There is work to be done, yes, but this national dialogue and the concrete steps the FCC is mulling can have great impact. The best recommendation the FCC can make in its National Broadband Plan is universal adoption of broadband use by the federal, state, and local governments. The retail market will follow.
The FCC’s Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative Blair Levin had it absolutely right when he said “…the benefits of the technology only come to life if [they] also change their fundamental processes and develop… a digital culture.”
And in a post on Blogband, he rightly pointed to “diffusion lag “ i.e. the time it takes “for one technical system to replace another.” He asked why some parts of the economy quickly adopted broadband and others are lagging but he eloquently points out the government’s role in helping the nation overcome this diffusion lag:
The national broadband plan will show how our country can act to utilize broadband to have (the healthcare, education, energy, public safety and government) sectors perform at a higher level.
This problem of “scaling” is one that Verizon has given considerable thought. Our vision is that the government sector would use the very infrastructure we are deploying throughout the nation to transform the way the government delivers services to Americans.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s broadband vision is very much welcomed. With his “100 Squared” initiative, he sets a goal of having 100 megabits (mbs) per second broadband available to 100 million households in 10 years. He, like Verizon, wants broadband adoption increased. And we agree that a good goal would be to have 90% of the population having adopted broadband within 10 years.
THE VERIZON BROADBAND EFFECT
At Verizon we are also proud to be leading the race for faster broadband.
FiOS serves more that 15 million homes with fiber optic connections, a technology that allows us to sell 50mbs connections today and in real-world tests to customers homes has shown that we can get that speed to 100mbs and even 10gbps.
We’re also leading the charge in deploying 4G wireless broadband, with LTE expected to cover 25 to 30 markets by the end of this year and be coast-to-coast by the end of 2013.
It is also important as we focus on where to go next, to also look at where we are.
The Crandall study lays out some important facts around both wired and wireless broadband technologies:
„ Industry has invested a cumulative $200 billion on broadband networks
„ 92 percent of homes now have access to broadband (versus only a few million 2001) and most households have a choice of at least three broadband technologies and even more in some areas with 3G
„ Resulting in the creation of approximately 434,100 jobs
THE BROADBAND EFFECT
Ubiquitous deployment of broadband, spurred by the ubiquitous use of that platform to better serve our citizens is what U.S. broadband service providers (BSPs) are committed – to upgrading their existing infrastructure with next-generation access technologies. To reach the same coverage levels as they achieved with first-generation technologies, we estimate that BSPs will invest the below amounts over the next six years (2010-15). And these infrastructure investments will be one of the largest job creation projects in the American economy. (Source: The Crandall study ).
„ Annualized investment in wireline broadband, including FTTH and FTTN, will be $12.5 billion, which corresponds to 247,000 jobs created
„ Annualized investment in cable broadband, including DOCSIS 3.0, will be $3.6 billion, which corresponds to 52,000 jobs created
„ Annualized investment in wireless technologies will be $14.0 billion, which corresponds to 205,000 jobs created
„ Annualized investment in satellite broadband will be $300 million, which corresponds to over 4,000 jobs created
„ Annualized investment in all broadband technologies will be $30.4 billion, which corresponds to over 509,000 jobs created