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FCC’s Broadband Plan

March 19 , 2010
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The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has released its long anticipated National Broadband Plan (“Broadband Plan” or “Plan”). The Broadband Plan details, in over 340 pages, the policy priorities that will drive the US government’s regulatory activities in the communications industry well into the next decade. The core objective of the Broadband Plan is to promote the deployment and uptake of all modes of broadband services. The Plan aims to accomplish this by shifting long-established regulatory frameworks decisively away from their current focus on analog voice networks and services, and toward a focus on high-capacity IP-based networks and services. In so doing, the Broadband Plan will have a significant impact on all segments of the communications industry, including cable television, telecommunications, Internet, wireless and broadcast.

If fully implemented, the FCC anticipates that consumers will have near ubiquitous and seamless access to voice, video and new innovative services through both wired and wireless broadband networks. For service providers, full implementation of the Plan will likely mean a vastly changed regulatory environment, with increased regulation of broadband services, the creation of new subsidies and grants for broadband network deployment, the removal of subsidies and intercarrier compensation for analog voice networks, and the transfer of large amounts of wireless spectrum away from broadcasters and toward wireless broadband providers. This is likely to translate into significantly changed competitive environment, with the winners likely being the owners of wireline and wireless broadband networks, and the losers being the owners of analog networks and broadcasters.

Successful implementation of the Plan is far from certain. The FCC’s statutory authority to undertake many of the most significant recommendations in the Plan are either absent or unclear. As a result, full implementation of the Plan will require either specific new federal legislation authorizing FCC action, or in the alternative will require that the FCC make very controversial decisions based on questionable statutory authority. We anticipate that portions of the Plan will meet with significant political opposition. We expect the FCC to release a timeline of the proceedings that it will initiate to implement the Plan sometime within the next two weeks.

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