Governmental plans for broadband deployment in the U.S. and other countries should emphasize universal connectivity rather than a limited population’s reaching the highest speeds, David McGlade, Intelsat’s said Tuesday on a panel at the Satellite 2010 conference in National Harbor, Md. Speeds as high as 100 Mbps, although reachable, make sense only for the densest regions, he said.
Maine regulators will spend three months reviewing a petition by FairPoint Communications to accept the company’s bankruptcy reorganization plan and to grant it relief from performance requirements. FairPoint petitioned March 5 for commission approval of its plan and to revise a 2008 order granting it the right to acquire Verizon’s phone network, the commission said.
The FCC approved Tuesday by a unanimous vote a brief statement of principles on broadband. FCC Republicans Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker were sharply critical of some aspects of the plan itself, which was not put up for a vote before being submitted to Congress. Both found lots to like in the plan but said it must not be used as a lever for imposing more regulation. Agency officials said the FCC will offer a list in coming days of more than 40 rulemakings that will be begun as a follow-up to the plan.
FCC members of both parties had words of caution about parts of the National Broadband Plan concerning media. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at Tuesday’s commission meeting that she has qualms about the reallotment of spectrum used by TV stations that the plan envisions. Commissioner Robert McDowell asked the commission to “tread gingerly” regarding set-top boxes. Blair Levin, who’s leaving the commission as the executive director of the broadband-plan work now that the document is complete, said his staff had taken concerns like Clyburn’s into account.
The significant time devoted by many FCC staffers to work on the National Broadband Plan the past year, and the commission’s attention to the subject, cut into the time and energy available for more routine matters, said broadcast and cable lawyers. That leaves some items languishing, causing some licensees regulatory confusion and leaving complaints unresolved, they said. “While the task Congress assigned to the FCC was enormous, all of the effort and energy the commission put into creating the plan will reap many benefits in the years to come,” said an agency spokesman.
Wireless carriers may get less in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan than meets the eye, commission officials indicated Monday. Although the plan recommends that 300 MHz of spectrum be made available for wireless broadband over the next five years and 500 MHz total over 10 years, FCC officials made clear Monday that not all will be dedicated to licensed use. The plan also provides substantial detail in its recommendations for the Universal Service Fund, including a phase-out of the high-cost fund. The plan will be presented to FCC commissioners Tuesday. They won’t vote on the plan, only on a mission statement setting out goals for U.S. broadband policy.
The city of Alexandria, Va., was told that all cable TV negotiations related to Verizon FiOS service have been suspended nationwide as the company does a review, the city’s director of communications, Tony Castrilli, told us. But Verizon said its FiOS expansion plans haven’t changed. Meanwhile, the city is hoping to become a site for the high-speed Internet testbed announced by Google, Castrilli said.
House Democrats endorsed the FCC’s National Broadband Plan a day before its official release. House Republicans gave conditional praise, saying they're watching closely. In an interview, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he believes legislation will be required to satisfy the plan’s recommendations to revamp the Universal Service Fund, build a public safety wireless network, and identify lightly used spectrum.
The most connected societies aren’t the major sources of growth of the Internet economy, said a report (www.xrl.us/bgymnd) Monday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on the growth and future of the 25-year-old .com domain. The media fixation on social networking has obscured much more important growth mechanisms whose success can’t be reduced to universal broadband, foundation President Robert Atkinson told reporters Monday. “It’s a mistake to put so much emphasis on broadband” and less on the applications that make the Internet useful, as the FCC seems to be doing, he said.
Verizon and Frontier laid out for the West Virginia Public Service Commission an extensive set of arguments in a filing late Friday summing up the companies’ case for approval of their proposed transaction. The deal would give Frontier ownership of Verizon landlines in 14 states. It ran into resistance last week when an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission recommended against approval, saying consumers would be ill-served (CD March 11 p13). Illinois, West Virginia and Washington are the only states where approval of the transaction remains pending.