Aspirational E-rate NPRM Considers ‘Whole Host’ of Proposals, Clyburn Says

The notice has three broad goals, officials said: ensuring schools and libraries have affordable access to 21st century broadband to support digital learning; maximizing cost-effectiveness of E-rate purchases; and streamlining program administration. But of the various competing proposals, commissioners have yet to determine which will win. In part because of so many competing proposals from the various commissioners, it has been difficult for Wireline Bureau staff to draft the item, said Wireline Bureau Associate Chief Trent Harkrader. “One of the nice things about having Commissioner [Ajit] Pai on the one hand and Commissioner [Jessica] Rosenworcel and the chairwoman so vocal about their interests in this is because we get these great ideas,” he said. “It’s challenging for those of us on the staff who are going to have to kind of mesh all those ideas together. … There are a lot of ideas right now.”

The commissioners do share at least one sentiment: “We are not where we need to be,” Clyburn said. Students “need faster high-capacity connections and they need them now.” But in a press conference after the meeting, Clyburn declined to take a position on the viability of a national broadband speed target, as has been pushed by President Barack Obama in his ConnectED initiative, as well as by Rosenworcel in her E-rate 2.0 proposals. “After the comments are received from the general public, I will review and weigh all that and will make up my decision in a comprehensive fashion,” Clyburn said. Pai last week criticized the “arbitrary” national speed target, calling it a “one-dimensional national benchmark” that eschews local autonomy and forces schools to “skew their spending decisions."

Obama applauded the commission in a news release for taking a “first, important step toward realizing our vision of making 21st century classrooms available to every student in America.” He touted the administration’s ConnectED initiative to ensure that schools and libraries are connected through broadband of at least 100 Mbps with a target of 1 Gbps. The program, he said, “will ensure that the federal government can provide schools with the infrastructure and tools they need to deliver this competitive digital education for every student in the United States. That is the process that the FCC began today, and we look forward to the next steps in this effort as we move closer to our goal of getting 99 percent of America’s students connected to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within 5 years.”

Clyburn declined to say whether she agrees with the specifics of the president’s plan. “This particular notice of proposed rulemaking,” she said, “is influenced and derived from Chapter 11 of the National Broadband Plan: It’s broader than ConnectED.”

Pai said Friday he was “grateful” to his colleagues for including in the NPRM Pai’s proposals, which would shift the focus of the program to next-generation services as opposed to stand-alone telephony, require matching funds from schools, and simplify the application process for funds. “We stand this morning at a crossroads with respect to the future of the E-rate program, and this NPRM tees up some fundamental questions,” Pai said. “My approach is to embrace the spirit of our 35th president,” making the tough choices “not because they are easy but because they are hard,” quoting John Kennedy.

The NPRM seeks comment on how best to measure progress on its goal, and the best methods to collect accurate and timely data about the program, said Wireline Bureau attorney-adviser Cara Voth, who presented the item. It proposes shifting funding priorities to “better focus funds” on access to high-capacity broadband, and seeks comment on how to reprioritize funding, she said. The item proposes updating the list of services eligible for support, seeks comment on how to “more equitably distribute” funds, and proposes driving down prices via consortium purchasing, bulk buying, and an improved competitive bidding process.

The item seeks input on issues raised by stakeholders, such as the applicability of the Children’s Internet Protection Act to certain devices; changes to school lunch program; fraud protection; the utilization of community Wi-Fi hotspots; and new E-rate procedures to address national disasters and emergencies.

The original author of the E-rate provision in the 1996 Telecom Act, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., commended the commission’s rulemaking proposal in a news release. “The global economy demands an increasingly educated workforce with higher skills and strong backgrounds in science, math and technology,” he said. “Our students must have access to high-speed Internet connectivity to gain the skills necessary to compete.” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who helped lead the effort in the House to include E-rate in the 1996 Telecom Act said: “Connecting schools and libraries with high speed will help our country maintain its technological edge in education and our students succeed in the 21st century.” House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said she “fully support[s] the steps the FCC is taking to modernize the E-Rate program so that our schools and libraries can keep up with the digital demands of the 21st century.”

Several agency officials noted the superiority of countries like Singapore when it comes to connecting schools. “It’s a matter of our global competitiveness,” Rosenworcel said. “Welcome to the world that is flat. Knowledge, jobs and capital are going to migrate to places where workers have digital age skills.” The rulemaking will set out some capacity goals Rosenworcel has proposed, she said: By the 2015 school year, every school should have access to 100 megabits per 1,000 students; by the end of the decade that should go up to 1 gigabit per 1,000 students, she said.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the commission vote “marks a first step in a five-year effort that will have enormous benefits for students, teachers and families, and for our national competitiveness.” Thanks to the ConnectED effort, “teachers will have new tools to tailor learning to students’ individual needs,” he said in his news release. “Schools will begin to move beyond fill-in-the-bubble tests. Students -— especially those in rural and geographically-isolated communities -— will have access to a previously unattainable world of resources, experts, and experiences. And families will be more closely connected with their children’s schools and schoolwork.”

NCTA said it would work with the FCC on reforms to the E-rate program that will “fairly and responsibly build a strong program to further enhance the role of technology in education.” Verizon Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Kathleen Grillo said modernizing the E-rate program is “an important part of the efforts to ensure that our education system will harness the power of broadband to change the way teachers teach and students learn, and prepare them to enter the digital economy.” Telecommunications Industry Association President Grant Seiffert said the FCC “deserves credit for looking for ways to refresh the program as technology evolves.” The Communications Workers of America is “particularly encouraged by the FCC’s goal of ensuring higher capacity networks for schools and libraries,” it said: “Our goal should be at least 1 gibabit per second capacity to every school in our nation. Today’s FCC action is a good step forward.”

The NPRM doesn’t contemplate a specific timeline for implementing the E-rate reforms, said Harkrader. But the commission definitely has a “sense of urgency” about it, he said. “I think we're going to get the weekend off, but Monday morning we need to start thinking about how to go on to the next step.”