Blair Levin Joins Brookings

Blair Levin has been named a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute's Metropolitan Policy Program, where he will "inform city efforts to apply innovative practices to expand broadband access."

Levin was the FCC's National Broadband Plan czar, the plan that, among other things, recommended the broadcast incentive spectrum auction the FCC is planning on holding next year.

Blair had for the past four years been with the Aspen Institute's Communication and Society Program, where he was executive director of Gig.U, a multi-university effort to accelerate high-speed broadband deployment.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who is trying to help city broadband efforts himself via preempting state laws limiting them, tweeted about Levin's move: "Blair Levin heads to Brookings. No one's done more to advance bband expansion & competition thru the vision of Nat'l Bband Plan & Gig.U."

Levin joined the FCC in 2009 from Legg Mason and Stifel Nicolaus, where he had been an analyst. But it was a return engagement for Levin. He was chief of staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in the mid-1980's.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.