Latoya Livingston shared her remarks on net neutrality before the Penn/Fordham Digital Diversity Workshop recently held in New York City.

Ms. Livingston lays out a cogent and valid argument for allowing strategic partnerships between minority content providers and broadband access providers. Her analysis that paid prioritized services for larger content providers will bring in greater revenues that can be used to pay for upfront network costs is also economically sound.

This market approach provides a faster and more efficient mechanism for promoting the adoption of broadband among minority communities while providing entrepreneurs access to broadband networks for delivery of their content.

Two technological achievements amaze me still to this very day: airplanes and cell phones. I’ve often said I’d rather be in the cockpit of a Cessna flying from Frederick to Baltimore rather than driving five minutes to the grocery store. It’s a lot safer and saner in the air.

The telephone also amazes me. I still look at it as two cans connected by a string, but with a bunch of electronics that help to boost the signal. Cell phones are even more amazing, but in the end are merely suped up radios. When you look at the history of cell phones and airplanes, their early uses share a common thread: productivity.

Both technologies were developed and promoted to make commerce easier. While one technology carried mail and business passengers, the other carried voice messages. Today the cell phone can do much more than carry voice messages, but as an article by the Associated Press’ Jesse Washington points out, minorities are not doing much with today’s 4G technology except for entertaining ourselves.

Mr. Washington described how African Americans and Latinos appear not to be using mobile technology for productive purposes, placing a greater emphasis on video games and social networks. It’s too bad, especially given the Obama administration’s push to build out our digital infrastructure. It’s part of his winning the future vision.

But if we are to out-compete, out-build, and out-innovate in order to get our economy moving again, I think that all portions of the population will have to focus on the substance of commerce and creation. So far I haven’t come across much of any policies designed to inspire a productive mindset versus the uber-focus on consumption.

Entertainment is good. It’s fun. Just ask Justin Bieber. But given the state of joblessness, and the restructuring of the workplace and its needs, I’d prefer some of Esperanza Spaulding’s depth right about now.

I had the opportunity to attend the Congressional Internet Policy Forum sponsored by Innovation Generation and the Minority Media & Telecom Council. Given the rapid changes in technology, the high level of unemployment for African and Hispanic Americans, and our national productivity gap, this forum took on additional importance.

One thing that came to mind as I listened to the participants was the need for regulatory policies that would encourage investment in broadband as a means of production.

The Internet is about information exchange and at the forefront of information gathering and distribution are the increasing number of minority content producers. For example, I have contributed to two online publications that have started up within the past twelve months. One publication specializes in reporting on policies and political events that have a particular impact on the African American community. The other focuses on general news that impacts predominantly African American neighborhoods in southwest Atlanta, including the historic West End district.

As unemployment for blacks hovers at twice the national rate, the Internet offers opportunities for entrepreneurs in the information business. Their content cannot reach their natural markets if broadband access providers are burdened with unnecessary franchise fees and requirements. Costly requirements force access providers to deploy mainly in high income areas while lower income areas are put on a digital waiting list for service. In addition, costly regulatory requirements get passed on to consumers, in many instances to the very minority consumers we are trying to reach.

Hopefully policymakers will seriously consider the adage that less means more.

My mother, a 67-year old grandmother who lives alone, called me about her cell phone bill. She was “shocked” at the 30% increase in the bill amount. A couple days later my sister, eight-year old son, and I stopped over to my mom’s place and the subject of the bill came up. My son, who is shock averse, quickly dispatched himself to the back room to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants. After an hour or so we came up with a strategy for working around any future “bill shock” problems.

My mother, who only has a high school diploma from night school, determined that given her calling behavior and the number of local, long distance, and international calls she makes, plus her mobility, that an alternative combination of existing telecommunications services could best be employed to avoid any future “bill shock.” Applying the alternative services, she is now able to make more calls anytime she likes at a lower price.

My mother is the example of a proactive consumer. This is a far cry from the “Ooops, I messed up so let me blame someone else” consumer that Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski appears prepared to defend. Consumers like an executive Mr. Genachowski referred to in a speech on bill shock three months ago. It seems that this executive was shocked that his cell phone bill would run a couple thousand dollars after transferring data overseas.

I repeat. Overseas. You would think that an educated international jet setting executive would have the presence of mind to expect that in a foreign jurisdiction there would be different rules regarding telephone rates just like there are different prices for eating overseas.

Yet, Mr. Genachowski would like the mobile telephone industry to find more ways to use technology to alert consumers when they may be going over their minutes based on his executive‘s dilemma and other outlier consumers. And lets not forget driving up our cell phone bills in the process.

Heck. I was under the impression that we were running out of spectrum. I may have been wrong.

Look. I have no problem with cell phone companies disclosing their rates, terms, and conditions each month in cell phone bills. It is a bit much, however, to require them to reconfigure their billing systems to send me an alert about possibly going over my minutes of use limit when all I have to do is look at the clock on my phone, determine how long I talked, and subtract the talk time from my monthly minutes.

We already have the technology for knowing when we are running out of minutes. It’s called our brains and eyes. I don’t want another line item that says “bill shock avoidance fee” on my bill either. Besides, doesn’t everyone have a sexy female voice on their phones telling them how many minutes they have left anyway?

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Here is a line from the Federal Communications Commission’s recently released net neutrality report and order.

“We expect that open Internet protections will help close the digital divide by maintaining relatively low barriers to entry for underrepresented groups and allowing for the development of diverse content, applications, and services.”

Interesting. The FCC also said in this order that the rules are little different from the net neutrality principles currently in place. If that is the case, that these principles now codified in proposed rules are just a tad over the status quo, why should we believe that all of a sudden net neutrality is supposed to help close the digital divide? The divide has been gaping with these principles in place, meaning that they have not and probably will not contribute to greater broadband adoption by minority groups.

I’m not surprised by the FCC’s equivocal verbiage. After all, this is the same agency that has done next to nothing when it comes to monitoring the lack of employment opportunities in media for minorities and the dearth in access to capital by underrepresented groups.