Net Neutrality Vets Join Obama FCC Transition Team

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 15, 2008 @01:14AM from the setting-the-table dept.

circleid writes "The Obama-Biden transition team on Friday named two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up its Federal Communications Commission Review team. Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, member of the board of directors of ICANN, and OneWebDay founder, as well as Kevin Werbach, former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC. 'Both are highly-regarded outside-the-Beltway experts in telecom policy, and they've both been pretty harsh critics of the Bush administration's telecom policies in the past year.' The choice of the duo strongly signals an entirely different approach to the incumbent-friendly telecom policy-making that's characterized most of the past eight-years at the FCC." Reuters has a related story about Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who plans to introduce net neutrality legislation in January.

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First thing the Bush admin did by Nicolas+MONNET · 2008-11-15 05:34 · Score: 5, Informative

The Clinton FCC had forced phone companies and cable companies to lease their lines to competitors at fair prices.
One of the first things the Bush FCC did was to undo this.
(The exact opposite happened in France around the same time; the EU forced phone line unbundling to the former state monopoly. Result? Cheap, abundant broadband)