San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo quits FCC broadband advisory board

Source: The Mercury News




PUBLISHED: January 25, 2018 at 11:59 am | UPDATED: January 25, 2018 at 3:02 pm

San Jose’s mayor on Thursday quit a Federal Communications Commission broadband advisory board, decrying its lack of progress and saying the group seems to be working for the interests of the telecom industry and not the public. The board was formed a year ago to explore speeding up deployment of high-speed internet access.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who was vice chair of a working group that aimed to establish a model code for municipalities, described this week’s meeting in Washington, D.C., as dominated by business interests.

“I knew going into this that it would be an uphill battle,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. Liccardo is still in Washington for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

“One working group, which did not have a single municipal representative among its 30+ participants, created a draft model state code that included provisions to eliminate all municipal control over when, how, and whether to accept industry applications for infrastructure deployment,” Liccardo wrote in his resignation letter, which was addressed to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Read more: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/25/san-jose-mayor-sam-liccardo-quits-fcc-broadband-advisory-board/