Policymakers must focus more on spurring broadband adoption if they want to improve broadband penetration in the U.S., said Carly Fiorina, chair of the Technology Policy Institute, in a media briefing Tuesday. The former Hewlett Packard CEO advised the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in California. The $7.2 billion broadband infrastructure program may not be as effective at improving penetration as the government hopes, Fiorina said. “Simply throwing money at technology doesn’t work,” she said. “You can spend a lot of money and not get a lot to show for it.” More attention must be paid to demand-side factors, she said. “It’s not quite as simple as, ‘If we build it, they will come,'” she said. “For technology to be deployed most effectively, the underlying processes and practices and habits have to change. Otherwise what you're doing is just adding a layer of complexity and expense on top of what already exists.” Congress specified only about $200 million of the stimulus money for spurring adoption, noted Scott Wallsten, a vice president with the institute. And the program focuses mostly on rural areas, even though the most severe adoption problems are in low-income urban areas, he said. Even if the program is effective at deploying broadband throughout the country, “you're not going to get much of a boost in broadband penetration at all,” he said. Fiorina applauded increased emphasis on technology in Washington, but warned that technology “is a place where the details matter” and “emotions can run high” when it’s tied to other issues like healthcare and education. Collecting objective research and analysis will be key to making good policy, she said.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
Eight years after setting an “interim” freeze on jurisdictional separations, the FCC tentatively decided to extend its expiration date one more year to June 30, 2010. Separations, which is governed by the FCC’s Part 36 rules, is the process by which incumbent local exchange carriers allocate interstate and intrastate regulated costs. In a rulemaking notice issued late Friday, the FCC pledged to work with states to finish the long-delayed separations overhaul. The Copps FCC has already taken steps to increase states’ involvement in the process, said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, in an interview.
There appeared to be little new in the more than 100 comments that flooded into the FCC this week about how to develop a comprehensive broadband strategy for rural parts of the U.S. The recommendations of the commission are expected to be given weight at NTIA and RUS as the agencies develop their respective broadband stimulus programs.
Qwest refiled for forbearance in the Phoenix metropolitan statistical area, again seeking relief from dominant carrier and loop and transport unbundling rules. The company said competition has intensified since last year, when the FCC rejected a Qwest petition seeking the same relief in Phoenix, Denver, Seattle and Minneapolis (CD Aug 19 p3). The petition’s success may depend on a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Kaut.
The FCC ordered a long-awaited overhaul of regulatory fees for submarine cables. The 3-0 decision, released Tuesday, creates a new fee for operators of the cables to pay instead of the international bearer circuit fee that they have owed. The order doesn’t affect fees paid by terrestrial and satellite operators. Industry applauded the decision, which fell off the sonar late last year when Kevin Martin was the commission’s chairman.
The FCC may soon answer a court remand on universal service high-cost support for non-rural carriers. Last week, the commission circulated a notice of inquiry that includes a laundry list of questions asking how the FCC should respond to a 2005 remand by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, an FCC official told us. In 2005, the court called unlawful the FCC’s current non-rural rules, which address carriers like Qwest that serve high-cost areas with too many lines to be considered “rural” by the statutory definition. Earlier this year, Qwest petitioned the court for a writ of mandamus to force the FCC to make new rules (CD Jan 16 p6). Qwest wants the FCC to change the rules so it can receive more USF support for its rural territories.
The FCC received broadband availability data from most companies filing the new Form 477 report, an FCC official said Tuesday. The FCC is still processing the data submitted, but has received more than 95 percent of the roughly 7,000 filings expected, the official said. The revised form narrows broadband data collection to a census tract level from 5-digit ZIP codes, and distinguishes between residential and business connections. The collection didn’t go completely without error; some companies missed the deadline and are now pleading for extensions.
Incumbent and competitive carriers split on whether access charges should apply to virtual NXX calls, a subset issue to the intercarrier compensation debate. In comments last week on a petition by Blue Casa Communications, most incumbents said access charges should apply. Competitors defended the existing practice of applying reciprocal compensation.
State and industry officials debated possible limits to NTIA broadband grant eligibility in a Monday public hearing at the Commerce Department. In a morning roundtable, representatives of broadband providers and equipment makers urged a widely inclusive approach, while an official for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners suggested the NTIA mandate state involvement. Later in the day, officials discussed coordination between the NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service, and how to spur broadband adoption and public computer center capacity.
A small Colorado company planning to apply for broadband stimulus money started a mapping Web site to collect information on untapped markets. RidgeviewTel created WeNeedBroadband.com, a dialup-friendly Web site where users lacking broadband can enter their names and physical addresses. The site stores the information in a database and maps users’ locations. RidgeviewTel will include select information in grant and loan applications it plans to submit to the NTIA and Rural Utilities Service, CEO Vince Jordan said. The company will share the information with other service providers, and, if enough information is collected, also with the government agencies, he said. RidgeviewTel has built 54 broadband networks in Colorado, New York and Illinois. The company plans to expand in its current markets and enter new ones around the U.S., Jordan said.