Getting Started: Reducing Digital Exclusion, Promoting Digital Evolution

Over the course of the past year the Consumer Federation of America has urged the Federal Communications Commission to take a pragmatic, real world approach to the urgent national problem of making a world-class broadband network truly universal in America. With one-third of U.S. households now three generations behind in technology adoption and the U.S. lagging other advanced industrial nations, achieving universal service would not only be an immense benefit to those households, it would provide a powerful boost to the economy.

We see today's National Broadband Plan report to congress as a significant first step in the right direction. It strikes a good balance between what needs to be done in the long-term and what can be done in the immediate future. Given the complete absence of policies to address the digital divide and promote competition in broadband in the past decade, this is an ambitious agenda and a good starting point for responding to the challenge confronting the U.S. communications network.

The fact that the Federal Communications Commission intends to quickly launch dozens of proceedings to implement these first steps is good news. In a democracy of 300 million people we must live by the rule of law. To change society, we must change the rules. To change the rules, we must have rulemakings that comply with the Administrative Procedures Act. Above all, that means the public should have the chance to comment on the actual rules that will be implemented. It would have been inappropriate for the FCC to present detailed policy prescriptions without a full hearing record developed in individual proceedings. There will certainly be lots of devils in the details, but the more rulemakings and the sooner they get started, the better.