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COMPTELPlus
|
Monday, April 13, 2015
Beka Publishing,
www.bekapublishing.com4
DAY 1
A
s Google slowly expands its efforts to
promote and provide super high-speed
Internet access, its Vice President of
Access Services Milo Medin becomes a
more prominent industry name.
Part of the Internet development community for
more than 25 years, Medin previously led Google
Fiber, Google’s Gigabit Fiber to the Home project,
along with other efforts to improve Internet access,
including the utilization of unlicensed spectrum to
deliver wireless broadband services. Today, he returns
to COMPTEL PLUS to deliver the keynote during
the opening general session at 10 a.m. in Osceola
Ballroom A. Medin plans to address the “Agenda for
Broadband Abundance.”
Last year, Google started working with 34 cities
in nine metro areas throughout the United States
to explore building new fiber-optic networks in
their communities. And speaking in February at an
event in Washington, D.C., Medin offered a most
enlightening tip for those who want more high-speed
Internet options – clear a path for anyone willing to
build a fiber network: “Tell your town to get rid of its
fax machine, touch up its maps and streamline the
permitting process,” he said.
Today, Google Fiber is available in Austin, Texas;
Kansas City, Kan.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Provo, Utah.
The company is building out its gigabit-to-the home
service in Charlotte, Atlanta and Nashville, Salt Lake
City, and in towns in the Raleigh-Durham area.
During his February appearance, Medin explained
that although Google Fiber has worked closely
with municipalities and utilities around the country
to deploy state-of-the-art
gigabit fiber-to-the-home,
a number of challenges and
barriers to entry still exists
and requires sustained atten-
tion and action. For example,
existing FCC rules still permit
infrastructure owners to
delay competitive broadband
entrants’ build-out efforts
through protracted timelines
for the necessary engineering
work and unnecessary limi-
tations on the ability of
entrants to hire independent,
utility-approved contractors
to speed up the work.
He concluded with the
reminder that in addition to removing barriers to fiber
deployment, policy makers need to move quickly to
implement spectrum proposals to expand licensed
and unlicensed access to spectrum both above and
below 1 GHz.
Prior to joining Google in 2010, Medin was
founder and CTO of M2Z Networks, a company
that sought to deploy a national broadband wireless
network system that will expand consumer network
access by providing nationwide portable broadband
service that was also to help bridge the digital divide.
He also was co-founder and the CTO of Excite@
Home, where he led the development of the compa-
ny’s national infrastructure, and helped to deliver the
first large scale residential broadband access service
in partnership with major cable operators.
Earlier, he worked at NASA’s Ames Research
Center, where he managed the primary West Coast
interconnect for the Internet, and was the architect
and manager of the global NASA Science Internet.
As a University of California at Berkeley student, he
worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Labo-
ratory, programming high performance computers
in support of various defense programs.
Medin has participated in a number of public
policy forums, including two National Academy
of Sciences panels and a variety of TechNet initia-
tives. He also has testified before Congress and the
Federal Communications Commission on broad-
band technology policy.
o
Google Keynoter Promotes Faster Speeds
Nelson Discusses at Senate Telecom Issues
T
he ranking minority member on the
Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science
& Transportation, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.)
will deliver the Congressional Keynote
today at 9:15 a.m., in the Osceola Ballroom A and
will provide an outlook of the 114th Congress and
communications-related issues before the Senate
Commerce Committee.
Nelson, who has been in the U.S. Senate since
2001, is on the Commerce Committee, which has
jurisdiction over a range of issues from telecom,
Internet and technology to transportation and even
to the nation’s space program, which he knows a little
something about after becoming only the second
sitting member of the U.S. Congress to fly into space.
In 1986, he served as a payload specialist on the Space
Shuttle Columbia, orbiting the Earth for six days.
“From that perspective, you can see howwe’re all in
this together,” Nelson has said of the experience. “If we
could just remember that, we’d sure get
a lot more done.”
It’s from that perspective that
Nelson has earned a reputation as
a thoughtful, moderate voice in the
world of partisan politics.
With a long public-service career that
began when he was elected to the Florida
House of Representatives in 1973, Nelson
was singled out byVice President Joe
Biden as the reason the current admin-
istration was able to win the Sunshine
State during the 2012 election.
As a U.S. Senator, Nelson has stood up to the insur-
ance industry, Wall Street banks and big oil. He exposed
mistruths stated by British Petroleum regarding the
April 2010 Gulf oil spill, and he has created a blueprint
forward for NASA. He also continues to advocate for
federal policies that protect consumers and competi-
tion while encouraging innovation and
entrepreneurship.
Nelson was born in Miami, but he
grew up in Melbourne, Fla. His father
died when he was 14, and he lost his
mother 10 years later.
As a teen, Nelson served as presi-
dent of Kiwanis-sponsored Key Club
International in 1959-60. He attended
the University of Florida, where he
was a member of Florida Blue Key, and
the Beta Theta Pi social fraternity. He
transferred to Yale University, and he
received a law degree from the University of Virginia.
In 1965, he joined theU.S. Army Reserve and servedon
active duty from1968 to 1970, attaining the rank of captain.
He alsowas admitted to the Florida bar in 1968, and began
practicing law inMelbourne in 1970. In 1971, heworked as
legislative assistant to thenGov. ReubinAskew.
o
Sen. Bill Nelson
Milo Medin