CTIA Opposes Radical Redefinition of ‘Broadband’

The FCC “should aim for over-, not under-, inclusiveness in defining ‘high-speed,’ ‘advanced telecommunications capability,’ and ‘advanced services,'” CTIA said, endorsing today’s 200 kbps threshold, but urging addition of more tiers as needed. “Raising the minimum speed for ‘broadband’ service does nothing to help bring faster data access to underserved areas and may provide disincentives for carriers to build out 3G networks,” CTIA said. Carrier spending on 3G technologies has brought broadband to rural communities that otherwise would go unserved, CTIA said: “Services available from those carriers who employ 3G technologies like EDGE -- that provide maximum downlink speeds of 384 kbps -- are far and away better than dial-up alternatives.”

AT&T also urged a multi-tiered classification, with 200 kbps “the beginning point.” But speed alone is a poor measure of broadband quality, the carrier said, citing such factors as “the applications that a user runs, the customer premises equipment chosen for the communication, the protocols used to transmit data, and the use of any compression technologies to reduce the size of the data files to be transmitted.” That means the FCC “should remain cognizant that factors other than pure transmission speed do affect whether a consumer is able to enjoy a rich broadband experience,” AT&T said.

The FCC definition of “broadband” fosters misconceptions about the extent of deployment, critics said. “The Commission’s current definition for broadband services, fixed at 200 kilobits per second (kbps) upstream and downstream, has outlived its usefulness,” said the Alliance for Public Technology (APT). The Computer & Communications Industry Assn. (CCIA) said: “Broadband connectivity should be defined as something greater than the current 200 kbps standard,” preferably “at least 2 Mbps downstream and one Mbps upstream.”

Many commenters used the proceeding as a forum for championing policy changes sought in other proceedings. M2Z, which has a proposal at the FCC to build a free, national broadband network in the 2155-2175 MHz spectrum band, said the inquiry shows why it should get its way. “Got broadband?” the company said: “For too many Americans today, the answer is no. Too many live in neighborhoods that broadband networks have yet to reach. Too many lack the financial resources to keep up with the high cost of recurring monthly charges that are unrestrained by true competition.”

Covad pushed its concerns about the Bells retiring their copper loops when they move to fiber. Covad and other competitive carriers have developed innovative services using the copper infrastructure, Covad told the FCC: “Withholding competitive access to last-mile copper loops, either via copper retirements or via unprecedented regulatory forbearance from last-mile incumbent [LEC] unbundling obligations, impedes such innovations.”

PCIA said the Commission could speed wireless broadband rollout by preempting state and local rules that are often in the way of building towers carriers need to expand offerings. Sprint Nextel urged the FCC to “reverse its premature deregulation” of special access and reintroduce price caps for special access services. “Wireless carriers use special access to connect their cell towers to their switches and to the networks of ILECs, and broadband providers use special access to connect office buildings/campuses/hotels to Internet backbone networks,” the carrier said. Though special access is a “critical input” to many providers’ services, “the ILECs, and in particular AT&T and Verizon, operate as a largely unregulated monopoly with their special access services,” Sprint Nextel said.

ILECs, NCTA Describe Widespread Broadband Deployment

In their comments, the incumbent telephone and cable industries offered a rosy picture of rapidly growing broadband deployment, spurred by light FCC regulation of broadband. “The broadband marketplace has grown tremendously since the Commission’s decisions” to deregulate wireline broadband Internet access, AT&T said. Since the last Sec. 706 report, in Dec. 2004, “the number of broadband lines in the U.S. has more than doubled to 64.6 million lines,” AT&T said.

Broadband has “achieved near ubiquity,” with analysts estimating that 94% of U.S. households can buy it, NCTA said: “This is not by accident. The dramatic growth in broadband deployment over the past decade is directly attributable to the Commission’s initial policy of ‘vigilant restraint’ that unleashed competitive marketplace forces,” NCTA said. The U.S. has the most broadband subscribers in the world and its low global ranking is “highly misleading,” since it’s compared with nations much smaller and with denser populations, the Assn. said.

Market reliance isn’t enough, said the American Library Assn. (ALA). “The market is not meeting the demand of libraries for connectivity,” ALA said: “A recent survey shows that 45% of public libraries do not have sufficient bandwidth to service the public’s needs at all times.” The National Assn. of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA) warned that “relying solely on market forces to achieve the nation’s vision of a ubiquitous affordable broadband network will likely result in the neglect of many consumers.” ILECs focus on high-profit areas, with smaller communities less served, it said: “NASUCA urges the Commission to identify those situations where regulatory intervention is necessary to avoid these results.”

The FCC does a poor job of collecting deployment data, APT said. The agency counts any zip code with one broadband subscriber as having high-speed access, APT said: “This narrow measurement does not offer the Commission, Congress or the American people an accurate picture of broadband deployment. The N.J. Rate Counsel said: “The use of zip codes to assess availability is misleading and unreliable. At a minimum, carriers should be required to specify the percentages of customers within a zip code that have broadband capability.” CCIA promoted a proposal in the Senate to make carriers report down to 9-digit zip codes the proportions of residents who can get broadband and who take it. An alternative to such “9-digit measurement areas might be to use USF study areas,” CCIA said.

Using GIS technology to show “precisely where broadband access is available” would better portray deployment, said the N.J. Rate Counsel, envisioning the FCC getting ILECs’ and cable companies’ GIS data: “Detailed mapping data could then inform regulators’ and policy makers’ assessment of the status and future of broadband access.”

Most commenters agreed that pushing broadband into hard- to-serve areas remains challenging. USTA urged reform of the Rural Utilities Service broadband loan program to better target unserved areas. Broadband deployment is expanding swiftly thanks to FCC deregulatory policies, but some areas remain so hard to serve that the market has skipped them, said Embarq, recommending that unserved areas be targeted for financial aid to get them broadband.

Rural telecom companies need help paying for broadband deployment, said NTCA. “Absent specific broadband incentives, it is likely to be years before all rural households can order DSL or other broadband service,” the group said. Regulatory certainty is important because rural providers “invest significant sums of money” to deploy broadband and “fear of changes in the regulatory area can be enough to compel rural providers to postpone, or in extreme cases, cancel these investment.”