Owing to a failure at two SBC nodes in Connecticut, we (along with about one-third of Connecticut) were without Internet and Web connectivity for most of the day. In the meantime, President Bush delivered his speech which included the following:

Now, the use of broadband has tripled since 2000 from 7 million subscriber lines to 24 million. That's good. But that's way short of the goal for 2007. And so -- by the way, we rank 10th amongst the industrialized world in broadband technology and its availability. That's not good enough for America. Tenth is 10 spots too low as far as I'm concerned. (Applause.)

Broadband technology must be affordable. In order to make sure it gets spread to all corners of the country, it must be affordable. We must not tax broadband access. If you want broadband access throughout the society, Congress must ban taxes on access. (Applause.)

Secondly, a proper role for the government is to clear regulatory hurdles so those who are going to make investments do so. Broadband is going to spread because it's going to make sense for private sector companies to spread it so long as the regulatory burden is reduced -- in other words, so long as policy at the government level encourages people to invest, not discourages investment.

And so here are some smart things to do: One, increase access to federal land for fiberoptic cables and transmission towers. That makes sense. As you're trying to get broadband spread throughout the company, make sure it's easy to build across federal lands. One sure way to hold things up is that the federal lands say, you can't build on us. So how is some guy in remote Wyoming going to get any broadband technology? Regulatory policy has got to be wise and smart as we encourage the spread of this important technology. There needs to be technical standards to make possible new broadband technologies, such as the use of high-speed communication directly over power lines. Power lines were for electricity; power lines can be used for broadband technology. So the technical standards need to be changed to encourage that.

And we need to open up more federally controlled wireless spectrum to auction in free public use, to make wireless broadband more accessible, reliable, and affordable. Listen, one of the technologies that's coming is wireless. And if you're living out in -- I should -- I was going to say Crawford, Texas, but it's not -- maybe not nearly as remote. (Laughter.) How about Terlingua, Texas? There's not a lot of wires out there. But wireless technology is going to change all that so long as government policy makes sense.

And we're going to continue to support the Federal Communications Commission. Michael Powell -- Chairman Michael Powell, under his leadership, his decision to eliminate burdensome regulations on new broadband networks availability to homes. In other words, clearing out the underbrush of regulation, and we'll get the spread of broadband technology, and America will be better for it. (Applause.)

President Haynie responded with the attached letter to President Bush. We also put the attached news release on the PR News Wire.

Tomorrow we will encourage members to share their concerns with the White House.

Dave K1ZZ

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