fcc

The FCC is asking for comments on the contribution of federal, state, tribal, and local government to broadband [pdf]. Comments are due on Friday, Nov 6.

Take a look at the comment request above (it is only 5 pages long) and pick one of the areas in which they are interested - readers here may be most interested in #2 - "Government broadband initiatives."

a. Governments have engaged in various initiatives to increase broadband deployment and adoption in certain geographic areas. With regard to specific examples of federal, state, tribal, or local broadband initiatives, how did the initiatives come to fruition from start to finish? Please describe cost information, including planning, equipment, training, labor, and conclusion of the initiatives, as well as barriers that were overcome. What elements of the initiation, planning, or implementation were most critical to the success of the project? What factors impacted the technological choices made in the planning and implementation of the project? Were the projects sustainable, and have the projects continued beyond their initially conceived timeframes? What were the costs and the resulting empirically demonstrable benefits or harms of the implementation? How did costs and benefits differ from the original plan and why?

b. What conclusions should be drawn from any particular experiences (e.g., what efforts or practices should be replicated or avoided)?

c. Please provide examples of governments aggregating demand to encourage broadband deployment. Are such programs sustainable? Do these programs cause the deployment of network infrastructure that otherwise would not have occurred? Please provide data when possible.

d. How can successful broadband solutions be more widely shared or publicized to enable other governments to benefit? What should be the role for the federal government (and specifically, this Commission) in fostering the widespread adoption of ideas and initiatives that have worked?

e. Is there a role for non-profit or private sector partnerships in governmental broadband solutions?

Please provide examples from real-life initiatives.

You do not have to answer everything - feel free to just pick one aspect you want to bring to the FCC's attention and then:

1. Go to the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System (you will be making a public comment).
3. The proceeding number is #09-51
4. Fill out the required fields.
5. At the top of the box for your comments, start by noting the comment refers to GN Docket Nos. 09-47, 09-51, 09-137 and says "Comments -- NBP Public Notice #7"

If you are looking for examples of government broadband initiatives, click around this site - that is what it is here for!

The Chair of the Federal Communications Commission has taken a stand for network neutrality - the founding principle of openness of the Internet. In short, network neutrality means the entity providing you access to the Internet cannot interfere with the sites you choose to visit - it cannot speed them up or slow them down in order to increase their profits. See video at the bottom of this post for a longer explanation.

FCC Chair Julius Genachowski recently spoke at the Brookings Institution [pdf] on the importance of an open Internet. He started by noting many of the ways we depend on services delivered over the Internet:

Even now, the Internet is beginning to transform health care, education, and energy usage for the better. Health-related applications, distributed over a widely connected Internet, can help bring down health care costs and improve medical service. Four out of five Americans who are online have accessed medical information over the Internet, and most say this information affected their decision-making. Nearly four million college students took at least one online course in 2007, and the Internet can potentially connect kids anywhere to the best information and teachers everywhere. And the Internet is helping enable smart grid technologies, which promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by hundreds of millions of metric tons.

However, because most Americans get access to the Internet from large, absentee-owned profit-maximizing companies who are often de facto monopolies, we have to beware the gulf between community interests and the narrow interests of these companies.

A second reason [for network neutrality rules] involves the economic incentives of broadband providers. The great majority of companies that operate our nation’s broadband pipes rely upon revenue from selling phone service, cable TV subscriptions, or both. These services increasingly compete with voice and video products provided over the Internet. The net result is that broadband providers’ rational bottom-line interests may diverge from the broad interests of consumers in competition and choice.

For this reason and others, the Chair suggested adding two new "freedoms" to the four Internet freedoms [pdf] already recognized by the FCC (freedom to access content, use applications, attach personal devices to the network, and obtain service plan information).

The fifth freedom expands on the first two - to access content and applications. Under these rules, providers will be explicitly prohibited from interfering with legal content - something that is currently less clear (which is why Comcast is suing the FCC over its power to enforce this rule).

The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes. Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.

And the sixth freedom expands on our previous freedom to obtain service plan information - it expands the required transparency of Internet Service Providers.

The sixth principle is a transparency principle -- stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices. Why does the FCC need to adopt this principle? The Internet evolved through open standards. It was conceived as a tool whose user manual would be free and available to all. But new network management practices and technologies challenge this original understanding. Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users -- with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world.

Note that these are not yet rules, they are potential rules that have to go through the FCC process - something that should be a given as 3 of the 5 FCC Commissioners support Genachowski on the matter and even President Obama has praised the idea.

The LA Times also endorsed the idea, further explaining why it is necessary:

Lobbyists for phone and cable TV companies argue that there's little evidence of ISPs playing unfairly or violating Powell's four freedoms. Yet when the FCC moved to stop Comcast from surreptitiously interfering with a legal file-sharing application last year, Comcast sued, claiming the commission had no power to enforce the principles. It's paradoxical that the government should have to regulate the Internet to preserve its unregulated essence. But with so little competition in broadband service, the major phone and cable companies have the power and the incentive to stop worthy but disruptive innovations in the name of "managing congestion." The FCC should set clear rules that enable ISPs to keep data flowing from all legal services and applications, not just favored ones.

Network Neutrality is a necessary but insufficient rule to protect subscribers. Service providers must not be allowed to interfere with user freedom to boost corporate profits but this is just a small part of the problem outlined by Genachowski above: the divergent interests of profit-maximizing companies and the communities that depend on broadband infrastructure. Community networks are far less likely to interfere with subscriber freedoms, something that will not change even as corporate lobbyists chip away at regulations protecting subscribers from companies like AT&T and Comcast.

Photo used under Creative Commons license from AdamWillis.

The FCC recently asked for comments about how broadband should be defined. There was a marked difference between those who put community needs first and those who put profits first. Companies like AT&T and Comcast were quick to argue that the FCC should not change the definition of broadband for reasons ranging from too much paperwork to the suggestion that rural people have no need for VoIP. The honest approach would have been for these companies to say they do not want a higher definition because it will change their business plans, likely requiring them to invest in better networks for communities, and that will hurt their short term profits.

On the other side were groups that argued for a more robust definition of broadband - something considerably less ambitious than our international peers but an improvement over the current FCC definition.
NATOA's comments [pdf] focused on issues like the need for measurements based on actual speeds rather than advertised and symmetrical connections (or at least "robust upstream speeds to facilitate interactivity" - which we think captures the importance of symmetric connections without getting lost in debates about absolutely symmetric connections).

The key metric for broadband should be the applications and needs that drive consumer requirements and choices. In this way, broadband should be understood as a connection that is sufficient in speed and capacity such that it does not limit a user’s required application.

Their magic broadband number is a reasonable and doable 10Mbps symmetric connection for residential and small businesses as well as a 1Gbps level for enterprise users. Importantly, they note that a single broadband connection supports far more than a single computer or use - these connections are shared, often among many wired and wireless devices.

Compare these comments to those of the NCTA [pdf] (lobbying organization for cable companies) that argue broadband is nothing more than an "always on" connection regardless of the speeds or user experience. This is how they justify maintaining the international laughingstock definition of 768kbps/200kbps.

It is this basic “always on” functionality that is most relevant for definitional purposes, more so than the presence or absence of the various detailed characteristics (e.g., latency, jitter, symmetry, mobility) mentioned in the Commission in the Notice.

If it is the "always on" functionality that is so important, why shouldn't the commission totally ignore speeds and consider people with 56kbps modems on dedicated phone lines to have broadband?

Eldo Telecom speculated on why the incumbents prefer the current, or other tepid definitions and what that says about them:

By advising the FCC to define broadband on such obsolete and arguably bogus terms, the providers are essentially telling the feds they aren't serious about the issue. It's a frivolous, throwaway position that summed up says "forget about any national broadband plan and leave us the hell alone."

It appears that these private service providers hold their product in low esteem and see little potential for it in the way that consumer and community-oriented groups see it is a transformational technology.

Reading the Free Press comments came as a welcome relief following the NCTA. They base their comments on existing legal definitions of broadband - one of which comes from the '96 Telecom Act:

The term ‘advanced telecommunications capability’ is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology

Much of the comments are, as they should be, inside baseball but make for interesting reading. These comments are the epitome of what the U.S. needs in order to remain competitive in the coming decades. They conclude that the minimum broadband speed should be 5Mbps symmetrical to each user during peak times (using the the somewhat standard approach of 95% availability of that speed during the measured period).