National Plan to Propose USF, Spectrum Policies, Says FCC Official
FCC staffers will meet this week to discuss a proposed policy framework for the National Broadband Plan that will take up universal service and spectrum, said Bruce Gottlieb, Chairman Julius Genachowski’s chief counsel. “Currently the staff is in the process of talking with a lot of folks on the eighth floor on these issues,” he said on a Practising Law Institute panel. The meeting will explore USF and spectrum “in more detail than people have seen so far,” Gottlieb said.
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Eighth-floor legal advisers received a 90-minute briefing Wednesday on where the plan stands, and more briefings will follow Monday. Gottlieb said the commission is dividing its work on the plan into two broad tasks. The first, he said, is to “write down in one place a lot of insights about how broadband affects different markets in different parts of the country.” The other goal is to created a “clear, strategic plan for what steps the agency can take in the short-term, medium-term and long-term and spend the next few years executing” those steps, Gottlieb said.
It remains unclear whether the commissioners will vote on the plan at their February meeting or each of the members will put out a statement after the document is released. FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker said she thinks the plan will bring together many ideas on a range of issues, but it probably won’t be “self-executing.” More likely, the FCC will brief Congress and work with it on a series of rulemakings to carry out plan recommendations.
Meanwhile, bipartisan legislation to expand broadband access through the universal service program was introduced Friday by Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., of the Senate Commerce Committee. The bill would tell the FCC to run a two-year pilot on expanding the USF Lifeline program to include broadband and give the committee a report on the results. “It is crucial we help to provide all families with the high-tech resources they need to succeed in the workplace and in school and for the United States to continue to be a competitive, global economic leader,” said Rockefeller, long a supporter of the USF’s E-rate program. The broadband bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the committee’s ranking member. Other co-sponsors include Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Mark Warner, D-Va.
The bill is a “step in the right direction,” said Commissioner David Coen of Vermont’s Public Service Board, speaking for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., who has proposed similar legislation, also welcomed the bill.
At the PLI conference, many said the push for more broadband will spur the FCC and Congress to look closely at spectrum availability. Broadcast airwaves are a possible source but hardly the only one, panelists said. “I think we will be looking everywhere,” said Julius Knapp, the chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. Gottlieb agreed. “It is not the only thing on the table,” he said, and the broadcasting industry is not going to be put out of business. Spectrum reallocation is “not the same thing as saying there will be no more over-the-air TV.”
Ideas for using spectrum more efficiently will also be explored, Knapp said. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast said there will be a need for wider swaths of spectrum down the road, which will be a challenge for policymakers. Wide swaths of spectrum are “most optimal,” Baker said. “But what is optimal and what is achievable is different.”
Baker said she hopes the broadband plan will be “competitively neutral and technologically neutral.” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said tackling universal service in the plan is necessary and timely, though “everyone has been cringing about” the issue. The plan should be viewed as the beginning of a process and not a “blueprint for Congress,” said Richard Whitt, Googles’ Washington telecom and media counsel.
The Obama administration is looking at ways to spur mobile broadband across the U.S., said Jim Kohlenberger, the chief of staff for the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. A rover on Mars is sending data at speeds higher than many rural areas get, he said. “We can get 34 megabits per second back from the far side of Mars, but we can’t get 2 megabits per second on the far side of Manassas,” Va. Spectrum is a “critical fuel for innovation,” he said. Kohlenberger said he’s “doubtful that we're going to find there’s a need for dedicated spectrum in smart grid.” The administration is driving toward all IP-based technology, and “you don’t need specific spectrum for that.”