PREPARED REMARKS CHAIRMAN JULIUS GENACHOWSKI JUNE 14, 2012 WASHINGTON, D.C. OSTP EXECUTIVE ORDER/U.S. IGNITE LAUNCH EVENT Good morning. Thank you to John Holdren and OSTP for hosting today’s event and inviting me to participate. Thank you to President Obama for issuing today’s Executive Order removing barriers to broadband infrastructure deployment on federal lands and buildings, making it easier to deploy high-speed Internet across the country. This is a big deal. As the President has said repeatedly, the U.S. has led the world economically because we have led the world in innovation. In the 21st century, broadband – wired and wireless – is our innovation infrastructure. Broadband is reshaping our economy and our lives more profoundly than any new technology since electricity. And broadband has enormous potential to help advance national goals around education, energy, public safety, and health care. I'm glad to see so many people here today who have helped focus the country on the opportunities of broadband. Todd Park, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, did great work harnessing technology and innovation at HHS. We're fortunate that Todd has brought his vision and energy to the White House, operating on an even broader platform. I am pleased to see Larry Strickling from NTIA. Under Larry’s leadership, NTIA is managing a Recovery Act broadband program that is benefitting communities across America. I'm glad to see private sector participation here. John Donovan from AT&T, which announced earlier this year $50 million in broadband investment to rural Mississippi based in part on the FCC’s Universal Service Reforms. I am also pleased to see Marc Ganzi, who has been a constant source of practical ideas to accelerate broadband buildout. Thanks to Tom Wheeler for your leadership on these issues. And I'm glad to see new initiatives like Gig.U represented here. Of course, Blair Levin was the leader of our effort at the FCC to develop our country's first National Broadband Plan– a strategy to ensure the U.S. has a world-leading broadband ecosystem. 2It’s an exciting time in the world of broadband. So many great things are happening in our broadband economy. For example, we have now regained our global leadership in mobile innovation. Our "apps economy" is unparalleled, and the envy of the world. The U.S. is now ahead of the world in deploying 4G mobile broadband at scale – with 64% of the world’s 4G LTE subscribers here in the U.S. And the U.S. has more Wi-Fi spots than any other country. On wired, in the last three years we've gone from 20 percent of our population living in areas with infrastructure capable of delivering 100+ megabits to 80 percent. Private investment, innovation, job creation in the broadband economy – all up, all moving in the right direction. But, there’s no rest for the weary. There’s a lot of work to do and many challenges ahead. To lead the world in innovation, we need to unleash more spectrum and drive greater efficiency. We need to increase our broadband adoption rate. And we need to keep driving greater broadband speeds and capacity - because to foster innovation we need a mindset of abundance not scarcity. Now, a key part of the plan to meet those goals is to remove barriers to broadband infrastructure deployment - to drive more private investment, and to get more broadband bang for the investment buck. This has been one of the Commission’s highest priorities since I became Chairman. That’s why we launched a Broadband Acceleration Initiative to identify unnecessary barriers to broadband buildout and propose solutions. As part of the Initiative, we established a 90-day shot clock to speed the local approval process for tower and antennae siting. We’ve also streamlined and reduced the cost of obtaining permits and access to pole attachments and rights-of-way. “Dig Once” is another great idea. It was a recommendation of the National Broadband Plan. I tasked the FCC’s Technology Advisory Council, or TAC, chaired by Tom Wheeler, to prioritize recommendations on actions to tackle challenges to broadband buildout. One of TAC’s first recommendations was for an Executive Order to speed broadband deployment on federal lands and buildings. Today, I’m so pleased the President issued an Executive Order to tackle this problem. This Executive Order will foster job creation by reforming the procedures for access to federal lands and buildings – making buildout faster and cheaper. 3It also will fuel economic growth by facilitating the construction of broadband facilities in Indian Country, and encouraging the deployment of broadband facilities in conjunction with federally funded highway construction. This Executive Order is also an example of how we can make government more efficient. It creates a process for streamlining and harmonizing federal regulations and standardizing contracting. The result will be cost-savings for taxpayers and private industry. I strongly support this Executive Order and look forward to working with other agencies on its implementation. But, it’s not enough for government to just remove barriers and get out of the way. Government should be proactive in encouraging nonprofit and other private sector stakeholders to collaborate to achieve national goals. For example, the FCC worked with outside partners to launch Connect2Compete to tackle the barriers to adoption. I was just in San Diego to announce the program’s first pilot, which, with the support of the cable industry, is helping low-income families subscribe to broadband for less than $10 a month. Today, we also announce the launch of a new public-private partnership: U.S. Ignite. U.S. Ignite is a complement to C2C – it brings together industry, communities, and campuses to ensure there are new waves of high-speed applications that meet the needs of these communities. U.S. Ignite is also a complement to Gig.U, a coalition of leading research universities working in partnership with their local communities and broadband providers to accelerate the deployment of ultra high-speed broadband networks. An important example of this is the U.S. Ignite partner at the University of Missouri, which is creating a new remote patient monitoring network utilizing HD videoconferencing and electronic medical records. I am pleased that this project will draw on the telehealth expertise of the Missouri Telehealth Network, one of the FCC's rural health care pilot projects. I expect that American innovators and entrepreneurs will come up with other new ideas to take advantage of the capacity of these networks to develop new, breakthrough applications. It’s about a mindset of abundance, not scarcity. Broadband-enabled innovation is essential to our economy and competitiveness. Today we take two important steps forward to grow our economy, create jobs, and ensure U.S. leadership. 4Thank you.