NBP Creators Seek Updates to Inform Policymakers

The next National Broadband Plan shouldn't be a 10-year project and shouldn't be assigned solely for the FCC to conduct and implement, said New Street's Blair Levin during a Friday FCBA webinar with panelists who worked on the original National Broadband Plan before it was released as a report to Congress 10 years ago (see 1003170154). Their consensus now is it should be shepherded outside the FCC to gain broader buy-in across government (see 2003030030). Suggestions for NBP ownership included NTIA, the Commerce Department or the White House.

"We really should be able to do this by 2025," Levin said. He hopes by 2030 creators of the first 10-year plan can say the U.S. has met the NBP's three original goals: increase broadband networks, have all Americans connected, and have applications that help them access online education, healthcare and job training. A new plan might have to address controversial issues that the first one didn't, he said, such as how to regulate bad behavior online. "I would love to start tomorrow" on the next NBP, Levin said. If timed right, he said, it could inform broadband policy for the president in 2021.

Quadra Partners attorney Ruth Milkman wants presidential candidates to acknowledge the broadband access problem and encourage government at the federal, state and local level to do more. "We can't have another situation where people can't file their unemployment applications online but have to stand in long lines during a pandemic," she said.

The increase in broadband usage during the pandemic is called a national network stress test (see 2006260041). Levin wants more formal study. Last month, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., filed the National Broadband Plan for the Future Act to require the FCC to update the plan by July 1, 2021 (see 2005070065). Consensus across the political spectrum about the importance of universal broadband has increased since the pandemic, panelists said.

Not everyone supports a new plan. "There is no use creating a national broadband plan if it has no teeth -- if it doesn’t obligate the FCC or any other part of the government to change anything," emailed telecom consultant Doug Dawson. "We were not much more than a year into the last 10-year plan when it fell out of conversation in the industry. I just hate to see the FCC spend money for this sort of thing when such a plan would do absolutely zero good for any broadband customer."

Free State Foundation President Randolph May favors work on a new national broadband plan "conducted under the auspices of the FCC." He emailed that "if done properly and with discipline, the effort can produce a sharpened focus on where we are as a country and how to continue to move forward." He applauded current FCC leadership on furthering broadband progress, "including in the wireless area, which was an important part of the first broadband plan."

Panelists recognized how big a role smartphones played in broadband deployment in the past 10 years. Technology Policy Institute Senior Fellow John Horrigan suggested high consumer adoption of mobile broadband might have "lulled us into a sense progress was made" when the technology wasn't necessarily best suited to education, telehealth or job training. Milkman wished the plan had pushed for more USF fiber deployment 10 years ago, so today's funding could be spent on upgrades and expansion as needed.