Broadband consultant frustrated with Beltway policy making
Craig Settles, a broadband industry consultant and president of Successful.com, as a D.C. outsider is frustrated with the ways of decision-making inside the Beltway.
Broadband industry analyst Craig Settles is frustrated with the way Washington works when visionaries try to implement new ideas, such as the National Broadband Plan.
"I think the biggest problem with Washington is that it functions in a way that perpetuates sameness and you can try to work against it, but you kind of keep getting bounced back into the same process, the same way of thinking,” Settles said. “You are responding in X way because you have always responded in X way because the people on the other side of the table have always responded in X way.”
“So, someone comes along from outside the bubble and says if you did this really differently you would get better results then everybody freaks out,” Settles said.
He spoke earlier this month at a discussion on the plan co-hosted by tech blog GigaOm. Also on the program was Blair Levin, the architect of the plan for the Federal Communications Commission and a former FCC chief of staff.
Settles, president of Successful.com, took the role of a beltway outsider in the discussion.
“The road between the bill and the program is a bear of a process,” Settles said. “It can be a nightmare. In a nightmare process things can happen to the program that intent gets shafted. I feel very strongly that congressional intent does not work its way all the way to implementation when the final tally is going to be had on the Broadband Stimulus Program. There are some final outcomes that differ from the original intent in the bill."