FCC Officially Releases National Broadband Plan

The FCC voted Tuesday to approve a two-page joint statement on broadband, but did not vote on the broadband plan in its entirety. The new broadband plan could have a deep impact on the future of MDTV as the FCC looks to utilize the same airwaves broadcast television currently uses to offer broadband internet. A future auction of those frequencies could occur with television stations having the option to auction their airwaves.

Among the major proposals in the broadband plan:

– Make broadband available to all U.S. residents. About 7 million U.S. households don’t have access to broadband service today, according to FCC member Robert McDowell.

– Connect 100 million U.S. households to “affordable” 100M bps (bits per second) broadband service by 2020. While there are no specific actions recommended in the plan to accomplish this, the whole plan focuses on that goal, Genachowski said.

– Connect anchor institutions such as hospitals, schools and government buildings in every U.S. community to 1G bps broadband service in the next decade.

– Identify and make available 500MHz of wireless spectrum that can be auctioned or shared and used for mobile broadband by 2020.

– Increase U.S. adoption rates for broadband from about 65 percent to 90 percent.

– Build a nationwide, interoperable mobile broadband network for public safety agencies such as police and fire departments. The cost would be $12 billion to $16 billion over the next 10 years, the FCC estimated.

– Restructure the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and redirect $15.5 billion from traditional telephone subsidies to broadband deployment over the next 10 years. The FCC will tell Congress that it could add $9 billion to make the broadband deployment happen faster and more smoothly, said Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative.

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