State, Federal Focus Called for To Make Broadband Work
State and federal regulators need to be focused on making broadband work, experts said during a National Regulatory Research Institute webinar Wednesday. The NRRI event expanded on a panel -- with the same participants -- held at a NARUC meeting in Washington last week (see 1602160004).
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Broadband is the whole ballgame, said Jimmy Carr, All Points Broadband CEO, so the FCC is right to focus on that service for the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II. The most important thing the FCC could do to improve choice and broadband in rural America is to structure the upcoming CAF II reverse auction as a true auction, where all technologies can compete on a basic level, he said. All broadband providers should be able to compete on a technology-neutral basis to meet whatever standards the FCC wishes to enforce for broadband, he said. “A true auction like that is how we are going to use the USF money that we have as efficiently as possible to connect as many Americans in rural America as possible.”
The FCC isn't enough money to cover all of the needs of rural America, said Jonathan Banks, USTelecom senior vice president-law and policy. “The FCC has to make some hard economic decisions,” he said. “There are going to be places at the end of the day that are going to have to be served by satellite... The FCC doesn’t have enough money to fund competition and I don’t think the states do, either.”
The available funding should have been put out for competitive bid, said Rick Cimerman, NCTA vice president-external and state affairs. While there isn’t enough money to fund competition, there could have been a competitive bidding process for the money that is available, he said.
When there’s only one game in town with no regulatory framework, problems are more likely to pop up, said Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades. But there is still a chance to promote competition and reduce the need for excessive regulation of broadband providers, she said. “In an ideal world, money served by CAF isn’t then served by the state Universal Service Fund; you would use that money in a different way, and not necessarily [to] make something happen faster, but more efficiently, and use that as an opportunity to deploy as many services to as many consumers as possible,” she said. “The idea that you could have a completely deregulated system is probably just not all that practical.”
Both fixed and wireless networks should be available to consumers, said Angie Kronenberg, Incompas general counsel. Key for the USF should be to ensure that rural Americans are not left behind, she said. “When networks are interconnected and communities are connected to those networks, the value of all of those networks -- whether it’s an incumbent network or a competitor network or a cable network -- the value of all those networks and services increase[s],” she said. “It makes the economy stronger.”