to make good on the promises he made during the 2008 election," said Charles Benton, Chairman, CEO and Trustee of the Benton Foundation. "One clear goal articulated by candidate Obama is that every American should have the highest speed broadband access - no matter where they live, or how much money they have. This goal is not achievable overnight nor with the simple stroke of a pen. However, President Obama can immediately exercise strong leadership to improve the competitiveness of the United States in the global economy by acting to craft a National Broadband Strategy."

An Action Plan for America: Using Technology and Innovation to Address Our Nation's Critical Challenges offers a draft Executive Order to implement the America COMPETES Act, legislation which Sen. Obama co-sponsored. Specifically, the Benton Foundation is calling on President-Elect Obama to take immediate action to establish a Presidential Council on innovation and competitiveness, a provision of the law he helped perfect, but that has been swept under the rug by President Bush.

The Presidential Council envisioned by Congress in the America COMPETES Act would include policymakers at the highest level of government and 50 experts chosen by the President. The report recommends that the Council deliver by January 1, 2010 a National Broadband Strategy, a coherent road map of goals and policies that complement and accelerate efforts in the marketplace to achieve universal adoption of affordable high-speed Internet connections.

Read the executive summary as well as the full report.