02 Apr Sen. Kerry Promises ‘Aggressive’ Tech Agenda
Wall Street Journal, By Amy Schatz, March 31, 2009
Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the newly resurrected Senate Communications, Technology and the Internet subcommittee, planned to tell cable executives tonight that his panel will be busy this year developing a comprehensive broadband strategy and monitoring how the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds to expand broadband service is spent. Kerry is addressing a dinner with hundreds of cable executives who are in Washington for the industry’s three-day annual trade show. “There are a lot of issues on our plate and we’re teeing up an aggressive subcommittee agenda to deal with them,” he planned to say, according to prepared remarks released by his office. “We’ve got to develop a coherent, comprehensive national approach to broadband service in this country,” Kerry planned to say. “We have to view the $7.2 billion broadband investment in the stimulus package as a down payment on a national strategy to deliver broadband to rural Americans who can’t access it and urban Americans who can’t afford it.”