The Digital Broadband Migration: Toward a Regulatory Regime

The transformation of telecommunications from an analog, narrowband network optimized for voice to a digital, broadband network optimized for data traffic has created a slew of challenges for businesses, policymakers, and academics alike. In the fall of 2000, as he prepared to take the helm at the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Powell analogized this transition to one of people having to “migrate” across continents. Like the migrations taken by ancient peoples, the transition to a digital, broadband environment is painful and will not happen overnight. Consequently, as increasing numbers of users are adopting digital products and services that are networked through broadband connections, it is now an opportune time to evaluate the issues that policymakers, academics, and businesses will confront over the course of this transition.

This conference will examine three central areas of regulatory policy associated with the Internet age: broadband policy, digital rights management, and privacy and security policy. Our principal speakers will be Chairman Powell, who has spearheaded a set of regulatory responses to these issues and Craig Mundie, the Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft, the most powerful and successful computer company. With a thoughtful array of leaders from academic, industry, and governmental circles, we believe that this conference will continue the Silicon Flatirons’ tradition of encouraging “bolder thinking” in Boulder. Like its predecessors, the proceedings from this conference will be published in the Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law.