BROADBAND PLAN: A ROAD MAP

FCC’s Plan Sets Ambitious 10-Year Goals for Nationwide High-Speed Rollout

By John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 3/15/2010 11:50:12 AM

Washington — When the Federal Communications Commission releases its national broadband plan on March 16, it’s not likely to surpise many people.

The FCC has been disclosing parts of the plan, or at least working recommendations, in a variety of forums, from blogs to workshops to speeches. It’s been akin to reading the plan as a serialized drama now being released in book form.

The FCC has set a roughly 10-year time frame for its “2020” vision of dramatically boosting universal deployment and adoption, and reclaiming or otherwise finding enough spectrum to handle all the expected mobile broadband applications.

Much of the plan — more than a year in the making — has already been laid out in Hill briefings, and Congress gets it on March 16, when the FCC outlines its proposals to the rest of the world in its public meeting.

The FCC has been billing the plan as akin to the country’s marching orders for the new millennium, suggesting there is virtually no part of society or the economy — from healthcare and energy to education and government services — that won’t be touched by broadband.

The plan will be a starting point for FCC rulemakings. About 50% of it consists of FCC recommendations to itself and 50% of recommendations to Congress, the administration, nonprofits and industry.

Among the plan’s key points of reference:

BROADBAND SPEEDS: The plan will recommend a goal of 100-Megabits-persecond download speeds for 100 million households by 2020. For the other 200 million households, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has set a goal of speeds above 2 mbps. The plan will recommend disclosure of actual and advertised speeds for fixed broadband.

SPECTRUM: The FCC wants to free up 500 MHz from current users for wireless broadband over the next decade, including offering broadcasters cash for some of theirs. The broadband plan team has suggested the process needs to get started soon given how long such reclamation takes (five to 10 years). That might meet resistance in Congress, where House Communications & Internet Subcommittee chairman Rick Boucher (R.-Va.) and others have signaled they think the FCC should complete a spectrum inventory (possibly a four-year process) before deciding how to proceed with reclamation.

ADOPTION: The plan is for the current 65% broadband adoption rate to be raised to 90%, and for all children to be digitally literate by the time they graduate high school. The FCC backs a Digital Literacy Corps to conduct training and outreach; targeting education and outreach to seniors; adding broadband to the FCC’s Lifeline and Linkup programs that have subsidized low-cost phone service and to at least consider “using spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service.” Former FCC wireless bureau chief John Muleta, now CEO of M2Z Networks, says he thinks the FCC might make a condition on re-auction of the reclaimed 500 MHz that the winner, essentially as a public-interest obligation, provide low-cost or free wireless broadband.

UNIVERSAL SERVICE: The plan is to open the Universal Service Fund to broadband in two phases, focusing on deployment first and ongoing operations second, with a goal of availability to 99% of U.S. households by 2020. It will also seek to reform intercarrier compensation. Support for wireline-only service will be phased out by 2020. The commission will also propose a separate fund to support mobile broadband.

POLE ATTACHMENTS: The plan says the government should speed deployment of wired broadband by tweaking pole-attachment rules to lower costs and resolve disputes more swiftly. Pole attachments are regulated by the FCC.