FCC Asked to Take Bold Action in National Broadband Plan

"Our basic message to the Commission is this -- be bold,” said the public interest group filing. “The Commission need not and should not be timid at this juncture in the creation of national broadband policy. The statute that directed the creation of this Plan is bold. The Plan should match that ambitious spirit and should not settle for short-sighted caution.” The filing was signed by Consumers Union, Free Press, Media Access Project, National Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and Public Knowledge.

"Be practical,” was part two of the groups’ message. “While bold pragmatism may seem a contradiction in terms at first blush, it is not. It simply means that the FCC [should] set ambitious goals and plot realistic next steps to achieve those goals.” The groups also said the commission should avoid mistakes of past commissions. “A policy framework that simply focuses on reducing costs, providing subsidies, and stripping regulations for incumbents will fail,” the groups said. “These ’trickle down’ theories of the past left America’s broadband infrastructure and rates of broadband adoption in such a predicament that it was necessary for Congress to instruct the FCC to make a Plan for immediate change."

Free Press said the agency should “radically overhaul” the high-cost Universal Service Fund, establish a broadband Lifeline fund, assess the impact of government investment on middle-mile access, adopt use it or lose it rules for spectrum licenses, and expand the amount of unlicensed spectrum, among other steps. “The keys to success lie in the Commission promoting meaningful competition, radically overhauling universal service policy, and ensuring the Internet remains an open platform for innovation, education and democratic discourse,” it said.

Broadband providers hope the plan will give them “a financial windfall” in access to public rights of way at very little cost, said the NATOA-led filing, signed by such major cities as Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, Seattle, Dallas and Charlotte, N.C. “There is no evidence that limiting fees for use of public property will make broadband more available or affordable for consumers,” they said. “However, if the Commission issues any pronouncement that fees for rights-of-way or other public resources must be limited to ‘costs of management’ or must be ‘cost-based;’ or if it opines on what is ‘fair and reasonable compensation’ for use of rights-of-way; local governments anticipate immediate and scorching damage to their budgets and to our ailing economy."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors also said the FCC should not do anything that would cut into the ability of cities to collect revenue for the use of rights of way. “Cities of all sizes in all parts of the nation have been forced to institute layoffs, furloughs, service reductions, and fee increases,” it said. “The next fiscal year looks even worse for cities, with more than four in five cities anticipating a budget shortfall. The nation’s mayors do not believe Congress or the Obama Administration intended for the National Broadband Plan to be used as a vehicle to take revenue from city budgets in order to subsidize private entities.”

The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates said just deciding on what it should reply to is a huge job, given the size of the record. “As previously noted by the Commission, there have been over 66,000 pages of comments filed thus far in these proceedings,” NASUCA said. “Thus the issue of which of the seemingly-infinite number of issues to respond to in the limited time allowed is, to put it mildly, daunting."

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The Western Telecommunications Alliance urged the FCC to establish separate broadband high-cost mechanisms for rural local exchange carriers and small wireline carriers-of-last resort, large wireline COLRs and the RBOCs, and one for wireless and other carriers “providing mobility and other desired services that complement or supplement the broadband services of COLRs.” Because such companies vary in size, access to capital markets, cost structures and other factors, separate mechanisms are necessary to transition to “high-cost mechanisms that will focus on the upgrade, operation and maintenance of higher and higher capacity broadband networks in high-cost areas,” the group said. For RLECs, continued sufficient and stable cost-based support is needed to enable them to progress in the “future broadband network."

Adopting special access reform and reforming the Universal Service Fund to recognize broadband deployment are some of the changes proposed by Sprint Nextel. Broadband competition can not thrive unless the FCC “releases the local exchange carriers’ choke hold on competitive broadband deployment that results from their monopoly on special access connections,” the telco said. Customers who pay excessive special access rates to ILECs “have billions of dollars less to invest in their own broadband networks and services, and must charge rates to their own end customers that may well inhibit broadband adoption.” The telco also seeks more efficient use of existing spectrum and the elimination of switched access subsidies for POTS.

The Optoelectronics Industry Development Association told the FCC that advancements in optoelectronics are necessary “to drive the ultra high capacity communications infrastructure in the U.S.” Most optoelectronics suppliers are manufacturing their parts in Asia, which may become a national security and economic impact issue, it said. The group urged the commission to do a study that could lead to funding priorities “to prevent our communications infrastructure from becoming predominantly designed, developed and manufactured offshore."

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association said the FCC should re-focus its spectrum policies to promote “more expeditious deployment of broadband networks in high-cost rural, unserved and underserved areas.” The commission should “designate 300 megahertz of spectrum for fixed wireless broadband,” and allocate the spectrum according to non-exclusive hybrid procedures that “combine the benefits of affordability, rapid deployment and private resolution of interference disputes,” the group said. Winners of license auctions should be required to serve high-cost areas because instead of benefitting rural areas, they have “focused build-out on larger, densely populated areas that give shareholders a greater turn on their investment.

The Association of Public Television Stations urged the FCC to recognize the role that public television stations play in the “development of innovative content to drive broadband adoption and advance national priorities.” Several public TV licensees are “seamlessly transitioning into roles as the anchors of high-speed broadband networks that conduct advanced educational content and services,” the association said.