Chairman, CEO and President of tw telecom, Larissa Herdam, called on the competitive business broadband providers to engage Congress and the FCC in establishing a national Broadband Policy for Businesses that will spur innovation for enterprises and create jobs in a New Broadband Economy.

A comprehensive broadband policy for businesses is foundational to create the growth, efficiency and reduced costs that all American businesses need in order to deal with this recession, according to Herda.

"We must enable the enterprise with technological solutions that will propel and accelerate growth," she said. "We can continue the path of the last decade, permitting consolidation and deregulation to limit competition and forestall innovation. Or, we can develop a meaningful broadband policy for businesses, and truly unleash the power of competition for the benefit of the entire U.S. economy...A comprehensive broadband policy for business must focus on better, more efficient, more scalable ways to interconnect with the incumbents."

Herda sees a fundamental shift in the strategies enterprise customers are adopting and implementing towards an applications environment that supports initiatives like: Collaboration, Web 2.0 applications, Software as a Service, Ethernet and Storage, Telepresence, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, Green IT and Cloud Computing; all of which require massive amounts of data bandwidth.

"Demand for bandwidth is growing - exponentially," Herda said. "Yet, access to the end user customers and the buildings is generally constrained - limited to the facilities available only from the incumbent. This limited access often means higher prices and less innovation, which inflicts harm not just on our business, but more importantly on the hospitals, schools, banks, and government agencies on which our nation depends for economic progress."

"The bottom line is that competition drives innovation," Herda added. "We need a healthy competitive environment to spur innovation that delivers better solutions to the enterprise customer because that will lead to a more stable and healthy economy."

Herda urged the assembly to fight for a national business broadband policy that includes three critical points -- effective regulation of Special Access, including Ethernet services, and UNE last-mile facilities; interconnection for IP voice and data services; and a reform or elimination of the forbearance process.