The National Broadband Plan And You
By: Jim Reese
With a title like “The National Broadband Plan And You”, I expected Troy McClure to walk out and say something like: ”You might remember me from such SXSW presentations as HVAC Technology for the Data Center, or The Care and Feeding of Modern Ethernet Switches.”
Instead, Derek Turner, Research Director for Freepress presented an excellent consumer-oriented analysis of the FCC National Broadband Plan which is due to be released later this week. I plan to attend a presentation Monday by representatives from the FCC on the same subject. It will be interesting to see how they present the plan.
The FCC took a very passive role following the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the last major legislation dealing with this subject. That act was supposed to address many of the same issues, but failed to do so, Turner says, because the telecom companies lobbied the FCC to dismantle most of the law’s key provisions.
Turner provided a detailed analysis of the key points in the new plan, which primarily seeks to restructure the Universal Service Fund to redirect some of its funding toward broadband deployment instead of voice services. I’ll detail some of the provisions in the plan in an update following the FCC presentation on Monday.
UPDATE
I went to the FCC presentation Monday and it was a big disappointment. No details of the plan were provided. Apparently, the FCC officials presenting have been prohibited from discussing the specifics of the plan until it is formally released on Wednesday.
So we wait.
