Jockeying to Shape Biden's Broadband Vision Heats Up

As President Joe Biden fills out his top administration posts and his digital agenda, advocates are rushing forward with ideas for just how his team and the Federal Communications Commission should proceed, touting structural reforms and emphasizing equity concerns. And several recommendations are for potential permanent agency chairs, a key post that President Biden hasn’t yet settled on. The National Urban League’s new broadband plan calls on the FCC and executive branch to better measure issues of digital equity, overhaul the Lifeline low-income subsidy program, and create a new Office of Digital Equity to increase broadband adoption. Edward “Smitty” Smith, a telecom lawyer on the Biden transition’s FCC review team, helped spearhead the effort, along with other former FCC officials including Blair Levin. The league’s resident telecom expert, Clint Odom, is a former staffer for Vice President Kamala Harris. Gigi Sohn, a former Obama-era FCC adviser and senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, called for better use of broadband data to guide more precise policy-making. “The US can’t repeat the mistakes of the past — investing billions of dollars in the wrong places using technologies that will become obsolete,” she warned. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who some want to see made permanent FCC chair, put those equity concerns front-and-center during his own speech at State of the Net: “When we focus on broadband in America,” he said, “we must focus on the smoldering front that communities of color constitute in our battle against internet inequality.

[Also see Benton's Recommendations for a National Broadband Agenda]