The U.S. National Broadband Plan must tackle the nation’s broadband adoption not just focus on its access issues, a group of industry insiders said this week at Supercomm’s National Broadband Strategy Conference.

 

But widespread broadband adoption should be addressed without the need to implement regulations, industry leaders said. That would only slow down private investment in broadband infrastructure, Telephony Online (News - Alert) reported.

 

“We see towns with 100 percent coverage and they have a choice between two wireline broadband providers and three 3G providers, and 50 percent of them don’t choose broadband,” Bob Udell, senior vice president of telephone operations, for independent telco, Consolidated Communications (News - Alert), said. “For some its economic reasons, for others, lifestyle reasons.”

The fact that 95 percent of Americans can access broadband, but one-third don’t want to buy it has broader implications for the U.S. economy and should be addressed, Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs at AT&T (News - Alert). 

“If you believe in broadband and the good it can do for this country, that’s something we have to tackle,” Cicconi said, according to Telephony Online.

John Horrigan, the consumer research director for the omnibus broadband initiative at the Federal Communications Commission, said the agency is issuing a survey to determine why consumers who can receive broadband don’t, the report said.

 

Some 2,200 applications totaling$28 billion have been submitted from various organizations, cities and states seeking federal funding. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce agency that advises the president on telecom policy, said it plans to start awarding grants for the first round of funding in early November.

 

A number of speakers also used the panel as a forum to caution the Federal Communications Commission against Net Neutrality legislation that could discourage broadband investment.

 

Bruce Melman, co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance (News - Alert), a non-profit group that has argued against net neutrality rules, pointed to research that showed a 2 percent drop in investment in the telecom sector that would result a 31,000 job loss in the economy. Meanwhile, a 10 percent dip would produce result in a 156,000 job loss, he said.

 

For example, Cicconi said AT&T didn’t apply for broadband stimulus funding because of felt that there were overly restrictive regulatory strings attached.

 

“They put regulatory strings on this money and requirements that are very akin to some of the Net Neutrality requirements being pushed currently,” Telephony Online reported. “We considered them overly constraining and that was absolutely a major factor in AT&T‘s decision not to apply. If we are not going to take government money for free with those kinds of strings attached, why would we invest our own under those same circumstances?”