3500 Days of The National Broadband Plan

In early 2009, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop a National Broadband Plan with a functional objective to ensure every American has “access to broadband capability.” Now, with just 165 days left before the National Broadband Plan was to meet the plan’s original stated objectives, I explore some of the key components and objectives of the plan. Ten years is a great deal of time in the telecommunications realm, and it is true that the plan asked a great deal of the FCC from the very start. But it is just as true to say that the FCC has failed to deliver. The internet, and the broadband infrastructure that delivers it, are potentially the greatest tools for maximizing political participation in a democratic society. Making sure that high-speed, affordable internet service is available to as many people as possible is the criteria we should be using to evaluate the FCC. 3,500 days after the plan was released, it is clear the agency will not meet the plan’s stated benchmarks for speed, for universal access, for public safety communications, nor for access to high-speed broadband for anchor institutions like schools and libraries or to provide functional energy management controls. Each failure represents an unfilled public-interest objective.

It is time to make a new plan. A plan with realistic, incremental goals backed by the necessary subsidies, and a willingness to admit that the government has taken the lead on every communication system since the creation of the post office.  We can do better. But I am not sure we can afford to wait another 3,500 days to do so.

[Christopher Terry is a publicly engaged scholar who is currently an assistant professor of media law and ethics in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.]