FCC Opens New Tech Tire-Kicking Center

National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell will be among those helping FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski cut the ribbon on the commission's new Technology Experience Center July 13 at FCC headquarters in Washington.

The Center will showcase new broadband and broadcast technology and products for employees and FCC visitors, with all the product donated by 20 companies--Comcast, DirecTV, GENBAND, Grooveshark, HTC, iBiquity, Lexis-Nexis, Livio Radio, Microsoft, Motorola, Open Mobile Video Coalition, Panasonic, Research in Motion, Sprint, Samsung, Sonos, Verizon and Verizon Wireless.

Each month will showcase products around a different theme, this month's being "innovation and spectrum."

The National Association of Broadcasters, which has been pushing the value of innovative uses of broadcast spectrum, will be represented at the ribbon-cutting by Kevin Gage, its new chief technology officer. Also on hand will be representatives from the Consumer Electronics Association, Consumers union, and CTIA: The Wireless Association.

But according to an FCC spokesperson, Genachowski, in brief remarks, will "spotlight the kinds of broadband-enabled technologies (devices and apps) that can't exist without the benefits of high-speed internet."

The FCC announced the creation of the center last October "to promote better employee understanding of the current state of technology in the industries in which the Commission oversees," according to the spokesman.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.