Many Questions Remain About Free Broadband Proposal, Levin Says

The FCC needs more data before it can make any decisions about whether to move forward on allocating spectrum to an advertising-supported free or low-cost broadband service, one of the suggestions in the National Broadband Plan, Blair Levin, executive director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, said Friday during a taping of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, to be telecast over the weekend. Levin also responded to criticisms of the plan from both Democrats and Republicans that were voiced during last week’s House hearing on the plan.

"What we were saying was we need to revise the way we think about how we provide broadband for low-income individuals,” Levin said. “There are various programs, such as the so-called Lifeline Link-up program that currently does it for telephony. But we need to run some pilots in order to determine to how best to do it for broadband."

One thing the FCC should look at is a spectrum-based service, Levin said. “We in no way had sufficient data in order to be able to make that a concrete recommendation,” he said. “I think there is a very valid question about whether that business model would work. Again, we want to be both visionary and practical. We were raising that as something that ought to be considered along side other things that we could more confidently recommend.”

Levin also said he was pleased with most of the reaction to the plan. “A lot of people, even though they disagree with, really, elements of it, have a great appreciation for the work that went into it,” he said. “It’s a serious document. It’s very data driven. It’s very analytic. It doesn’t react to things that don’t exist in the real world. It tries to lay out a path that’s both visionary and practical.” The plan is also “very transparent about what the government agenda should be,” he said.

But Levin was asked about an article that appeared in The Des Moines Register last week by former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, a Democrat, who was sharply critical of the plan. “The NBP offers broadband consumers no hope of protection from price-gouging by limited-competition phone and cable companies earning upwards of 80 percent profit margins,” Johnson wrote.

"There are a lot of very pro-competitive things in the plan,” Levin replied. “I think Mr. Johnson, with due respect, completely ignores a number of spectrum recommendations, that what we're seeing in various places in the world is that while wireless is not a complete competitor it does in fact … provide an alternative way that forces a market-based mechanism putting some price constraints on certain fixed offerings.” Levin noted that the FCC took criticism from House Republicans at Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing for being too aggressive in the plan. “There were a number of members of the House who said, hey, you guys went too far,” he said. “So I find that criticism, you know, not really a valid criticism in my view."

Levin reacted specifically to criticism from Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who suggested in Thursday’s House Commerce Committee hearing that the FCC plans to use the plan as an excuse to change how broadband is regulated, making it subject to Title II, common carrier regulation. “The plan didn’t get into that at all,” Levin said. “We took the view, and we were very clear about this from the beginning, that the purpose for us in the plan was to develop a data-driven set of recommendations that we thought were important for the government to take action on."

Levin was also asked about concerns voiced Thursday by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., about a proposal to get broadcasters to voluntarily give up spectrum to be sold in a future auction. “Over-the-air broadcasters surrendered nearly a third of their spectrum to facilitate the recent transition from analog to digital signal transmission,” Dingell said. “A further loss of spectrum may have an adverse effect on the public by limiting consumer choice."

Levin said recommendations on “incentive auctions” are one of the parts of the plan of which he is the most proud. “It puts us on the right side of history,” he said. “One of the fundamental lessons that we learned … was the importance of spectrum and the difficulty of correcting if you don’t have enough. … No market can create more spectrum. We have what we have.” Congress has to give the FCC the tools to hold an incentive auction, reimbursing broadcasters for surrendered spectrum, he said. “In order to accomplish what we want, it’s a relatively small number of broadcasters in a relatively small number of cities that create a huge upside for the entire American economy as well as, I think, creating an upside for themselves,” Levin said. “I think once that’s well understood Congress will feel that they should give us those tools."

Levin noted that in a 2000 poll 80 percent of those responding said they would rather give up the Internet than give up TV. “Today, a majority of people say they'd rather give up television,” he said. “If you look at the under 45 [group] it’s overwhelming in terms of that. That’s consumers speaking. That’s the market speaking.”