Washington, DC -- Today, the Federal Communications Commission officially unveiled their highly anticipated National Broadband Plan recommendations.  The Plan combines a broad vision with targeted approaches to address competition, adoption, access, and digital literacy, but pushes most of the substantial decision-making to an as yet undefined future date.

"Ten years of market failure have left the United States far behind other industrialized countries in broadband access, affordability, and adoption," explains Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative. "This plan has the potential to address these issues; however, bold leadership needs to come from the FCC, congressional leaders, and President Obama to successfully implement the meaningful reforms we need to put our 21st Century economy back on track."

While the Plan includes a number of targeted approaches, including efforts to improve connectivity on Tribal Lands, where adoption rates are below 10%, and providing more spectrum for unlicensed use, many points in the plan are little more than status updates of ongoing FCC proceedings. For example, in their recommendation for increasing opportunistic access to spectrum, the FCC proposes that it should "expeditiously conclude the TV white spaces proceeding." 

Michael Calabrese, director of New America's Wireless Future Program, said: "It is notable that the Plan recommends the allocation of a new contiguous band of unlicensed spectrum, as well as the implementation of unlicensed access to the unused TV channels known as 'white spaces.'  We believe the Plan's call for more opportunistic access to slices of unused spectrum can yield more wireless capacity more quickly than relying primarily on clearing incumbents and holding auctioning licenses."

"The National Broadband Plan needed to move beyond conventional thinking.  Although, several innovative policy recommendations were proposed in the plan, the majority of the plan relies on the existing market that has resulted in the U.S.'s woeful international broadband position," said Benjamin Lennett, policy analyst for the Open Technology Initiative. "As the FCC implements this plan, it must move swiftly to create meaningful opportunities for new technologies and business models to transform the U.S. from a broadband follower to a leader. The FCC is setting benchmarks for tomorrow that other countries have reached today."       

Some elements in the Plan are unlikely to have meaningful impact, such as the recommendation that wireless become viable competition for wireline. "As telecommunications costs continue to rise in America, pushing wireless as an alternative to wireline is not a viable option for increasing competition," explained James Losey, Program Associate with the Open Technology Initiative. "In order for the United States to be competitive internationally, we need to see dramatically increased speeds at more affordable prices. Hoping that 4 Mbps wireless will be a competitive service with wireline markets is not a viable solution."   

100 Megabits or Bust!
The United States is the last highly industrialized country to propose a national broadband strategy. As our research has shown, not only have many other counties already implemented plans, they have set higher goals over shorter time frames:
http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/100_megabits_or_bust 

Bandwidth Caps for High-Speed Internet in the U.S. and Japan
The Open Technology Initiative has compared broadband speeds, caps, and prices between the United States and Japan and find that the United States both slower and more expensive: http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/bandwidth_caps_high_speed_internet_u_s_and_japan

Broadband Truth-in-Labeling
OTI has proposed meaningful Broadband Truth-in-Labeling standards that empower users with the type of information they need to make informed decisions about broadband service offerings:
http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/broadband_truth_in_labeling

The National Broadband Plan is available here:
http://download.broadband.gov/plan/national-broadband-plan.pdf 

About the Open Technology Initiative:
New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. For more information, visit: http://oti.newamerica.net.

Please contact Kate Brown with media inquiries at 202-596-3365 or brown@newamerica.net.