[imgbelt img=Students_at_computers150.jpg]“The unregulated, market-driven approach to providing broadband has not worked for us.” So writes filmmaker Mimi Pickering of Whitesburg, Kentucky. Pickering’s op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader advocates support for the FCC’s plan to reclassify broadband services: to bring high-speed Internet “under the same common carrier provisions that have enabled over 95 percent of American households to receive and afford phone service.” As the laws now stand, telecommunications companies are not required to extend broadband service into less profitable localities. This system, Pickering writes, has left low-income urban areas and many rural communities with Internet connections too slow to meet their business and education needs. Bringing broadband service into line with telephone regulations is part of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.