March 2010

Free Press Executive Director Josh Silver made the following statement:

The FCC's National Broadband Plan represents a decisive break from the policies of the Bush administration. The Plan makes clear that high-speed Internet access has become a 'must have' critical public service like water, electricity and telephone service. Closing the digital divide is now a national priority. The agency staff should be commended for pouring countless hours of hard work into preparing this blueprint for America's broadband future.

We strongly support the FCC's goals of bringing world-class speeds and affordable prices to American broadband consumers. The commitment to universal access and near-universal adoption in the next decade is the most important infrastructure challenge of this era. Ambitious benchmarks to put the United States back among the world's leading broadband nations are exactly what we need at a time of economic uncertainty. We are especially pleased to see policies focused on the digital have-nots and a clear commitment to erasing the digital divide.

But there are no easy paths to reach these goals. To put the market to work for American consumers, the FCC will need to foster competition to drive down prices and drive up speeds. This will require confronting the market power of the cable and telephone giants that control the broadband market. The problems caused by the lack of competition are what led the Congress to order up a National Broadband Plan. While the FCC does take some important steps toward a new framework for competition policy, many of the critical questions are deferred for further review. We hope the plan will confront the competition problems directly, and will include specific policies to put consumers first. Implementing the policies needed to bring every American affordable, robust broadband will require courageous leadership and a willingness to stand up to narrow corporate interests.

CTIA President Steve Largent issued the following statement:

CTIA and our member companies are extremely pleased that spectrum is recognized as being pivotal to the National Broadband Plan. We appreciate the FCC's and the Broadband team's focus on making '500 MHz of spectrum for broadband within 10 years, of which 300 MHz should be made available for mobile use within five years.' Based on the executive summary, it is clear the Broadband team recognized the importance of the mobile Internet to the economy and to meeting many national priorities. We applaud their commitment to providing everyone equal access to the most advanced wireless communications.

We look forward to working with the Chairman and Commissioners, the Broadband Team, Congress and other policymakers to ensure Americans have continued access to and benefit from the most competitive and innovative wireless industry in the world.

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.

The New Zealand cabinet has signed off on proposals for the roll out of high speed broadband in rural areas and the reform of the Telecommunications Service Obligations (TSO). Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce says in a statement that the plans will lead to a major step-change in rural broadband.

Joyce confirms that 97 percent of rural households will have access to broadband services of at least 5Mbit/s; with the remainder reaching at least 1Mbit/s. A big part of the plan will be connecting fibre directly to rural schools, one of the most concentrated areas of broadband demand, Joyce says. "The government's rural broadband initiative will help deliver fibre connections to 97 percent of schools across the country and 99.7 percent of students. The remaining most remote schools will achieve speeds of at least 10Mbit/s. Joyce says that the only significant change to the rural broadband initiative was to up-weight the importance of the community connection objectives, relative to the schools part of the initiative.