Stanford Law School

Stanford Center for Internet and Society

In the heart of the Silicon Valley, legal doctrine is emerging that will determine the course of civil rights and technological innovation for decades to come. The Center for Internet and Society (CIS), housed at Stanford Law School and a part of the Law, Science and Technology Program, is at the apex of this evolving area of law.

Universal Service in the Broadband Age

by Mark Cooper, posted on March 25, 2009 - 7:05pm

Proposal to serve those without braodband available by using stimulus funding to deploy middle mile fiber and provision the first mile with cutting edge wireless broadband. Thess "no regrets" policies get the biggest bang for the buck and meet the fundamntal goal of the Communications Act to deliver to 'all people of the United States, adquate facilities at reasonable charges.' Middle mile fiber is necessary to deliver broadband no matter what tehcnology is used for the first mile. Cutting edge wireless is a "two-fer" in unserved areas. The unserved receive mobile computing, which will be a permananet feature of the 21st century communications ecology, and they get service that supports the applications necessary for eocnomic, social and civic participation in cyberspace, which is a vast improvmeent on what they currently have available.