The Federal Communications Commission’s plan of using open innovation to close the digital divide

[Commentary] Shortly after being designated as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai announced his moon shot: closing the digital divide. In a refreshing and pragmatic break from central planning of the broadband economy, the FCC launched the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), a diverse group of experts tasked with making recommendations on how to accelerate the deployment of high-speed internet access by reducing and removing regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment.

To be sure, the US is the global leader in broadband infrastructure investment, accounting for one-quarter of the world’s total, but the process to deploy infrastructure could be improved. The BDAC demonstrates the open innovation model to broadband deployment policy, recognizing that the solutions to closing the digital divide reside not necessarily in the FCC, but in the knowledge of a multitude of actors on the ground.

[Layton is a PhD Fellow at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark. She also served on President Trump's FCC Landing Team.]