Yvonne Berg
I was in Ottawa for the International Institute of Communications' telecom policy conference and managed to pull aside and chat with the man responsible for creating America's national broadband plan .
Blair Levin, who left the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in May, is now a telecommunications and society fellow at the Aspen Institute, a think tank.
He had some interesting and practical things to say about national broadband strategies and connecting rural areas in an era of global austerity, and his ideas are clearly rooted in the pragmatism he was forced to adopt in order to help the FCC push through their strategy. Some may think he's not being ambitious enough for rural areas (in terms of speeds or quality of service for rural areas), but this is a man who had to balance a lot of rivalling concerns – as the Canadian government is being forced to do right now.
All of this, of course, comes shortly after The Globe ran a series on the Internet, which included a piece I wrote about connecting rural communities.
Here's an audio clip of our conversation (near the hotel bar at the Crowne Plaza, which explains the weird background noise).