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Technology & Communications

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Economists have long recognized that technological innovation and enhanced communication increase productivity and reduce friction in economic activity.  And never before has technology’s impact on economic growth been as evident as it is today.

At IPI, we focus on technology and communications policy not only because it’s critical to economic growth, but also because government’s inherent tendency to regulate prospectively poses an active threat to the economic gains and lifestyle enhancements made possible by technological innovation.

The communications and technology industries are among the country’s most competitive and the biggest capital investors in the U.S. economy, and are thus prime engines of economic growth and job creation. It is critical that public policy encourages continued innovation and investment in the tech sector, and that we don’t limit the innovation upside with counterproductive taxes and regulations.

January 28, 2013

Comments to the FCC Urging Test Migrations from PSTN to IP-based Networks

IPI urges the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do its part to speed the transition from the legacy PSTN to IP-based networks by allowing test migrations in specific geographic areas, and by reforming several other archaic regulations.

January 28, 2013

FCC Should Help Speed Transition from Circuit-Switched Networks to IP

In comments filed with the FCC, IPI experts urged the agency to help speed the transition from the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) to IP-based networks by reforming archaic regulations and especially through proposed test-case migrations onto IP networks.

January 28, 2013

In Technology Policy, Doing Less Means Getting More

In the midst of one of the worst economic downturns in history, the Internet economy is one of the few areas where investment in research, infrastructure, and facilities, and consumer spending on products and services, continues at a strong pace.

January 28, 2013

States Will Play a Big Role in Health IT

Health care is entering the telecommunications age, and that development has significant ramifications for the access, cost and quality of health care. States have not been involved yet, but they soon will be.

January 24, 2013

Innovation, Not Legislation, Is Reforming the Health Care System

The stuff of science fiction is now becoming medical reality as innovation, rather than legislation, improves the health care system.

December 21, 2012

ALEC Eyes IP Regulation Laws, Municipal Broadband Reservations for 2013 Priorities

ALEC's Communications and Technology Task Force is examining "uber trends" affecting the telecom world, big changes that won't be easy to "crystallize into model legislation," as the heavyweight organization has often done in the past, said IPI's Bartlett Cleland, Private Chair.

December 20, 2012

Santa Clause Workshop

Over the last few years regulators seem to have been handing out gifts to those they deem worthy even as they bestow lumps of coal and switches to others who have not caught their fancy, most recently in Kansas City, Kansas. Call it a regulatory Santa Clause workshop.

December 13, 2012

The Back Room Sales Pitch to Raise Your Taxes on the Internet

Last week state elected officials swarmed Capitol Hill to pressure Congress to support the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act. Congress owes the country an open, recorded debate before risking the United of our United States.

December 7, 2012

The Fight Is Just Beginning for International Control of the Internet

The U.S. will need to hang tough in the global debate about who controls the Internet, stay committed to its fundamental principles, and perhaps convince the members of the ITU that only a unanimous vote will change the rules so that a block of repressive regimes cannot force a change. If not the only option may be a disconnecting from the global Internet.

November 29, 2012

Antitrust Troubling in an Innovation Economy

Just as competitors lobbied to have the government restrict Microsoft in the 1990s others are now lobbying to harm Google by trying to convince the iron hand of government to squeeze the company and limit its competitive abilities.

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