‘Massive’ Economic Model Guiding FCC Broadband Deployment Recommendations
The economic model being developed for broadband deployment will be the FCC’s largest since its Benchmark Cost Proxy Model, the broadband team’s deployment director, Rob Curtis, said Thursday at an Arts & Labs forum at George Washington University. And in a speech at an FCBA seminar, plan coordinator Blair Levin cited a shortage of spectrum as one of the biggest barriers to spurring broadband.
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Curtis said the broadband team is “building a massive data set from every piece of publicly available information on both availability -- who gets what speed and where are they -- by technology, and also by infrastructure.” Once the model is completed, the broadband team will “run a bunch of different scenarios” at the census block level and come up with a “statistically valid way of saying who’s got what, and have a pretty good point of view of what needs to go where and at what cost.”
“It’s incumbent upon us to come up with the best cost estimate that we possibly can about how much different choices cost,” Curtis said. “Every possible step within the span of six months that can be taken to make it as accurate as possible … will be taken.” No decision has been made on whether to put the cost model out for comment before the broadband plan is released, he said. The FCC also hasn’t decided how much of the model it will release when the plan comes out, he said. He predicted that the commission will provide “a very large appendix” and documentation for the model. “I think, but cannot commit, that you will be able to play with at the very least lots of the derivative data,” but raw data “will need to be protected.”
Curtis’ team is taking an “evolutionary view of the network” that looks at how to “drive and maximize” private capital over 20-30 years, he said. “It just makes no sense to make a decision today for the purpose of getting broadband out quickly that handcuffs you when … broadband continues to grow at a 30-40 percent” pace, he said.
Making broadband available everywhere is an “inherently more complicated problem than spreading telephony, Curtis said. “Telephony is fundamentally two-dimensional. Broadband is at least three-dimensional.” Besides download speed, considerations including upload speed, latency and jitter must be kept in mind,. he said. And building a data network is much more complex to plan than a telephone network, he said.
The FCC is looking at broadcaster spectrum as it seeks ways to spur mobile broadband in the National Broadband Plan, Levin said at the FCBA seminar. The commission this week confirmed discussions with broadcasters (CD Oct 29 p1). But broadcasters are just one of a “variety” of possible sources of spectrum, Levin said. He declined to comment on “private discussions” that the team is having with “any particular sector.” But he said a “looming spectrum crisis” demands action soon. Lack of spectrum is a major barrier to broadband efforts, Levin said. The wireless industry says it needs 800 MHz more, but there’s only 15 MHz in the pipeline and it’s not good quality, he said.
A spectrum inventory “would be useful” in writing the national plan, Levin said. So would broadband maps, but “we are where we are,” he said. The FCC can still do “a lot of things” in the plan without that information, though on some points it may make a disclaimer that additional information is needed to make “more granular” recommendations.
Levin joked throughout the speech about fainting at a Telecommunications Industry Association dinner last week in Chicago (CD Oct 23 p5). He asked attendees, “Are you really here because you want to hear about broadband, or are you here for the same reason that some people go to NASCAR races?”