Election Results Not Seen as Big Question Mark in Broadband Plan Follow-Through
SAN FRANCISCO -- Republican gains wouldn’t have much effect on National Broadband Plan follow-through by Congress on matters such as spectrum allocation and the Universal Service Fund that don’t depend on how net neutrality and broadband reclassification play out, said the former official who led the FCC’s work on the project and industry lobbyists.
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"None of them are really, like, partisan issues,” Blair Levin, who was the executive director of the commission’s effort, said late Tuesday at the FCBA Seminar West. Tom Sugrue of T-Mobile agreed that “in spectrum issues there tends to be a little less partisanship” than elsewhere. Chris Libertelli, Skype’s government and regulatory affairs, disagreed with the view that the election results don’t matter much to the plan’s results. “The legal foundation for the plan has become a partisan issue,” he said.
The net neutrality and reclassification argument has “taken political momentum away from implementation of the plan,” Levin said. “There’s only so much bandwidth for these issues. I personally think that’s unfortunate.” Sugrue and Paul Garnett of Microsoft agreed.
Sugrue said he’s hopeful for a spectrum bill that industry and the administration can support. It’s “still in the works,” and prospects for action in the lame-duck session are slim, he said. T-Mobile supports authorizing incentive auctions and letting the FCC use proceeds from auctions to plan later ones, Sugrue said. Action on the broadband plan can’t wait for Congress to rewrite the Telecom Act, Libertelli said.
"The day after election, no one is singing ‘Kumbaya,'” Levin predicted. But “there will be a moment in time when people say, ‘OK, we have to get to work.'” The broadband plan is in the mold of the 1996 Telecom Act, which passed unanimously, he said. Rachelle Chong of the office of California’s chief information officer agreed. She’s a former commissioner of the FCC and of the state Public Utility Commission.
Levin said the plan should be updated about every five years. But he won’t be involved again, “and I don’t think you need to do the same kind of process” as was used for the original plan, he said. Garnett said the definition of broadband should be reviewed more often than that.
"Probably the most important idea” in spectrum policy is holding incentive auctions, Levin said. “We have to have a way of constantly reallocating according to where the markets are,” he said. That’s especially true when Internet video “is going to be the big user of spectrum in years to come.”
The “worst idea” in U.S. broadband policy is that its success is measured by the access speeds available to the most rural residents, Levin said. “It’s time to kill this idea.” It’s “not at all clear … that there is much benefit” yet to ensuring that everyone have a chance at download speeds higher than 4 Mbps, as the plan recommended, he said. Raising the minimum to 6 Mbps, as rural carriers want, would double the cost, Levin said. It would produce pressure to recover universal-service support from wireless customers and to limit it to wireline broadband, he said.
Rural areas shouldn’t get the same broadband as denser places by extension from the equality of voice service, Levin said. “You don’t have the same power” facilities in all places. “You don’t have the same roads. Bullet trains don’t go to rural areas.” Levin said it wasn’t very challenging to him to present this position at the FCBA forum. “I like going to RLEC phone companies and telling them, ‘It’s a really bad idea giving you all this money.'"
Libertelli said, “We agree you should drive a stake in the idea that it’s only speed that matters.” Skype is more concerned about connection quality than speed, he said.