In a few weeks, the FCC will post its plan for ubiquitous deployment of broadband. A couple of thoughts:
We all share the same ultimate objective: to ensure that broadband helps all Americans reach their full potential, while addressing important social challenges, providing the foundation for job creation and economic growth and, of course, giving consumers the opportunity to choose their own Internet experience. With under a month to go before the FCC unveils its broadband plan, last week’s open meeting presentation by members of the FCC broadband team’s national purposes working group demonstrates just how much America can achieve through the ubiquitous presence of broadband.
For instance, we learned that the FCC is poised to address connectivity issues for rural health care providers, helping to make sure that rural America receives the best available care regardless of a person’s proximity to the best hospitals. The Commission also plans to work with commercial broadband providers and utility companies to ensure that the power of broadband is brought to the electrical grid. Encouraging innovation in the energy delivery system will empower consumers and bring down our energy costs as a nation, and Verizon looks forward to working with the Commission to maximize this effort. With the right policies in place, broadband will help revolutionize health record keeping, reinvent the electrical grid, rebuild our classrooms, and help to keep America safe and secure.
The challenge is not in the “what”, it is in the “how”. For any conceptual plan to succeed, it must draw the best from the private sector and the best of principles that will guide smart governmental policies. That’s the only way to create the kind of broad, bi-partisan agreement that we will need to get the job done. And done effectively and efficiently.
Verizon intends to continue lending its expertise to the success of smart deployment initiatives. Just as we have invested billions of dollars in the creation of the nation’s only large-scale fiber network (FIOS) and in the imminent rollout of the next generation of wireless broadband, we have invested effort into working with other stakeholders to define a core set of common-sense principles.
Drawing on those conversations, practical experiments, non-profit projects and our own understanding of broadband, I believe that national broadband efforts must be built on the following five fundamental elements that will not only stimulate broadband deployment and access, but increase consumer choice as well.
First, we must encourage broadband demand by increasing computer ownership, computer skills, digital literacy, and online education. Demand is as important as supply. Because broadband technology and the Internet are already integrated into many aspects of our government, society and economy, they will continue to be put to increasingly critical uses for consumers. Creative approaches are needed to increase computer ownership and literacy. With an economy increasingly reliant on the power of the Internet, better users will translate into more and better jobs, and new sources of economic growth.
Second, we also need to ensure that new uses of the Internet can serve societal needs. For example, broadband offers great opportunities to save energy, power a smart grid, improve education, protect the public and deliver better and less expensive healthcare. Critical to the success of any broadband plan will be smart strategies to incent these, and other, new social uses of broadband. And that, like digital literacy will be good for the economy and for workers.
Third, increasing consumer choices and providing more options for broadband connections will undoubtedly speed deployment to places it might not otherwise reach. Policymakers should pursue a flexible approach to any future governmental action – defining a path that encourages continued innovation and investment to increase the options in networks, services, devices and applications for consumers to choose. For example, as health care records become digitized, broadband companies and content providers must have the flexibility to work together to create seamless access to such technologies, while finding the best ways to protect patient privacy. This approach also includes supporting the continued development and employment of a variety of innovative tools and approaches that ensure robust cyber security to ensure that the options available to consumers are safe and secure.
Fourth, wireless broadband platforms will be especially important in reaching unserved and rural areas. Currently all of the major wireless providers in the U.S., including Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint, and Clearwire are currently undertaking mass massive investments to begin deploying 4G technologies that will provide far greater speeds and produce the long sought after ubiquitous third (indeed, fourth, fifth and sixth) broadband pipe into the home. However, even in their infancy, wireless services are highly competitive, with ongoing investment and innovation that has brought tremendous consumer benefits, from the development of smart phones such as the Motorola Droid and the Apple iPhone to innovations such as AppStores that have exploded in popularity In order to continue this trend and remove current obstacles to more widespread deployment and adoption, there are several steps policymakers should take including more efficient tower-siting processes and the identification of additional spectrum.
Five, there is a legitimate role for government to ensure that Americans who, for reasons of income or geography, lack the opportunity to use broadband networks. Such efforts must be technology-neutral, especially given the development of wireless broadband, and must put choice in the hands of consumers, rather than subsidizing providers directly, and must be targeted precisely to the needed effort.
Broadband has proven to be an extraordinarily transformative technology – changing the way people communication and engage in the world. Any National Broadband Plan that heeds these five fundamental principles would, I believe, be able to build a consensus that would speed its implementation, benefiting consumers, fostering platforms that can help address the nation’s most pressing challenges, and securing America’s technological and economic future.