The FCC US Broadband plan was launched with a fanfare by the FCC and a few surprises. It led off with 6 clear aims, to give 100 million US homes 100 mbps broadband access; to get the US to lead the world in mobile innovation; to bring affordable broadband to everyone in the US; to bring at least 1 Gbps to all US communities for schools, hospital and government buildings; to ensure that all first emergency responders have access to broadband and to use broadband to help the US become a clean energy economy, by tracking energy consumption.
These were laid out with half of the specific, detailed plans for the FCC to get going on now, and for Congress to make new laws to make possible the other half.
One of the areas of the biggest potential commercial collisions is how the FCC regulates broadband among existing suppliers, and it has promised to collect and publish market by market broadband pricing information so that everyone knows what prices are prevalent in the next county or state, for broadband. This the FCC feels will deliberately affect competitive pricing. The FCC also said it will ensure that all broadband suppliers have an obligation to tell potential customers all of the best deals available to them so consumers can self price their broadband options.
But the biggest issue is that the FCC will review wholesale pricing in both fixed and mobile broadband. The FCC now has to take on this thorny issue of how much companies like AT&T and Verizon can charge for wholesale broadband to rivals and CLECs. That issue led the FCC to court in the past over unbundling and AT&T refused to spend money extending its fiber network until the FCC made a ruling that meant it did not have to share access with rivals. That is now likely to be torn up and has the potential to become the biggest collision between the Obama administration and existing US commercial interests.
The FCC also said that it would issue more unlicensed spectrum and would try to create low priced data roaming, so that broadband users can use wide ranging broadband services which cover the entire country. Good luck with that, Broadband Wireless roaming in Europe needed harsh regulation and legal changes and it still isn’t under control after a long fight.
Another surprise was a reference to set tops and changing and clarifying the rules on them, with a view to extending CableCard and creating set tops which are no longer controlled and specified by operators, but which also encourage Over The Top video services, without onerous encryption problems. This kind of open cable TV device would almost overnight kill the set top hegemony of both Motorola and Scientific Atlanta (Cisco) and turn cable set tops at least into retail propositions.
It’s a small thing, but the FCC also realized that the man in the street needs re-assurance about what data broadband companies can keep on people’s online activities, and promised to come up with a formula for that.
The loudest headline promise off all has been that the FCC would make 500 MHz of fresh spectrum available within ten years, and 300 MHz of that in the next in five years. This is perhaps going to come from re-harvesting unused spectrum, some of it bought and paid for by companies which cannot afford to build it out, and some of it re-using UHF broadcast spectrum. This was highlighted in recent weeks as the FCC gave speeches on the content of its plan. It also looks like the FCC plans to act as a go-between in creating a secondary market to buy and sell spectrum.
One idea that we did not hear prior to the publishing of this report was that the FCC will seek legislation to regulate pricing on poles, conduits and rooftops and create a more efficient process for gaining rights of way to work on them. Defining what is reasonable to charge for roof rights could become a sticky challenge.
Also the FCC said it would make regulations on the concept of ‘Dig once’ policies which are designed to make for the efficient laying of infrastructure in one go. If you have to dig up a road, then lay cable while you are putting in the new electricity cable etc’ That’s going to be tough to orchestrate, but it was the key to how companies like Fastweb in Italy was created out of thin air with a massive fiber operation shared with the power authorities.
One way that the FCC plans to fund affordable broadband is to take part of the Universal Service Fund which has been used to ensure telephone networks extend throughout America and replace it with a $15.5 billion Connect America Fund, a kind of minor tax on broadband and phones services to spend on future broadband. One use for this may be to provide subsidies to low income US families for broadband.
The FCC also alluded to launching a digital literacy corps of young educators in broadband, to modernize the electricity grid by adding broadband and to spend $6.5 billion ensuring that public safety had its own broadband services.
This plan needs government approval and then it will be given time lines and the work allocated to what the FCC can do on its own, and where the government needs to help. So it will be a while before any of these battles can be fought. For our own part, on first reading, it has the potential to go a long way to fixing what’s wrong with US broadband, but the devil is in the detail and we see this broadband plan being used to beat up big business in the US, and that usually results in appeals through the law courts. So who knows.