Genachowski to Circulate Schedule Next Week for Follow-Up Orders to Broadband Plan

LAS VEGAS -- Commissioners will next week get a calendar laying out basic timing of the rulemakings and other actions that follow up on the National Broadband Plan, FCC officials said at the spring CTIA meeting. Commissioners won’t vote on the schedule but it’s expected to be discussed at the April 22 meeting.

"We do feel that one of the best parts about the plan is that we actually do have a roadmap and that people can understand, okay, over the next couple of years, this is what you can expect from this agency,” said Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC Omnibus Broadband Initiative. “Businesses can say this is the general direction and let’s make sure we get the details right."

Meanwhile, top FCC officials said on a CTIA panel late Wednesday they have a huge job ahead as each bureau and office does its part to implement the plan. “For the Wireline Bureau, the biggest, biggest, biggest issue is really universal service reform,” said Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett. “In February we brought [commissioners] something that had absolutely 100 percent support in the record, no opposition and had to do with taking E-rate funds that are already out there and allowing the community to make use of the facilities that we're already paying for in schools. We have already taken our first step toward making the Universal Service Fund more broadband friendly. We have a lot more to come."

On March 16, the bureau circulated an order referring to the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service the question of how lifeline eligibility is handled and what that might mean if broadband is added to the lifeline program, Gillett said. “Already in two of the five components [of the USF] we've got stuff out there,” she said. “You can look forward soon to tackling the really big one that everyone is nervous about, which is high-cost reform."

The bureau is also taking a close look at the kind of data the FCC collects from carriers about broadband. “I was very struck coming in and having the staff lecture me over and over, ‘You know our Form 477 data is not availability data, it is subscribership data,'” she said. “After I had been there a few months I had one of those lightning revelations that one of the reasons this whole thing is so problematic is we collect the most confidential data that the industry would part with -- where are your subscribers, who are they? Very sensitive data … but what we all really need to know is where is broadband available. We need to know adoption rates in the aggregate. Do we need to know your own individual subscribers? No.” The FCC needs to collect instead information on how competitive markets are, price trends and where broadband is available.

The bureau will also wrap up work on ongoing items on pole attachments and intercarrier compensation reform, where the record is substantial, Gillett predicted. On other items like changes to Form 477, the bureau still needs to take comments. “We will be doing a lot of NPRMs but wherever we can we will be using what we already have,” she said.

The Public Safety Bureau will move quickly on a “roadmap” on rules that will open up 700 MHz spectrum for roaming and priority access by public safety as part of an interoperable wireless broadband network, said Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett. But even before that, the bureau is pushing hard to open an Emergency Response Interoperability Center. “We feel like it’s crucially important to get that up and running. We actually have an order circulating on the eighth floor right now,” Barnett said. “One of the reasons it’s so important to do that is we need to have that in place and some initial guidelines set up so that we can start dealing with the [700 MHz] waiver petitions. … They deserve an answer."

Barnett acknowledged that the broadband plan’s proposal for the D-block “did in fact upset a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people in public safety who made such a strong bid that the D-block be reallocated.” Barnett said the bureau received strict instructions from Chairman Julius Genachowski and Levin that all decisions be fact-based. The bureau took a hard look at how much spectrum public safety needed. New York City was the only agency that submitted information on capacity, he said. “When you actually crunch it and look at the assumptions they made and the small number of cell towers that they assumed and things like that it just didn’t justify” allocating the D-block to public safety, he said. “I was willing to go to the chairman and say we need the D-block if that’s what was required for the network,” he said. “I understand the concern. I think I would acknowledge to public safety that someday they will need additional spectrum. The chairman has made a commitment to that. … The main thing is we need to have funding for this network. We need to get that off the ground. I'm not sure if the D-block is reallocated that that would happen."

Barnett said congressional action approving funding for the capex costs of a fund to support development of the national network is critical. “If you don’t have $6.5 billion to start the capital expenditures, we miss, in essence, the technological buildout by the commercial networks and the price goes up significantly,” he said. “It’s crucial that we have action from Congress and it’s a very tough budgetary environment right now. That’s why I have been encouraging public safety to speak out."

The National Broadband Plan calls for the Office of Engineering and Technology to finalize an order addressing the coexistence of Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service terrestrial repeaters and the Wireless Communications Service, said chief Julie Knapp. “That’s been going on for quite a while. We're hoping to close that out very quickly,” Knapp said. She said the workload for OET will be very heavy, as it works with other parts of the FCC on changes for broadcast spectrum, on wrapping up rules for use of the TV white spaces and on identifying spectrum that could be paired with AWS2 and AWS3 spectrum, in combination with NTIA. “I look for more things to be happening sooner than later,” he said. “I think there’s a strong motivation, where it’s appropriate, to try to bring outstanding proceedings to closure. That doesn’t mean that there’s no further conversations going on. … There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer here. In some cases either there could be a need to refresh a record, new proposals, it’s going to vary."

"Transparency around broadband speed and quality is going to be one of the major things we're looking at first,” said Joel Gurin, chief of the Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau. “Closely behind that we're going to be looking at tribal issues. We have a tribal working group that’s going to be teed up as part of the plan, the implementation. Indian country generally has less than 20 percent access to broadband, which is a huge, huge gap.” Disability access will also be a major early focus, Gurin said.