Broadband reaches more than 95 percent of Americans,...
Broadband reaches more than 95 percent of Americans, but the FCC still might declare in its next broadband progress report that broadband is not being timely deployed, said Free State Foundation’s Seth Cooper in a report Wednesday (http://bit.ly/14YFlAb). Section 706…
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of the Communications Act, which directs the commission to make such a report, was written in “deregulatory terms,” but the commission continues to use it to take a pro-regulatory approach, Cooper said. The FCC could remove regulatory barriers to broadband infrastructure investment by abstaining from enforcing legacy telephone regulations, approving trials to facilitate the ongoing Internet Protocol transition, and setting a sunset date for the public switched telephone network, Cooper said. On the wireless side, the commission could remove regulatory barriers to cell site construction, conduct the incentive spectrum auction in a “simple and timely manner,” and promptly review mergers and secondary market transactions involving transfers of spectrum licenses, he said. “If the FCC continues to suggest -- wrongly, in my view -- that progress in broadband deployment is a problem, a deregulatory and market-driven approach offers an answer,” Cooper said. “Should the FCC continue to allow regulatory barriers to stand in the way of infrastructure investment, the agency will have itself to blame for any lack of timely and reasonably deployment of broadband services to all Americans."