Compromise Needed for NBP to be a Success, FCBA Told
FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus said delivering the end product of the National Broadband Plan will take time. Speaking late Wednesday at an FCBA event on the first anniversary of the plan’s announcement, he focused on its success to date. FCC and industry panelists said compromise is needed to make the plan a success. Some said they're cautiously optimistic that the regulator and those it regulates will come together to make the plan work out well. Industry officials disagreed on ways to open up cable set-top boxes to retail competition to stimulate broadband adoption, and whether rules requiring what’s called AllVid are needed.
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With Congressional authority, the FCC is ready for incentive spectrum auctions, Lazarus said. There’s “no exact time frame” for it to happen, but it “won’t be years,” he said. The broadband plan’s motto of “everyone, everywhere, for nearly everything” is “easy to describe, but execution is difficult even in the best [economic] times,” Lazarus said. President Barack Obama’s mention of high-speed Internet multiple times in his State of the Union address is a “measure of success,” Lazarus said. He also said the broadband plan was a strategic plan that will always need updates and adjustments as technology develops. There’s now a “foundation to build many more anniversaries” for the broadband report, he said.
For the broadband plan to move forward, the telecom industry and FCC must shift the debate’s focus to move beyond rhetoric and onto practical issues, Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey said. Both sides need to “roll up their sleeves” to do so, she said. The panel also discussed the FCC’s jurisdiction in implementing the plan. MTPCS General Counsel Julia Tanner said Congress, through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, only authorized the commission to develop a plan, not necessarily to implement it. Mattey said there was “no need” for Congress to authorize implementation, because the agency was previously given implementation authority.
The commission is talking about holding more workshops with state telecom regulators in the near future, because the issues like provision of high-cost services and providing telecom services to those who are poor “need to be tackled with a state and federal partnership,” Mattey said. AT&T Vice President Joel Lubin said states should be focusing on the transition because they know “the people and the terrain.” Lubin also said the states have a “significant role” here.
Google’s Richard Whitt encouraged the “marriage” of broadcast TV and Internet, to allow the TV to be a “third screen” in people’s homes. But he said first-generation technologies are “constrained” by the current set-top box “regime.” Whitt also said data privacy and cybersecurity issues generally are better dealt with by the FTC, and those areas are “much bigger” than the FCC. Comcast Public Policy Director David Don said set-top boxes promote broadband adoption, but it’s “unclear” if they need to be regulated. That’s because there were 55 million Internet-ready TVs in use in 2009, and without regulation, he said. Access to TV isn’t the issue with broadband adoption, and digital literacy is the main issue, Don said.