It’s been more than a year in the making, but the country’s first national broadband plan is done. Providing an advance copy to reporters a day ahead of the public release, FCC officials talk up goals for ensuring healthy competition in the broadband market, as well as the challenges of reallocating spectrum for wireless data networks.
Enterprise Networking Planet has the full report on the FCC’s national broadband plan, which figures to set the tone for much of the technology policy discussion going forward.
WASHINGTON — The national broadband plan that the Federal Communications Commission has spent more than a year developing will urge policymakers to take a series of steps to improve the competitive state of the Internet service sector, and set in motion the process of revising spectrum allocations to drive wireless broadband.
The FCC is due to formally deliver the plan to Congress on Tuesday, the same day that it will be presented at the commission’s monthly meeting, but an FCC source told InternetNews.com that key committee leaders on the Hill have already received the plan, and staffers have held a series of meetings with FCC officials to discuss its recommendations.
In a meeting with reporters Monday morning, senior FCC officials described the broadband plan as a call to action, admitting that even at 359 pages, the plan is a working document that will need to be revisited as the broadband market evolves.
And though the plan brims with specific recommendations, metrics and timetables, it also leaves many proposals left as broad goals, calling, for instance, for “a comprehensive review of wholesale competition rules to help ensure competition in fixed and mobile broadband services,” revisiting the controversial provisions of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that required incumbent providers to share access to their network infrastructure.