F.C.C. Gets Serious About Broadband

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Though it may certainly seem that way, healthcare reform is not the only game in Washington, D.C. this week.  While that certainly is big news, and I will be writing a good amount on it this week, there are other things going on.  For one, today the Federal Communications Commission presented its plan for the future of broadband internet, wireless spectrum assignments, and so on.  All of this sounds very prosaic; after all, why would anyone except a network executive at a corporation such as AT&T or Verizon care about how much of the wireless spectrum is used by a given company?  However, there are some interesting parts of the newly-released proposal.  Chief among them, there is a major plan in the works that if the F.C.C. gets its way, internet speeds around the country will be approximately 25 times what they are today by 2020.

According to CNN, while the U.S. did develop the internet, we are now the subject of much ridicule for our slow internet speeds.  The article states that the U.S. is 18th worldwide for connection speeds with an average of 3.9 megabits/second, compared with 14.6 in South Korea.  Of course, most people don’t even know what their speed is, which is part of the problem.  After all, the fact that speed-wise our internet fails on its own will not magically get us faster internet; we must pressure the Internet Service Providers to increase the speed.  Further, part of the plan is to increase access to high-speed internet to 90% of Americans, some of whom live in areas where there are no incentives currently for the companies to go.  As FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says in the CNN article: “This is not something that is nice for us to do, it is everyone’s right.”

While broadband is a necessity these days, far-flung rural outposts are not the only reasons for lack of access, as the New York Times reports.  The same problems that plague health insurance, cost and choice, are in play again.  The plan of course, is to tackle the former as they tackle every cost question: government subsidies.  This plan is still in the formative stages, but one of the other pieces is to make 100 gigabit/second connections the norm by 2020.  At least, that is what they will do in theory.  In practice, it will face some pretty strong hurdles, the least of which is lobbying by corporate special interests.

Why are they opposed? The plan would, according to both articles, auction off parts of the broadband spectrum in order to fund the subsidies and costs associated with the program.  Without going into the physics of the deal, mostly because I have trouble with it myself, the spectrum is owned by the government and leased to the various companies that provide TV and wireless internet and phone service.  As far as striking at the core of these companies’ businesses, this is it.  Reallocation would in theory open up a bunch more of the spectrum for use by mobile internet and a wireless network to be used by first responders.  Of course, that government network would mean less breathing room for companies to operate.  However, from a consumer and political observer’s point of view, this is the best way to fund the plan.  Sure, consumers might be affected a bit by the providers trying to play games with their rates and speeds just as they do now, but in the long run, this plan will go a long way toward increasing our competitiveness on the world stage.

Then again, the plan must still go through Congress.  At this time, I doubt that very much will get done in Congress the rest of this year.  Unless something extraordinary happens, as soon as the fate of healthcare reform is finally decided, most of the House will go into campaign mode.  And that is not to mention the bitter partisanship that currently grinds routine work to a halt.  I expect that many of the more popular legislation will get through, but to take up this debate now and its associated lobbying, it will be incredible if it even comes to a floor vote before summer, when the campaigning will truly begin in earnest.  Which is a shame, especially since faster internet is desperately needed as part of the puzzle that will help our economy recover.  Maybe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will pass it off as a jobs measure, which is possible considering the increased speeds will inevitable create at least some jobs.

The F.C.C. Gets Serious About Broadband by The New Age of Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Tags: Broadband Internet access, Congress, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, Harry Reid, Internet service provider, Politics, United States