One substantial achievement, announced earlier this month, will make it much easier for Tribes to gain access to USDA funding for water and sewer improvement projects, electrical system upgrades and telecommunications services including broadband.
In partnership with the likes of MIT and Georgia Tech, Pirelli Labs is studying telecommunications technologies like broadband access and photonics, which can feed back into Tel Italia, and new materials for tires and environmental cleanup.
One of his 2007 picks is KT, a wireless broadband and telecommunications company in South Korea.
The company also holds stakes in Asian telecommunications companies planning to deliver broadband and wireless net access, among them a joint venture with NTTDoCoMo in Japan and Korea's Thrunet.
Further, thanks to planned investments by companies like Cisco, 3Com, Lucent, Microsoft, United Technologies, Motorola and Texas Instruments, if Congress approves normal trade with China, expect American and world markets to be flooded with ever higher-tech Chinese goods: broadband routers, telecommunications switches, semiconductors, servers, applications software and aerospace engine parts.
Consumers will see a benefit in clearer pictures, more programming and more broadband space for other telecommunications services.
Another rival BSkyB is facing on the broadband front is BT Group, Britain's former telecommunications monopoly, which recently launched a digital TV service called BT Vision to all its broadband customers.
But with NTL due to change its name to Virgin Media next year, NTL also has UK commercial broadcaster ITV in its sights as a takeover target, part of its plans to offer television as well as broadband, fixed-line and mobile telecommunications services.
However, the conventional wisdom was that Comcast had won itself a battle but would ultimately lose the war in spectacular fashion, since the obvious move for the FCC would have been to reclassify broadband access as a Title II "telecommunications service, " which is the same way the agency regulates wireline phones, and ISPs would have suddenly found themselves in a regulatory nightmare.
ENGADGET: FCC outlines new 'third way' internet regulatory plan, will split access from content
It proposed a worldwide distribution system called GIBN -- Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks -- at a Paris meeting of telecommunications officials from the world's seven richest industrial countries.
But depending on how the court rules, it could have far-ranging repercussions on how broadband Internet is sold and how much power the FCC has to govern the telecommunications industry.
The Broadband Commission for Digital Development was established in 2010 by UNESCO and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), with the support of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to promote the adoption of broadband-friendly practice and policies.
To this end the Conference recommended that media should advocate for the full liberalisation of the telecommunications sector in parts of the region where this has not yet been achieved and for more and cheaper broadband services.
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