New Networks Institute was established in 1992 as a telecommunications market research and consulting firm focusing on the Public Interest. Today it acts as the Managing Director of a consortium known as the IRREGULATORS.
The IRREGULATORS: An Independent, Expert Telecom Team
The IRREGULATORS is an independent, expert Telecom Team comprised of senior telecom experts, analysts, forensic auditors, and lawyers who are former senior staffers from the FCC, state advocate and Attorneys General Office experts and lawyers, as well as former telco consultants. Members of the group have been working together, in different configurations, since 1999.
Bruce Kushnick
Bruce Kushnick is the Executive Director of New Networks has been a telecom analyst for over 30 years. If you ever used a touchtone phone, saw the phone number of the caller or listened to a recording over the last three decades, odds are Bruce Kushnick had something to do with it. In 1985, as Senior Telecom Analyst for IDC/Link, (a subsidiary of International Data Corp), Kushnick’s 1985 report (a best seller) predicted that the addition of new technologies and new networks would change the way America used communications. In 1992, Kushnick helped to invent and deploy the first 3-digit phone service, “511” with Cox Newspapers. In 1992, Kushnick also started New Networks Institute; in 2002 Kushnick was one of the founders that established Teletruth, a telecom advocacy group that was a member of the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee. Kushnick’s new book “The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net”, released May 2015, is the third in a trilogy spanning 18 years.
David Bergmann, Esq
Bergmann worked as an attorney and then Assistant Consumers’ Counsel for the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s residential utility consumer advocate, for almost 30 years. In 2007 he received the “Outstanding Service Award,” the first of its kind, from the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA), a non-profit, national organization of state offices in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia designated to represent consumers in state and federal utility proceedings. NASUCA stated that “His passion for helping to protect consumers has spread across the country through his role as a key organizer of federal telecommunications work performed on behalf of the nation’s telephone consumers.” In 2011, David started Telecom Policy Consulting for Consumers
Paul M. Hartman
Hartman recently retired from the Federal Communications Commission, worked as Assistant Chief, Pricing Policy Division (PPD) Wireline Competition Bureau, Pricing Policy Division as well as working in the Office of Inspector General, as part of the Universal Service High Cost Oversight by the commission. Paul was also on the FCC’s Jurisdictional Separations Federal-State Joint Board. Paul has been involved in regulatory cost studies since working for the Bell System in 1973. Starting in 1985, for the next 14 years, Paul taught classes on telecommunications primarily in the areas of jurisdictional separations, settlements, access charges and related issues for the various major stakeholders, e.g., local exchange carriers, interexchange carriers, cable TV providers, state and federal regulators. Among other opportunities, Paul was the general manager of a startup Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier that provided fiber to the home.
Tom Allibone
Allibone is the President of LTC Consulting, and the Director of Teletruth‘s Auditing Division. He has been a telecommunications professional with over 38 years of experience. Prior to founding LTC Consulting in 1989, Tom worked for New Jersey Bell and AT&T as a systems consultant and National Account Manager, starting in 1970. Tom is an AT&T ‘legacy’ as his grandfather and father (and his wife) all worked for AT&T and the Bell System. Tom has led Teletruth’s auditing capabilities which has resulted in the settlement of 2 class action suits against Verizon, New Jersey, as well as telecom auditing resulting in over $30 million in refunds. Tom was a member of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee.
Fred Goldstein
Goldstein advises companies on technical, regulatory and business issues related to the telecommunications, cable and Internet industries, especially in areas where they overlap. He has designed multifunction backbone networks for public and private sector clients. He has served as an expert witness in regulatory proceedings including intercarrier compensation, access to network elements, and the regulatory classification of services on multi-function networks Prior to joining Interisle, he was principal of Ionary Consulting; earlier, he was employed by Arthur D. Little Inc. in its Communications, Information and Electronics practice. Before that, he was corporate telecommunications manager for Bolt Beranek and Newman, after working for the telecom regulatory consulting firm Economics and Technology Inc.
Kenneth Levy, Esq.
Levy has worked as a telecommunications lawyer since the late 1970s, when he joined the FCC. He held several supervisory positions at the FCC, including Deputy Chief, Operations of the Common Carrier Bureau and Chief of the Tariff Division during the period leading up to divestiture and through the aftermath. He left the FCC to become General Counsel of the National Exchange Carrier Association, Inc., the organization charged with administering the FCC’s interstate access charge plan and universal service fund. Recently he has worked as a consultant on telecommunications regulatory proceedings involving universal service, inter-carrier compensation, Internet telephony and interconnection of networks.
Scott McCollough, Esq.
McCollough is an attorney whose practice focuses on communications, computer and Internet law and regulation, with an emphasis on representation of consumers and small competitive and new technology application and service providers. He also provides instruction and training in those areas to individuals, groups, and companies. He is Board Certified in Administrative Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Past activities included 10 years as an Assistant Texas Attorney General and Contract Consumer Advocate (representing residential and small business consumers) with City of Austin Electric Utility (1994-1999). Past Regulatory Counsel for Texas ISDN Users Group and Texas Internet Service Providers Association. He has unparalleled knowledge and experience relating to those places where technology and regulation intersect – and often collide – all the way up the protocol stack.
Chuck Sherwood
As part of his involvement with national advocacy associations, Chuck serves as a member of the Alliance for Community Media’s Public Policy Working Group and the Policy and Legal Committee of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors. He has organized and spoken at many conferences and workshops dealing with cable, telecom and broadband network infrastructure issues with a focus on how they can be used for community, educational and economic development. In addition he has written articles for the ACM’s Community Media Review (CMR) and the NATOA Journal and served as the Guest Editor for the Summer 2010 issue of the CMR entitled, “Community Connecting with the New Broadband Networks”.
Dana Spiegel
Spiegel is the Executive Director of NYCwireless, which has been the leader in helping get public spaces wired up for wireless service and it promotes open wireless hotspots in public spaces throughout the New York region. NYCwireless was formed in 2001, and is primarily focused in New York City and surrounding areas. It is most widely recognized for its work in deploying free Wi-Fi access in Bryant Park and Tompkins Square Park. He is also the Founder and Chief Code Therapist at FounderTherapy, where he helps early stage startups bring their software products to market, implement best practice software development processes, build agile software teams, and architects scalable systems and infrastructures. He is an advisor to a number of startups, including ClearServe and WorkMarket.
David Schofield
Schofield is a Partner at Network Sourcing Advisors. NSA provides contract compliance services to mid and large enterprises and specializes in voice, data, wireless and TEM (telecom expense management) negotiations. Schofield has been active in telecom for decades. At Siemans, Schofield managed multiple carrier contracts for 26 Operating companies, which included managing day to day telecommunications costs, service and delivery across the business units. NSA’s services include a benchmark of existing services to the most complex engagement which includes a bid process of existing agreements.
Dr. Ron Suarez
Dr. Ron Suarez is a former cognitive psychology professor turned serial software entrepreneur. He wrote assembly language programs for a Cognitive Psychophysiology Lab he directed in the early 1980′s and has since done virtually every aspect of development in the four startup businesses he founded.
He is currently the founder of the start up NeighborSquad.TV “Fire your cable company with tech support from neighbors.”, and runs LoudFeed.TV services provide digital strategy and technology solutions for social good with a focus on WordPress and BuddyPress (custom design, development, social media, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Themes and Plugins).
In 2007, Loud Feed provided consulting services to Tunecore.com and wrote the code which enables delivery of music and related metadata into Apple iTunes, Amazon MP3, Emusic.com, Rhapsody and other online retailers. Loud Feed was originally spun off from Object Insight (a Tech company based on Ron’s vision to create “UML for the rest of us” (Unified Modeling Language). as a separate company to help music distributors, labels and artists to manage and monetize their music, video, show ticket info and related metadata using their own branded web site and e-commerce enabled social media widgets.
Ron was on the Ann Arbor City Council in 2006-2008, where he worked to hold back special interests from wasting taxpayer money and create more transparency in government to expose the real motivations behind decision making. And prior to that had created Arbor Intelligent Systems, Inc. 1988had 30 engineers with a focus on Object Technology from Smalltalk to Java. More About Ron
Board of Advisors
Robert Robinson
Robert is Chairman of the District of Columbia’s Citizens’ Utility Board (CUB). The CUB was re-established in 2015, but has a long history since 1978 of advocating on behalf of DC ratepayers, taxpayers and residents. Rob started in DC when he was hired onto the Marion Barry for Mayor campaign in 1977 and worked as an administrator for the Executive Office of the Mayor agencies. He managed successful Council campaigns and a council member’s staff. The currrent DC CUB organization’s mission contains several components: to ensure the voices of DC ratepayers, taxpayers and residents are not only heard, but acted upon; to promote effective public engagement for public benefit; and to advocate for fair, transparent, affordable and progressive reforms of those entities that deliver DC’s electric, water, natural gas, and telecommunication services.
Larry A. Ortega
Larry is the head of One Million New Internet Users and is recognized as one of the foremost authorities in America’s digital divide issues. A 35 year Information Technology (IT) veteran, Mr. Ortega designed a training model that brings technology training to communities. He attributes his success to the partnerships built with leaders of non-profit organizations, schools, libraries and community. In 2011, Mr. Ortega brought together leaders from Asian, African American and Latino communities to launch in cooperation with school, business and civic leaders an initiative called One Million NIU(New Internet Users). The One Million NIU consortia became the sole minority-led group to be awarded a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission’s CASF
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