FCC Charged With Drafting National Broadband Strategy

The Federal Communications Commission will be charged with coming up with a plan, within a year, for getting broadband to everyone in the country, including benchmarks for reaching that goal. The Commission must provide an analysis of

1) "the most effective and efficient mechanisms for ensuring broadband access by all people of the United States";

2) "a detailed strategy for achieving affordability of such service and maximum utilization of broadband infrastructure and service by the public";

3) "an evaluation of the status of deployment of broadband service, including progress of projects supported by the grants made pursuant to this section"; and

4) "a plan for use by homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, worker training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes."

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) will be charged with handing out billions in grant money, with help from the FCC. The NTIA publish the nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations, which will be part of the contractual obligation of obtaining the $7.2 billion in grant money for rolling out broadband to un-served and underserved areas. NTIA gets $.7 billion of that, while the Department of Agriculture will dole out the rest. Those broadband conditions, says the bill, must include, at a minimum, adherence to the principles contained in the Commission's broadband policy statement of August 2005.