January 2010

It is looking more and more likely that the National Broadband Plan will include directions to the nearest available spectrum. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and his broadband team have made it clear that while there is no immediate spectrum crisis, they foresee one by mid-decade, and planning for it needs to start now. Broadband advisor Blair Levin recently said that the FCC's plans don't threaten the future of broadcasting, but he added that said future did not necessarily justify using all of that spectrum all the time. Last week, the sense of urgency got the backing of the Obama administration with a one-two punch that could be aimed at incumbent spectrum users, including broadcasters. In filings to the FCC on the upcoming broadband plan, both the Justice Department and the Obama administration—via its chief telecom advisor, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration—said the FCC needed to get its hands on a lot more spectrum. Both agencies framed the push as critical to broadband competition and deployment. While neither singled out broadcasting, the Justice Department in particular was clear that the FCC's first job was to find spectrum being underutilized in terms of its current value versus prospective value to wireless uses.

The California Association of Tribal Governments urges the Federal Communications Commission to include a Tribal Broadband Plan into the National Broadband Plan as broadband is the best hope for tribal governments to develop economic development opportunities that support all of the underlying building blocks of economic opportunity that are: education, health care, public safety and governance.

A key goal of the National Broadband Plan must be that all tribal governments, anchor tribal institutions, and tribal citizens, like other Americans, have the opportunity to reap the full benefits of broadband services. Recommendations include:

1) Increasing coordination—among federal agencies; Tribal, state, and local governments; and community groups and individuals—is a critical preliminary step towards ensuring that the federal trustee accomplish its tribal broadband goals and objectives in an efficient and effective way.

2) Congress should direct the NTIA, with FCC Tribal Affairs Bureau support, "to address both short- and long-term needs assessments" for tribal broadband.

3) Tribal recommendations for universal service reform, eligible telecommunications carrier designation process reform, network openness, spectrum access, middle mile/special access reform, inter-carrier compensation, access to poles and rights of way, tower siting, national historical preservation act (NHPA) processes, national environmental policy act (NEPA) processes, and video programming proceedings.

4) To help inform Congress of any needed changes to the recommendations in these challenges to the implementation of the Tribal Broadband Plan, including the completion of the National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission Chairman should complete a status report on the Tribal Broadband Plan by February 17th every year beginning in 2011.

In a wide-ranging one-on-one keynote interview with Consumer Electronics Association chief Gary Shapiro at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Jan. 8, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski described broadband as an "engine for economic growth" and emphasized that providing wireless broadband access will be an important component of the national broadband plan the Commission is currently formulating. While the FCC will explore using the spectrum more efficiently, such as through secondary licensing, he said it is clear the FCC needs to find more spectrum to achieve its goal of universal broadband access. The two most likely sources are broadcasters and government users of spectrum. But Chairman Genachowski did acknowledge the importance of stations' existing DTV broadcasts.

The federal government set 768 kilobits per second (Kbps) for downloading and 200 Kbps for uploading as minimum acceptable speeds to qualify for broadband stimulus grants. But critics say those speeds hardly equate to true broadband.

"It's almost impossible to participate in a real-time video conference [at that speed]. It's almost impossible to share video files, music files, pictures -- any large quantity of data with a time-sensitive nature to it. It's almost impossible to do that because it's barely four times the speed of dial-up," said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, a consumer group advocating for higher speeds within the National Broadband Plan, which the FCC plans to release March. "Certainly on the downstream side, you might be able to stream YouTube videos, but you're going to have a lot of stuttering and buffering," Turner added. "On the upstream side, it's barely enough to engage in a two-way voice over Internet phone call." Some critics say the federal government's standard, as written, would cement America's low ranking among national average broadband speeds. Turner contends that this would stunt the nation's economy, which increasingly depends on fast Internet connections.

The U.S. ranked 19th in average advertised broadband speeds compared to other countries in a 2008 study conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group headquartered in France that helps governments tackle economic, social and governance challenges of a global economy. If the national plan holds to the minimum speeds required by the stimulus, old-style copper lines will likely be used to provide DSL connections in regions that are now classified as unserved, said Alan Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute. He wants subsidies to fund more advanced technology. "We're preserving the current infrastructure," Shark said. "What new is going to be built, other than taking copper lines and putting in a few little switches?"