Levin Says Broadband Plan Can’t Be ‘One-Shot’ Deal

Levin, 55, collapsed in the middle of a speech later that night at a dinner hosted by the Telecommunications Industry Association, which co-sponsors Supercomm with USTelecom. He was conscious when paramedics arrived at the scene. Levin “will return to work shortly,” an FCC spokesman said. He “felt ill” during his speech, and was sent to Northwestern University Hospital, the spokesman said. He left the hospital Thursday and flew home, according to an e-mail to FCC staff by Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus.

Universal broadband goals won’t be achieved with only the existing levels of private investment, universal service and the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus money, Levin said in the afternoon. “It’s pretty clear to me that BTOP’s not going to do it, BIP isn’t going to finish the job, [and] universal service isn’t going to do the job right.” The FCC could ask Congress for “a lot of money … but there a lot of things short of that,” he said. For example, there may be ways to cut the costs of rights of way elements like pole attachments, he said.

Spectrum may be the most important asset, Levin said. “We have to look at where it’s underutilized.” There will be a “crisis” if “we don’t get more spectrum into the field,” Levin said. The iPhone has increased AT&T data traffic 5,000 percent, he said, and without more spectrum, many other carriers likely will face similar issues: “This is probably the single most important problem facing this sector.”

The sooner policymakers fix the Universal Service Fund, the better, Levin said. But he wouldn’t commit to revamps for that or intercarrier compensation as being recommendations in the plan. “I understand how government finds it difficult to deal with things until a crisis is right in front of their eyes, but this is a crisis waiting to happen,” he said. The USF high-cost fund and contribution factor is ballooning, while the revenue base is shrinking, he said.

The broadband plan should stimulate “more than just connectivity,” Levin said. That includes training sessions, among other things, he said. On how rigid the FCC’s broadband definition will be, Levin said it’s important to set goals so success can be measured. “But on the other hand, the real goal is not a numeric stat. It’s a dynamic process.”

What effect regulation has on telecom investment is a “hard question” to answer because the commission is looking “holistically” at the Internet ecosystem, Levin said. It wouldn’t be good to have “a huge investment on the network side, but no investment on the device side [and] no investment on the application side,” he said. The broadband team has been sensitive to the issue, but ultimately they're just staff providing options for the commissioners, he said.

The broadband plan will be based on what the agency knows or thinks is going to happen, but it must also accommodate the unanticipated, Levin said. One challenge is that government can’t predict “what the next Facebook will be” and what broadband attributes it will require, he said. The plan will take into account announced but unfinished deployment projects, he said. But the FCC won’t base policy on “highly speculative technologies,” he said. Getting good data is critical to determining how to get the most “bang for the buck,” Levin said. Upon arriving at the regulator, the broadband team “quickly learned” that FCC data on broadband was inadequate, he said. The plan will include recommendations to improve data collection, he said.

At the TIA dinner, Levin said industry filings to the commission have improved somewhat since he criticized their quality this summer. Filings “generally lacked anything … with regard to sufficient evidence to make any kind of decision,” and “didn’t tee up the choices that we as a country need to make.” However, “recent filings have been much better,” but “it’s still not enough,” he said. “Many of the filings in the record seem designed to convince us that the company doing the filing contributes a great deal to the economy. Well, consider me already convinced … but that does not answer the question that Congress asked?”

Many filings seemed to have an “obsession with numeric goals,” Levin said. “We will have numeric goals, but far more important are the mechanisms that generate constant progress.” Competition is a “primary mechanism, but there are other mechanisms such as transparency about key broadband attributes.” Like food inspection ratings, broadband ratings “could drive constant improvements,” he said.

Another recurring error “was thinking one size fits all,” Levin said. Some have suggested setting a goal of 100 Mbps for every home, “but we have to ask whether that’s the right thing to do,” he said. A better idea may be to ask what kind of bandwidth is appropriate for different use cases, he said. The team is investigating “the tradeoffs between having bandwidth evenly distributed” versus ensuring research institutions and major hospitals have the fastest bandwidth, “while households are provided some lower but sufficient bandwidth.”