FCC Rolls Out Its National Broadband Plan Today
As noted on Sunday (did you send in a question to the FCC Chair?), FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will deliver the National Broadband Plan to Congress today and then I imagine he’ll be everywhere talking about this plan. They released an Executive Summary today (pdf), which looks more like a To Do List than an Executive Summary. But if you plan on watching any of this on CSPAN (I imagine it will be on CSPAN, right?), this serves as a nice program to the festivities. What this seems to point to is an ambitious plan that counts extensive, fast and affordable broadband access as a key economic engine for the future. And it is a nice touch to roll this out during the week of the 25th anniversary of the Dot Com.
One of the major pieces here is the reclaiming of a fair bit of spectrum from TV stations and auctioning that off for mobile wireless use. This also includes increasing broadband access across the country, increasing broadband competition and upping the service level to 100 megabits/second 100 million customers in 10 years, more user privacy protections and an initiative to educate the currently computer illiterate. What isn’t here is the fervently wished for nationwide buildout by the government of a fiber network.
There’s lots of reporting (including the NYT article I linked to Sunday) noting that there will be a pitched battle over this plan from cable, telecoms and tech companies. But according to this blogpost from Comcast, they definitely dispute the idea that there will be a pitched battle over this plan — largely because they’ve been kept in the development loop here. (Thanks for this tip to Simon Owens, who has a fantastic blog called Bloggasm.) And the CEOs of a number of tech companies (no telecoms or cable companies here) sent a letter to the FCC Chairman broadly encouraging of this policy work.
Tags: FCC, National Broadband Plan
Let me go ahead and beat the rush, and get out ahead of the inevitable conservative talking points (assuming the administration is backing these ideas):
1) IT’S A GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF THE INTERNET!!!!
2) Why should I have to pay for hillbillies and poor people to get cable modems?
That about cover it?
more user privacy protections
Sadly, no.
Just a requirement for more fine-print disclosure of how they are raping your privacy. And of course they may change the terms any time they want as long as they send you some more fine print. If you manage to understand it and decide you don’t like it, you are free to cancel your service.
No real protection.
Great. First they are spying on children undressing on their web cams, now they will have a ridiculous 100MB stream to your home. And the feds wont be spying on people using this? And they DARE call it ‘increased privacy’ when the government is responsible for more data leaks than any other group.
If its not the left neocons spying on us it will be the right neocons.
Cant wait for FCC regulation of the internet!
interesting turn
I am always glad to see broadband spread out more and more into rural areas. I am not a fan of it being done by the federal government. I would rather see private industry that is still held to some level of accountability spread this technology out. I would rather see private industry do the job and the government stay out of it.
Sort of like how the government stayed out of the construction of the TVA or the Rural Electrification Project, I guess.
the majority of people without internet don’t want it. http://bit.ly/bGBXzN so why is the government pulling one over on broadcasters?