Could the FCC’s National Broadband Plan transform America?Photo: Corbis

Best Opinion: NY Times, Politico, BusinessWeek, Wash. Post, CNET, PC Mag

Truth, justice, and high-speed internet access for all? The Federal Communications Commission is set to present Congress with an “ambitious” proposal to establish a super-high-speed broadband Internet network throughout the USA within the next 10 years. Not everyone is thrilled with the “National Broadband Plan”: Television broadcasters say it will compromise their business, and are already gearing up to fight it. Here, a concise guide to the FCC’s plan, what it could mean for Americansand why it might not work:

What’s the goal?
The National Broadband Plan is designed to give every American access to affordable high-speed Internet, and to increase broadband download speeds from an average of 3 to 4 megabits per second to at least 100 Mbps.

How many Americans have access to high-speed broadband right now?
Just over one-fourth of the population, or around 81 million citizens.

How does that compare with, say, Germany?
In terms of broadband access, America’s ranking has dropped to 15th (down from fourth in 2009) behind countries like Germany, Sweden, and Canada (the Netherlands ranks first). While not all studies confirm that ranking, says FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in The Washington Post, “none puts us even close to where we need to be” competitively. (Watch an interview with the FCC chairman.)

How will the National Broadband Plan work?
It will expand high-speed Internet access to rural areas and open up new wireless bandwidth. You’ll be able to use smart phones or wireless devices like an Apple iPad as easily in Montana as in Manhattan.

How much will this vast undertaking cost?
The FCC estimates the plan could cost up to $350 billion over the next 10 years.

Who’s going to foot the bill?
This remains unclear. A corollary question: How much of the cost will be covered by tax dollars versus private investment?

Why is this so important?
Americans will pay less for high-speed Internet access. Beyond that, the FCC says the plan will improve education; reduce costs of health-care providers; allow the technology sector to innovate more aggressively; and give small businesses greater access to customers, especially in rural areas. But the “biggest winners” may be “mobile phone companies” like AT&T and Verizon, says Todd Shields in BusinessWeek, since the plan would greatly increase access to nationwide high-speed wireless signals.

When could we start seeing changes?
The FCC hopes changes will take place within the next five years, but that doesn’t factor in opposition to the plan, expected to be significant. “Each bullet point [of the plan],” says analyst Craig Moffett in an interview with The New York Times, “will trigger its own tortuous battle.”

Who opposes it and why?
The most fervent objections come from television broadcasters, who’d be required to “voluntarily” donate 500 MHz of their unused wireless bandwidth to the federal government, which would, in turn, sell the “spectrums” to the highest telecom bidder and give the TV stations a percentage. Broadcasters say this plan compromises their own expansion potential.

Is it just TV broadcasters who don’t like it?
No. Many in Washington and elsewhere are raising the specter of government Internet regulation. “Say goodbye to an open, flexible, consumer-driven Internet,” says an anonymous blogger at RedCounty.com, and “say hello to a big-government, regulated, censored behemoth.”

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That’s just one of several goals outlined in the National Broadband Plan, though it’s the one that’s drawing the most ire from a handful of ISPs who oppose “extreme forms of regulation” by the FCC.

“This is a fairly unique event,” said Paul Gallant, an analyst with Concept Capital. “The FCC really has never been asked to design a broad regulatory shift like this. Broadband is important and difficult because it threatens every established communications sector.”

Naturally, the FCC feels different, and according to the agency’s chief, Julius Genachowski, the proposal is a “win-win for everyone involved.”

“We’ve certainly heard from a number of broadcasters who told us they think this is a promising direction and are getting ready to roll up their sleeves with us,” Genachowski added.

Broadband providers are probably most concerned with the cost associated with the FCC’s proposal, but should they be? According to ABI Research, global fixed broadband service revenue is expected to exceed $210 billion in 2014, up from $164 billion in 2009, and $145 billion in 2008. Those are global figures, mind you, but still a staggering amount of revenue. Even during an economic downturn, ISPs appear to be as financially strong as ever, at least in terms of broadband dollars.

There are many other parts to the National Broadband Plan, such as a $16 billion investment to build an emergency public safety system, a one-time investment of $9 billion to extend the reach of broadband into rural areas, ensuring that government buildings, schools, libraries, and healthcare facilities get speeds in the vicinity of 1Gbps by 2020, and more.

Ambitious, to say the least, but entirely “achievable,” Genachowski says.

Source: hothardware.com

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Dramatically increasing Internet speeds to 25 times the current average is one of the myriad goals to be unveiled in the National Broadband Plan by the the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.

The highly anticipated plan will make a series of recommendations to Congress and is aimed at spurring the ever-changing communications industry to bring more and faster online services to Americans as they increasingly turn to the Internet to communicate, pay monthly bills, make travel plans and be entertained by movies and music.

“This is a fairly unique event,” said Paul Gallant, an analyst with Concept Capital. “The FCC really has never been asked to design a broad regulatory shift like this. Broadband is important and difficult because it threatens every established communications sector.”

Some details of the plan have trickled out in the last few weeks including how to find spectrum to meet an anticipated explosion of handset devices capable of playing movies and music in addition to handling emails and voice calls.

But some carriers like AT&T Inc and Qwest Communications International Inc were irked last month when the agency’s chief, Julius Genachowski, announced that the FCC would propose in the plan a goal of 100 Mbps speeds to be in place at 100 million American homes in 10 years. The current average is less than 4 Mbps.

In a sign of tension between the FCC and carriers, Qwest called it “a dream” and AT&T reacted by saying the FCC should resist calls for “extreme forms of regulation.”

Since the FCC announcement, Cisco Systems Inc announced it would introduce a router that can handle Internet traffic up to 12 times faster than rival products. Google Inc has also gotten in on the hype, saying it plans to build a super-fast Internet network to show that it can be done. The FCC has praised both announcements.

The plans could also touch off tensions with television broadcasters, who will be asked to give up spectrum to wireless carriers who desperately need it for their mobile devices, such as the iPhone and Blackberry.

The FCC plans to let them share in the profits of auctions structured to redistribute the spectrum.

“We’ve developed a plan that is a real win-win for everyone involved and we have every expectation that it will work,” Genachowski said in an interview with Reuters.

“We’ve certainly heard from a number of broadcasters who told us they think this is a promising direction and are getting ready to roll up their sleeves with us,” he said.

The FCC also wants to make sure that anchor institutions — government buildings, schools, libraries and healthcare facilities — get speeds of about 1 gigabit per second by 2020.

The full broadband plan is expected to be released at a Tuesday meeting among the FCC’s five members who are expected to discuss the results and recommendations of the roadmap, which was mandated by Congress. Congress may have to pass legislation to enact some portions of the plan.

FCC officials have said some of the goals are aspirational and should be viewed as a “living, breathing” document for the next decade in hopes of helping 93 million Americans without broadband get connected.

ACHIEVABLE

“It is both aspiration and achievable,” Genachowski said.

The Obama administration has touted the plan as a way to create jobs and make energy use more efficient.

“It will be a call to action,” said Blair Levin, who heads the FCC’s broadband task force which has collected data and comments from the industry, academics and the public as well as from three dozen public workshops.

The FCC has placed most of its attention on broadband policy which Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, called “the signature issue” since Genachowski took over the helm in late June.

“It means that broadband is going to drive other types of policy decisions and it really sets the parameters for telecommunications and new applications,” West said.

FCC officials have said that the plan will not take sides on technology or applications, but they want to lay the groundwork to spur innovation and job creation.

Officials have said the plan will ask Congress to fund up to $16 billion to build an emergency public safety system.

It would also tell lawmakers that a one-time injection of $9 billion could accelerate broadband reach to the 4 percent of Americans who do have access. Otherwise they could let the FCC carry out a 10-year plan to realign an $8 billion U.S. subsidy program for universal broadband access instead of universal phone access.

Experts call the plan ambitious but question if the FCC, which plans to spin off a series of rule-making proposals linked to the plan, can realistically make good on its recommendations.

“There’s so little progress on this stuff in Washington,” said Rob Atkinson, who heads the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

“I think Chairman Genachowski has a real opportunity to bring different warring interests under 50-75 percent of the plan.”

(Reporting by John Poirier and Sinead Carew, editing by Matthew Lewis)

Source: news.yahoo.com

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But what really got our attention was this: the NBP will ask the government to “consider use of spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service.”

That’s odd, we thought, since the FCC and Congress have been considering such an idea for years.

M2Z

Between 2006 and early 2009, the agency actively vetted a proposal by M2Z Networks to provide a free, wireless broadband across the United States. The FCC would lease a national spectrum license to M2Z

in the Advanced Wireless Services-3 (AWS-3) band area (2155-2175MHz), and the company would offer a free, advertising-funded, 512Kpbs broadband service that filtered out indecent content. Consumers would be able to access the band area via an attachment device on their computer. The firm would also offer a faster, unfiltered premium service and pay the government 5 percent each year from its gross revenues. Once granted this band, M2Z would commit to rolling out the smut-free network to 95 percent of the US population over the course of a decade.

M2Z launched a spirited campaign to generate public interest in its proposal, which came complete with a small battalion of endorsers.

“I know many Utahns would welcome the opportunity to provide their children with the educational and economic opportunity which broadband access can provide without having to become software engineers in order to protect their children,” Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) wrote to the FCC in 2007.

But while the idea received lots of shout-outs from family advocacy groups and members of Congress, the FCC rejected just granting the spectrum to a chosen entity. Then in 2008, agency chair and values voter Republican Kevin Martin came up with analternative proposal to run an auction of that license zonethe winning bidder promising to abide by M2Z’s commitments and rules.

Auction skewing

Various groups and companies quickly launched counter campaigns to stop or modify the Martin/M2Z plan. T-Mobile insisted that the service would interfere with spectrum it owned in a nearby band. And the wireless industry in general, led by CTIA – The Wireless Association, charged that the scheme would

“skew an auction to the benefit of one entity or business model.” Ironically, Key Republicans on Capitol Hill quickly took sides with big wireless, while Democrats backed Martinwith Rep. Anna Eschoo

(D-CA) submitting a bill to the House that pretty much echoed what Martin proposed.

Meanwhile civil liberties groups and bookseller/publisher trade associations opposed the plan on different grounds.

The service “would censor content far beyond anything ever upheld by any court for any medium,” warned a coalition of 22 public interest groups in July of 2008. “This prohibition would plainly infringe on the rights of adults to access broad categories of lawful speech,” they wrote.

In response to T-Mobile’s concerns, the FCC’s Office of Engineering Technology ran a battery of interference tests in Seattle that concluded that peaceful coexistence with T-Mobile’s licenses was doable. As for the civil liberties concerns, to our delight, in December of that year Martin called Ars to announce that he was dropping the porn-filtering part of the plan from his proposal (Julius Genachowski, the present chair of the agency, should feel free to emulate this fine example by contacting us at his convenience).

None of these gestures did the cause much good, however. Wireless companies challenged the FCC’s engineering report. And while those public interest groups were presumably assuaged by Martin’s announcement, it’s not as if they suddenly became big supporters of the plan overnight.

When Martin called us, we asked him what the prospects for the proposal now looked like.

“This is an item that has been pending at the Commission for several years, that the Commissioners were originally critical of not having moved forward faster,” he lamented. “Other commissioners said, ‘We’re overdue; we’ve got to do this.’ But when an actual item is put forth where you have to make a hard decision, they say, ‘Well, I’m not so sure what I want to do anymore.’”

In the end, the Commission never weighed in on the plan. Martin quit the agency the following year. To this day, the FCC has not voted on whether to launch the auction or not.

An open question

We contacted M2Z CEO John Muletta to ask him what he thought of the FCC’s latest proposal for a free wireless service. His response was pretty magnanimous, given his recent fortunes with the agency.

“I think this a victory for Chairman Genachowski’s data-driven process,” Muletta told us, “which has independently confirmed that we have low broadband adoption in this country largely because broadband is too expensive.Certainly a free service would go a long way to addressing that issue.”

But “since the FCC has yet to take action on the AWS-3 rulemaking, it’s an open question as to whether the incumbent carriers will eventually hijack the process that is supposed to follow the National Broadband Plan and somehow delay the quick auction of the AWS-3 band (in the face of a spectrum crisis and drought).”

There is also some irony in the fact that the same wireless industry that once objected to skewing auctions for a single business model is now, in the name of a looming spectrum crisis, asking the FCC to coordinate the massive transfer of television license spectrum to wireless sectoressentially on the grounds that wireless broadband providers could more productively use those licenses than TV broadcasters. And where were all those Orin Hatch style Republicans once big wireless cried foul over Martin’s smutless free broadband plan?

As the M2Z story indicates, anyone who proposes setting aside spectrum “for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service” could quickly find themselves on very uncertain terrain, with positions shifting overnight, and supposedly solid allies disappearing at the last minute. We are talking, after all, about a service that consumers could get for free rather than buying it from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint. So here’s some free advice: whoever launches the crusade at the FCC this time around better make sure they’ve really got the votes.

Source: arstechnica.com

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But what really got our attention was this: the NBP will ask the government to “consider use of spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service.”

That’s odd, we thought, since the FCC and Congress have been considering such an idea for years.

M2Z

Between 2006 and early 2009, the agency actively vetted a proposal by M2Z Networks to provide a free, wireless broadband across the United States. The FCC would lease a national spectrum license to M2Z

in the Advanced Wireless Services-3 (AWS-3) band area (2155-2175MHz), and the company would offer a free, advertising-funded, 512Kpbs broadband service that filtered out indecent content. Consumers would be able to access the band area via an attachment device on their computer. The firm would also offer a faster, unfiltered premium service and pay the government 5 percent each year from its gross revenues. Once granted this band, M2Z would commit to rolling out the smut-free network to 95 percent of the US population over the course of a decade.

M2Z launched a spirited campaign to generate public interest in its proposal, which came complete with a small battalion of endorsers.

“I know many Utahns would welcome the opportunity to provide their children with the educational and economic opportunity which broadband access can provide without having to become software engineers in order to protect their children,” Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) wrote to the FCC in 2007.

But while the idea received lots of shout-outs from family advocacy groups and members of Congress, the FCC rejected just granting the spectrum to a chosen entity. Then in 2008, agency chair and values voter Republican Kevin Martin came up with analternative proposal to run an auction of that license zonethe winning bidder promising to abide by M2Z’s commitments and rules.

Auction skewing

Various groups and companies quickly launched counter campaigns to stop or modify the Martin/M2Z plan. T-Mobile insisted that the service would interfere with spectrum it owned in a nearby band. And the wireless industry in general, led by CTIA – The Wireless Association, charged that the scheme would

“skew an auction to the benefit of one entity or business model.” Ironically, Key Republicans on Capitol Hill quickly took sides with big wireless, while Democrats backed Martinwith Rep. Anna Eschoo

(D-CA) submitting a bill to the House that pretty much echoed what Martin proposed.

Meanwhile civil liberties groups and bookseller/publisher trade associations opposed the plan on different grounds.

The service “would censor content far beyond anything ever upheld by any court for any medium,” warned a coalition of 22 public interest groups in July of 2008. “This prohibition would plainly infringe on the rights of adults to access broad categories of lawful speech,” they wrote.

In response to T-Mobile’s concerns, the FCC’s Office of Engineering Technology ran a battery of interference tests in Seattle that concluded that peaceful coexistence with T-Mobile’s licenses was doable. As for the civil liberties concerns, to our delight, in December of that year Martin called Ars to announce that he was dropping the porn-filtering part of the plan from his proposal (Julius Genachowski, the present chair of the agency, should feel free to emulate this fine example by contacting us at his convenience).

None of these gestures did the cause much good, however. Wireless companies challenged the FCC’s engineering report. And while those public interest groups were presumably assuaged by Martin’s announcement, it’s not as if they suddenly became big supporters of the plan overnight.

When Martin called us, we asked him what the prospects for the proposal now looked like.

“This is an item that has been pending at the Commission for several years, that the Commissioners were originally critical of not having moved forward faster,” he lamented. “Other commissioners said, ‘We’re overdue; we’ve got to do this.’ But when an actual item is put forth where you have to make a hard decision, they say, ‘Well, I’m not so sure what I want to do anymore.’”

In the end, the Commission never weighed in on the plan. Martin quit the agency the following year. To this day, the FCC has not voted on whether to launch the auction or not.

An open question

We contacted M2Z CEO John Muletta to ask him what he thought of the FCC’s latest proposal for a free wireless service. His response was pretty magnanimous, given his recent fortunes with the agency.

“I think this a victory for Chairman Genachowski’s data-driven process,” Muletta told us, “which has independently confirmed that we have low broadband adoption in this country largely because broadband is too expensive.Certainly a free service would go a long way to addressing that issue.”

But “since the FCC has yet to take action on the AWS-3 rulemaking, it’s an open question as to whether the incumbent carriers will eventually hijack the process that is supposed to follow the National Broadband Plan and somehow delay the quick auction of the AWS-3 band (in the face of a spectrum crisis and drought).”

There is also some irony in the fact that the same wireless industry that once objected to skewing auctions for a single business model is now, in the name of a looming spectrum crisis, asking the FCC to coordinate the massive transfer of television license spectrum to wireless sectoressentially on the grounds that wireless broadband providers could more productively use those licenses than TV broadcasters. And where were all those Orin Hatch style Republicans once big wireless cried foul over Martin’s smutless free broadband plan?

As the M2Z story indicates, anyone who proposes setting aside spectrum “for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service” could quickly find themselves on very uncertain terrain, with positions shifting overnight, and supposedly solid allies disappearing at the last minute. We are talking, after all, about a service that consumers could get for free rather than buying it from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint. So here’s some free advice: whoever launches the crusade at the FCC this time around better make sure they’ve really got the votes.

Source: arstechnica.com

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Most non-adopters cite “affordability and lack of digital skills” as the reasons for not steering themselves into the fast lane of the information superhighway, but many fear or are disgusted by the web. And millions just don’t care.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski isn’t happy with these numbers. “In the 21st century, a digital divide is an opportunity divide,” he said in a statement (PDF). “To bolster American competitiveness abroad and create the jobs of the future here at home, we need to make sure that all Americans have the skills and means to fully participate in the digital economy.”

The study says that 15 million Americans think that broadband access is irrelevant, calling the internet “a waste of time” and saying there’s no content of interest to them or that they’re satisfied with dial-up.

These findings are detailed in a 51-page report (PDF), “Broadband Adoption and Use in America,” based on a survey (PDF) of 5,005 American conducted last October and November. The survey was authorized by the Broadband Data Improvement Act signed into law by George W. Bush in October 2008.

Of the roughly 60 million adult Americans who don’t use the internet at all, 47 per cent cited cost and complexity and 45 per cent agreed with the survey statement that “I am worried about all the bad things that can happen if I use the Internet.” Thirty-five percent were of the opinion that “There is nothing on the Internet I want to see or use,” and one third thought “The Internet is just a waste of time.”

Of all respondents who told the FCC that they don’t have broadband – both dial-up and non-internet users – only 4 per cent said that the reason was lack of availability. More important to them was “too much pornography and offensive material” (65 per cent) and their belief that it’s “too easy for my personal information to be stolen online” (57 per cent).”

The survey is part of the run-up to the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which will be delivered to Congress on March 17. According to the FCC’s statement, this plan “details a strategy for connecting the country to affordable, world-class broadband.”

Of course, “affordable” means different things to different people. Of those who currently have broadband, the average cost is a bit over $40 per month. Those who don’t have broadband said they’d be willing to pay, on average, around $25 per month. And 20 per cent said they wouldn’t pay anything.

It’s not that those Americans without broadband are technophobes: 80 percent have either satellite or cable television, 70 per cent have cell phones, and 42 per cent have at least one working computer at home.

It appears that the FCC has its work cut out for it to achieve its goal of achieving “US global leadership in high-speed Internet to create jobs and spur economic growth; to unleash new waves of innovation and investment; and to improve education, health care, energy efficiency, public safety, and the vibrancy of our democracy.”

Millions of Americans don’t care, don’t want broadband, don’t want to pay for it, and find the internet either offensive or dangerous.

Source: www.theregister.co.uk

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As these calls for ever higher benchmarks reach a fever pitch, it’s worth remembering some of the grand proclamations of yesteryear. Take, for example, the TechNet group’s 2002 recommendation that the government should commit to a goal of 100 Mbps to 100 million homes and small businesses by the end of the decadein other words, now. The consortium included CEOs and executives from Cisco, Microsoft, and Hewlett Packard.

Principle number one, they declared, was that the US “should foster innovation and reduce regulationsespecially with respect to broadband applications and services.”

But in case you didn’t notice, 100Mbps x 100 million didn’t happen. About 75 to 77 million Americans currently access some kind of broadband, according to the latest data. That’s only assuming, however, that you accept 200Kbps as a flavor of “high speed Internet.” And a huge chunk of the population (over 30 percent) never go online at allless because they’re retired and not interested; more often because they can’t afford the prices.

So why this shortfall of progress, especially compared to other countries? Some argue that everything is going fine. The US is just too spread out, that’s alland we’ll catch up in due time. Others contend that we just haven’t spent enough government or private sector money on the problem. But the big thesis these days is that we missed the boat by curtailing wholesale network access to the big telcos and cable ISPs. By making it more expensive for smaller providers to link to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, or Time Warner Cable in order to build out their own middle-mile systems, the government condemned most consumers to two ISP choices, at best.

The FCC’s own recently commissioned study by Harvard’s Berkman Center declared that “there is extensive evidence to support the position, adopted almost universally by other advanced economies, that open access policies, where undertaken with serious regulatory engagement, contributed to broadband penetration, capacity, and affordability in the first generation of broadband.”

We’re not going to categorically proclaim that this is indeed the solution to the nation’s broadband woes. But there’s no question that the policy of the FCC for the last dozen years has been to make it more expensive and even harder for businesses and competitive service providers to get Internet or telephone access (which are increasingly the same thing) at regulated rates.

When the FCC announced it was letting Berkman do that survey, the Commission’s National Broadband Plan coordinator Blair Levin declared that in so doing, the agency didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel.” But let’s hold onto that wheel metaphor and review the extent to which the US has rolled back open access over the last dozen years. As you’ll see, on just about every available platform, businesses, smaller telcos, and alternative ISPs have been given a back seat to the game.

Dedicated access

In 1996, when Congress passed its Telecommunications Act, everybody was jazzed about the dot-com boom. Policy makers assumed that investors would pour capital into building out the nation’s middle mile broadband capacity, making it affordable for big corporations and wireless companies to rent lines for enterprise computing and backhaulthe circuits that link cell phone towers to network switches.

Sprint told us the company pays something like seven times for one of the thousands of special access lines it needs than what consumers pay for a single, much faster residential broadband account.

Instead, the boom fizzled. The FCC, however, kept working under the assumption that deregulation would encourage the construction of more capacity. It issued an order that gave the green light to the dismantling of “special access” price caps under certain conditions. If enough access-creating telecommunications infrastructure had “aggregated” or “colocated” in an urban area with more than 50,000 peoplethe agency would regard this as a sign of significant competition and lift price caps.

In addition, in 2000 the big carriers asked for, and got, yearly reductions in price cap levels based on agreed-upon percentages: three percent in 2000, and 6.5 percent for the next three years. Four incumbentsAT&T, BellSouth, QWest, and Verizonreceived full price deregulation in over 100 major metropolitan areas. One of those companies, BellSouth, is now part of AT&T.

But five years later, the Government Accountability Office did an audit of 16 metropolitan areas and found very few signs of growth in facilities-based competition, signs of its shrinkage, and higher special access prices in various cities. And the GAO concluded that the FCC “does not regularly monitor and measure the development of competition, which will affect how FCC responds to emerging trends, and the actions it takes to encourage and foster such competition.”

Fast forward to now, and Sprint told us the company pays something like seven times for one of the thousands of special access lines it needs than what consumers pay for a single, much faster residential broadband account. Meanwhile, a report issued last year concluded that special access charges now represent a huge chunk of incumbent telco business. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners found that in 1996, interstate special access represented less than five percent of Qwest’s, Verizon’s, and AT&T’s total revenue. In 2007 they represented almost 30 percent of Qwest’s, nearly 25 percent of Verizon’s, and close to a fifth of AT&T’s.

Source: arstechnica.com

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“Broadbands ability to improve lives goes far beyond a strictly ‘educational’ context,” noted Commissioner Mignon Clyburn during Thursday’s Open Commission FCC meeting. “Computer terminals at public access points that sit dormant waste an important opportunity to help members of the public search for jobs.”

Clyburn was referring to an Order that will let schools that participate in the FCC’s E-Rate computer equipment funding program open their doors to Internet seekers during non-operating hours. Right now, K-12s that take E-Rate money for equipment and broadband connectivity can only offer those resources to their students. That means that these facilities go unused on evenings, weekends, and during summer breaks.

Now schools that permit community access can share their networked computers with job seekers, students enrolled in digital literacy programs, and people who need to access government services online. The ruling comes in the form of a waiver of the FCC’s requirement that E-Rate recipients only use these funds for educational purposes. The Order will last through the E-Rate funding year, up until June 30, 2011. But schools have to promise that they won’t request more E-Rate money than they need for their students, will only open their Internet doors when students are out of school, and won’t sell their facilities to anyone.

No backdoors

“The change in our rules should not inadvertently put an increased demand on the E-Rate program,” warned Commissioner Robert M. McDowell. “It should not provide a backdoor way for schools to request more funds than necessary to support their student populations, and any upcoming audits should be designed in a manner to foreclose such actions.”

This expansion of E-Rate facilities was first tried in Alaska. It could take some of the pressure off public libraries, which share their Internet stations with patrons for general use, and have been deluged with job seekers who have no access to broadband anywhere else. But one wonders how many cash-strapped public schools will avail themselves of this change, given that opening up their workstations will require them to spend additional money on access supervisors and technical support.

Nonetheless, the move won praise from Representative Edward Markey (D-MA), who has a bill in the House that would allow E-Rate to fund e-Book readers and home broadband connections for low income K-12 kids. Free Press also cheered the announcement, but noted that it falls far short of the reform group’s own recommendations, which include letting schools offer WiFi to local neighborhoods.

Anytime, anywhere

Meanwhile, yet another sneak preview of the agency’s National Broadband Plan surfaced at Thursday’s meeting. The FCC’s broadband National Purposes Update didn’t mention any of the big regulatory recommendations that it will make to Congress when the plan is unveiled on March 17. But the document did offer a laundry list of ways that government could make broadband more useful for the public. These include:

Setting up a broadband powered “national employment assistance platform,” which would offer the workforce “anytime, anywhere e-learning tools to drive enrollment in post-secondary education and job training programs”

Authorizing the Rural Health Care Program to fund high speed Internet adoption at rural health care facilities, and encouraging the use of remote monitoring vital sign equipment hooked up to the ‘Net

Fast tracking the digitization and accessibility of health care records

Encouraging deployment of smart grid technology, and releasing more government data on digital platforms so that consumers have online access to their energy use records

Creating a nationwide interoperable broadband wireless public safety network.

Some of these proposals are a bit difficult to decipher, e.g., “Improve ability of federal buildings to serve as anchor tenants for unserved and underserved communities.” Will the FCC suggest running fiber lines to federal buildings as a way to jumpstart local ISP activity?

The FCC has been trying to get that interoperable public safety network out the door for quite a while. At present the Commission is tasked by Congress with auctioning off a chunk of spectrum to a private company that will share the bandwidth with public safety agencies. The one and only attempt at that auction failed, and now public safety groups want the agency to allocate that band to them outright, something that Capitol Hill would have to authorize first.

Source: arstechnica.com

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