Senate: Does Broadband Rollout Measure Up?

The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a full-committee hearing on the state of U.S. broadband deployment, "Communications, Broadband and Competitiveness: How Does the U.S. Measure Up?"

The hearing will be held April 24 at 10 a.m.

Congressional and FCC Democrats have been generally critical of the state of the broadband rollout, citing statistics that place the U.S. out of the top-15 in broadband deployment.

No witness list yet, but FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has countered that the statistics are misleading and that broadband deployment has made gains under his watch. He has cited that deployment as one of the reasons behind the FCC's adoption of video franchise rule Change's that make it easier for telcos to deploy their networks.

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.