FCC Facing Tough Timetable on Broadband Plan
FCC broadband coordinator Blair Levin laid out an ambitious schedule Thursday for development of an FCC broadband plan, due to be completed Feb. 17, 2010. The schedule includes more than 20 staff workshops at the agency starting Aug. 12, designed to take the place of traditional ex parte meetings that groups and companies hold with agency officials. The update was presented at an FCC agenda meeting that was Julius Genachowski’s first as chairman.
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Some key questions remain unresolved, including whether the report will be put out for comment and whether it must be approved by commissioners, agency and industry officials said. Levin, former FCC chief of staff, said he plans to coordinate other meetings between industry and staff through the Office of General Counsel. The meetings won’t start until the week of July 20 so the FCC has time to get staff in place. The workshops start with three sessions on Aug. 12, ending with a “big ideas” workshop on Sept. 3. Comments in response to the workshops are due Sept. 11. The FCC also launched a broadband plan website Thursday, www.broadband.gov, to keep interested parties up to date on the latest developments.
The workshops are a new way of doing business for the FCC, Levin said. The workshops “are designed to provide the same benefits as the ex parte process, but in a more open and efficient manner,” he said. “Traditionally, we have multiple meetings with multiple parties, often redundant, talking about the various issues raised by a proceeding,. They're behind closed doors. … We're going to take part of that process and put it in this room, open to the public, open on the Web.” The FCC must ask many questions, Levin said: “What is the current situation? What’s the state of deployment, affordability, utilization? What will be the near-term situation without a change in government policy?”
Levin said after the meeting that the FCC will provide more information later on who else at the FCC will be assigned to broadband plan and other details. Levin appeared on a panel by himself, in contrast to the four or five FCC staffers who present most issues. “The last thing I'm focused on is my position,” he said. “The thing I'm focused on right now is how do we pull together an organization that for the most part involves resources that are here at the FCC … along with resources that are not available at the FCC.”
Genachowski called the plan as Levin described “an aggressive, energetic, creative game plan” for the future. “Congress has entrusted the FCC with a matter of profound importance to the country,” he said. “They have given us the job of developing a national broadband plan for America. If we do our jobs right and enable universal broadband that’s fast, affordable, and open, we can unleash new waves of innovation that we can scarcely imagine today -- in the network and at the edge of the network.”
“There are many challenges and constraints such as time and budget and the statutory deadline,” Commissioner Robert McDowell said. He noted that Congress required submission of the report a year earlier than it requires a final broadband map. “One of the most critical inputs to decision making for the plan comes a year after the plan is due,” he said. “That’s the hand we have been dealt and that’s the hand we will play to the best of our ability.”
“Getting our broadband plan rolling was, right alongside DTV, top priority for me” over the past five months, said Commissioner Michael Copps, formerly the acting chairman. “Those were months we could not afford to waste in a country that wasted too many years by ignoring broadband planning. But, as Blair has shown, we've got a good process going and, with a full-court Commission press between now and February, we can -- we will -- get the job done.”