Anchor Institutes Work on Broadband Access, Connectivity Long After FCC Plan
On the five-year anniversary of the FCC National Broadband Plan, representatives of anchor institutions said Tuesday at an event organized by groups including New America that there has been a decent amount of progress. Work remains, they said. With 2014’s E-rate overhaul and the establishment of the Connect America Fund and the Healthcare Connect Fund, the FCC is taking steps in the right direction, said Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen, but a significant rural fiber gap remains. “We need to find a way to drive greater broadband investment out to these rural anchor institutions that need it the most, because otherwise, if we were to stop halfway -- where we are today -- the risk is that the rural gap would become even wider, so we really need to focus on the future going forward.”
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Blair Levin, nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Policy Program, said it’s important to recognize that the plan isn't ever going to move past beta, a statement that he said he makes every time the plan is brought up. Looking back at the development of the National Broadband Plan, he said he would have liked to see it created outside of the FCC and maybe in the White House, because officials would be more likely to follow the recommendations. “For a variety of reasons, it would have been much better if we had done it so it was clear coming out that this is what the president wanted, not what the FCC chair wanted,” Levin said. “You have a certain kind of authority working out of the White House that would have led to greater progress, but that's a lesson learned. Overall, it's been fairly successful.”
With the upcoming presidential election in 2016 and the changes that will follow, Levin said it's time to start talking about broadband problems. A lot of focus is on spectrum and auctions, he said, but there is so much more to the plan. Levin said it’s important to get all of the anchor institutions, such as schools, hospitals and libraries, connected, but some focus also will need to be on the use of data and the civic Internet of Things.
About 20 percent of the National Broadband Plan has been completed in the past five years, and action has begun on another 55 percent of the recommendations, said Amina Fazlullah, Benton Foundation director-policy. Fifty-five of the more than 200 recommendations haven't seen any work and 40 percent of those that have yet to be acted on were recommendations to Congress. Out of those recommendations that haven’t been addressed, she said the most important ones are for Congress to provide all public community colleges with high-speed broadband and for Congress to amend the Communications Act to help tribal libraries overcome barriers for E-rate eligibility that arise from state laws.
With schools, hospitals and libraries, one of the biggest concerns is rural connectivity, speakers said. Noelle Ellerson, associate executive director-AASA: the School Superintendents Association, said before E-rate was modernized in 2014, the only question asked was “are you connected?” Now, the schools are being asked how they're connected to the Internet, which she said is a step in the right direction.