James Assey, Executive Vice President, NCTA, participated in a Roundtable on Nondiscrimination and Interconnection Obligations held at the Department of Commerce. This was part of a series of public meetings held to discuss the Broadband Initiative portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Mr. Assey's statement included four key points:

• Nondiscrimination and interconnection obligations should be implemented in a manner that furthers the overall statutory goal of rapidly deploying Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) funds.
• Imposing new and untested requirements as a condition of stimulus funding risks injecting contentiousness, uncertainty, and delay into a process that should focus on creating new jobs, increasing broadband availability, and spurring adoption.
• Nondiscrimination obligations applicable to infrastructure grant recipients should be limited to the FCC’s 2005 Broadband Policy Statement, as the ARRA permits.
• Interconnection obligations applicable to infrastructure grant recipients should be defined to require that facilities funded by BTOP grants interconnect directly or indirectly with the public Internet under currently applicable rules and practices.