National Broadband Plan -- A Midterm Report

With 141 days remaining before the Federal Communications Commission must deliver a National Broadband Plan to Congress, the task force developing the plan provided a status report to the Commission during its monthly meeting Tuesday. Congress required the Commission to craft a strategy for delivery of universal, affordable, widely adopted broadband to serve vital national purposes. Capturing all the external benefits of broadband to society and the economy is key to the analysis of the costs and benefits of universality. Benefits include consumer savings, health care improvements, educational and employment opportunities, and more. Subsidy mechanisms must also be considered as a means to universal adoption, but current mechanisms, such as Universal Service and stimulus grants, are insufficient to achieve national purposes. On the other side of the ledger, reducing the cost of key inputs, such as spectrum, rights of way, backhaul, and fiber, can extend the reach and performance of broadband. Preliminary analysis indicates that approximately three to six million people are unserved by basic broadband (speeds of 768 Kbps or less). The number of unserved increases as the definition of minimum broadband speed increases. The incremental cost to universal availability varies significantly depending on the speed of service, with preliminary estimates showing that the total investment required ranging from $20 billion for 768 Mbps-3 Mbps service to $350 billion for 100 Mbps or faster. The cost of providing consumers with a choice of infrastructure providers, and/or ensuring that all consumers have access to both fixed and mobile broadband would be significantly higher than these initial estimates. Nearly 2/3 of Americans have adopted broadband at home, while 33% have access but have not adopted it, and another 4% say they have no access where they live. But large segments of the population have much lower penetration rates, and adoption levels vary across demographic groups. The cost of digital exclusion is large and growing for non-adopters, as resources for employment, education, news, healthcare and shopping for goods and services
increasingly move on line. The task force has commissioned its own survey to learn how three key factors affect adoption: attitudes toward broadband and technology, affordability and personal context (home environment, access to libraries, disabilities, etc.). Results are expected in November.