Commenters Pressure FCC to Ask Broad Range of Questions in Section 706 Reports
The FCC got significant pushback on its proposal to sharply limit the scope of its Telecom Act Section 706 reports to Congress, according to reply comments that were due Tuesday in docket 25-223. Public interest groups said in a joint filing that “narrowing” the focus of the reports “will threaten [the] commission’s ability to achieve universal service.” Commissioners approved a notice of inquiry ahead of the August open meeting (see 2508050056).
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FCC Chairman Brendan Carr dissented on last year’s report, which concluded that broadband isn't deployed in a "reasonable and timely fashion," with about 24 million Americans lacking access to speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps (see 2403140050). Carr said in August that the reports must “adhere to the statutory text passed by Congress.”
The public interest groups said the commission “must adopt a comprehensive approach that considers broadband deployment, affordability, and adoption together in order to better understand ‘availability.’” They opposed collapsing “deployment and availability into a single concept.” The filing was supported by Public Knowledge, X-Lab, the Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, UnidosUS and New America’s Open Technology Institute.
In the end, “the Commission must analyze critical factors of deployment, affordability, and adoption in order to determine if broadband is being made available in practice to advance its mandate under Section 706,” the public interest groups said. “The record reflects broad consensus for maintaining a forward-looking, aspirational approach to broadband speed benchmarks, which should be adopted by the Commission.”
Numerous commenters observed in the initial comment round (see 2509090010) that a 100/20 Mbps benchmark “is outdated and urged higher standards that consider reasonably anticipated demand over time,” NTCA noted. “Many commenters reinforced NTCA positions that the Section 706 inquiry must be forward looking -- specifically, that the success of today's broadband deployments depends upon their ability to meet tomorrow's needs.”
NTCA also said it opposes proposals to set lower goals and questions the proposition “that market-based targets disfavor certain technologies unfairly.” Market data typically reveals “year-on-year growth demand for higher capacity services” and “directly supports the Commission's mandate to assess whether advanced services, i.e., those whose capabilities represent improvements over previous achievements and standards, are being deployed to consumers.”
WTA said the FCC should use the report to assess progress toward a long-term goal of 1 Gbps download and 500 Mbps upload speeds, in addition to the current 100/20 Mbps benchmark. The 1 Gbps target isn’t a “pie-in-the-sky unrealistic goal” since “many service providers, including many of WTA’s members, are currently offering (and have offered for many years) gigabit broadband service,” the filing said.
“A long-term view in addition to a near-term view is … consistent with the long-term nature of broadband investment,” WTA said. The commission “regularly makes predictions about future technology trends, when, for example, [it] allocates spectrum for emerging services or seeks to influence global spectrum allocations through the World Radiocommunications Conference processes.”
WISPA urged the FCC to find “common ground” on the question of what the reports should consider. While the group “wholeheartedly supports the return to a focus on the specific statutory language as the basis for analyzing broadband access, it agrees with some of the dissenting commenters that evaluating whether advanced telecommunications capability is ‘available’ on a ‘reasonable’ basis necessarily involves consideration of the affordability of this service to those seeking it.”