Expert Advice: Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group

Sometimes if you ask enough smart people what they think you actually get good ideas.  And when enough smart people are sharing lots of good ideas, there’s even the chance that those ideas will turn into solutions that benefit all of us.  Something like that is behind the recent announcement of a Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG), a group we helped to launch.    

The BITAG brings together leading broadband providers, high-tech companies and Internet content providers.  These include AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, DISH Network, EchoStar, Google, Intel, Level 3, Microsoft, Verizon - and Time Warner Cable.  It will be managed by an independent and expert facilitator, Adjunct Professor Dale Hatfield of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a former FCC Chief Technologist who is executive director of the highly-respected Silicon Flatirons Center.

The goal of the BITAG is to provide an inter-industry forum to allow technical and engineering experts to discuss technical issues and develop best practices related to matters that affect the consumer broadband experience.  This is not intended to replace the FCC or displace any other enforcement agency’s role.  Instead, participants hope the BITAG can play a helpful role to resolve issues before they turn into disputes by shedding light from different technical points of view. 

An advisory group like this can play a wide range of helpful roles.  For example, it can provide technical guidance in response to questions from industry or consumers.  It can identify best practices for industry.  And it can propose safe harbors that give clarity to stakeholders.  While dispute resolution is not among its initial functions, the participants have left the door open to the possibility of that role sometime in the future. 

Perhaps as important as the formal roles a group like this can play is the message its formation conveys.  Companies with different services and priorities all see the value of reducing unnecessary conflict about the way the Internet is working.  That’s a good thing for customers because it means more time spent on making the Internet work better.  And it’s a good thing for companies like ours, because it means less time spent on unnecessary adversarial processes. 

No one expects the BITAG to solve Internet policy problems, nor should it.  But a more cooperative environment to address technical issues can certainly help everyone by giving good ideas a better platform so consumers can benefit sooner from them.  We believe that by helping to launch the BITAG we are helping solve problems and build a better broadband Internet.  And that’s something our customers will like.

Categories: Broadband Penetration/Deployment, Net Neutrality, What's New