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Representative Cliff Stearns (R-Fl) will deliver opening remarks at TPI’s July 24th event on Information and Privacy: What are the Tradeoffs? Stearns, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, has been in a leader on online privacy issues for many years.

The universal service program is coming under increasing pressure: expenditures for old-fashioned voice service, especially in the high-cost fund, are growing rapidly even as many policymakers are calling for the fund to also include broadband. Even without including broadband, consumers are already paying higher taxes for these increased expenditures. This seminar will address questions of how to reform the fund, including ways of controlling growth in the high-cost fund, such as reverse auctions, and how to incorporate broadband in an efficient and equitable manner.

Online advertising uses customer information to target messages to consumers’ interests. The resulting advertising revenues support an array of innovative new online services, which consumers can often use for free. But as the use of information online has increased, so have concerns about privacy. More privacy, however, would mean less information, less valuable advertising, and thus fewer resources available for producing new low-priced services. It is this tradeoff that Congress needs to take into account as it considers new privacy legislation. TPI has assembled a group of experts to discuss how policy makers should address the tradeoffs inherent in privacy policy.

The Obama Administration is increasingly looking at approaches other countries have taken as it continues to formulate its broadband strategy. This Congressional Seminar will address key questions of how the U.S. broadband market is developing, how competition in the U.S. compares to elsewhere, and how various policy prescriptions, such as open access and functional separation, would be likely to affect investment.

Broadband Competition Policy: What Comes After the Stimulus?; Universal Service Reform; Information and Privacy: What are the Tradeoffs?

Incorporating energy efficiency into a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) allows greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goals to be achieved at lower cost, but is still a second-best solution, according to a new paper by TPI President and Senior Fellow Thomas Lenard. Such standards are part of climate change legislation now being considered in the Congress.

Congress is writing major climate change legislation that includes a cap-and-trade program as well as renewable electricity and efficiency mandates. Cap-and-trade represents a market-based approach designed to leave choices about least-cost ways of achieving climate-change policy goals to individual producers and consumers. Renewable electricity and efficiency standards prescribe specific approaches. Are these policies consistent with each other? How should they be combined? TPI has assembled a group of experts to discuss these issues.