Adelstein Says U.S. Needs Plan to Regain Telecom Lead
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The U.S. needs a “coherent, cohesive and comprehensive” national broadband strategy so it can restore its place as the world leader in telecom, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said in a Tuesday PCIA Conference keynote. “Even though we have made strides, I am concerned that we are not keeping pace with our global competitors,” he said. “U.S. consumers are paying twice as much as Japanese customers for connections that are twenty times as slow. This isn’t just a public relations problem, it’s a real productivity problem, and our citizens deserve better.” Adelstein also gave his audience a brief update on FCC designated entity and special access plans.
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Adelstein sees the strategy incorporating benchmarks, deployment timetables and measurable thresholds for gauging progress, he said. Those goals should be ambitious, he added. “We should start by updating our current definition of ‘high-speed,’ which is just 200 kbps in one direction, to something that’s more like what consumers receive in countries with which we compete.” The FCC also needs more reliable broadband mapping and other data, the better to address problem areas.
To encourage broadband deployment, the FCC must “do more to stay on top of the latest developments in spectrum technology and policy, working with both licensed and unlicensed spectrum,” Adelstein said. “We have to be more creative with what I have described as ’spectrum facilitation.’ That means looking at all types of approaches -- technical, economic or regulatory -- to get spectrum into the hands of operators ready to serve consumers at the most local levels possible.”
FCC-carrier agreements signed during the Sprint Nextel merger and AT&T-Bell South merger are helping broadband deployment, Adelstein said. Sprint and Nextel committed to “significant” 2.5 GHz band buildout upon merging, but Sprint Nextel exceeded Adelstein’s expectations when it said it will have deployed WiMAX to at least 100 million people by year- end 2008, he said. Meanwhile, by agreeing to divest license and leases acquired in 2.5 GHz band from BellSouth, AT&T allowed independent broadband provider Clearwire to expand into an “important part of the country that may otherwise have been unavailable,” he said. “Increased 2.5 GHz availability in the southeast will lead to the deployment of wireless broadband services in this market in direct competition to the new AT&T -- a real boon to consumers.”
Adelstein wants more deployment in the 2.3 GHz band, he said. In merging with BellSouth, AT&T committed to a specific level of buildout by 2010, he said. “Like a rising tide that lifts all boats, AT&T’s work in this band will be a boon for other wireless broadband providers looking to provide service” in the band, he said.
Wireless is where “true broadband competition” to DSL and cable will come, Adelstein said. “We should not talk about a third broadband ‘pipe’ anymore, but a third ‘channel.'”
The 700 MHz auction rules were a “compromise,” Adelstein said. “I was unhappy with everything but ultimately supported it.” Still, the build-out mandates are the “most aggressive we have ever approved in the history of the FCC,” he said. It’s the first time the FCC has had geographic build-out requirements, something Adelstein said he was “surprised” to win. Sanctions against licensees failing to meet four-year geographic and population mandates “give real teeth” to the rules, but could have been tougher, he said. Under the rules, a failing licensee’s terms fall to the year- end benchmark and it must complete buildout on an accelerated schedule. The FCC should have required failing licensees to forfeit spectrum to someone that could build out on schedule, Adelstein said.
The FCC has “a chance to move quickly” on designated entity (DE) polices given the resolution reached last week in Advanced Wireless Services auction litigation. The FCC didn’t address the issue in its 700 MHz rulemaking, the commission’s most recent “missed chance” to “craft rational DE rules” that would better get spectrum into the hands of small businesses, the commissioner said.
The FCC should deal with special access concerns and an AT&T forbearance petition “in a month or so,” Adelstein said. It will be the first time the FCC has addressed special access in a “comprehensive fashion” as a full, five-member body, he said. The AT&T petition is due Oct. 11.
The FCC should work more closely with local zoning and do more to promote access to tower building sites, not use its radio frequency jurisdiction to preempt decisions denying tower construction applications, Adelstein said. People want better coverage and public safety, but don’t realize unsightly towers are needed to meet those goals, he said.
A planned FCC rulemaking on towers’ link to migratory bird deaths “takes a balanced look at a challenging issue,” Adelstein said. The rulemaking “asked tough questions and equally explored both sides of the issue so that we may best develop a strategic approach.”