FCC's New Broadband Plan Prioritizes Competition

adeelarshad82 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has released an outline of what might be included in its upcoming national broadband plan, and encouraging competition was a top priority. The FCC statement said 'Competition drives innovation and provides consumer choice. Finding ways to better use existing assets, including Universal Service, rights-of-way, spectrum, and others, will be essential to the success of the plan. The limited government funding that is available for broadband would be best used when leveraged with the private sector.' The stimulus plan provided $7.2 billion in broadband grants and $350 million for a broadband mapping program, but also directed the FCC to deliver a national broadband plan to Congress by February 17, 2010."

Comments

Right.

[bmo]

Didn't we do this in the 90's, throw a lot of money at the providers and all they did was give it out to the shareholders?

If we do this there had better be significant strings attached.

--
BMO

Re:Right.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Ideally to the necks of those responsible...

Re:Right.

[RobinEggs]

Didn't we do this in the 90's? ... If we do this there had better be significant strings attached.

Right...give them more money but this time put *strings* on it.

How about the kind of strings where we send every board member and executive, of any of these companies at any time since we gave them the money *last time*, a notice that they can install what we've already paid for or face federal fraud charges?

Seriously, I'm not usually a litigious, pseudo-populist dickwad, but a lawsuit or some criminal charges seem completely reasonable here.

And for fuck sake don't give them *more* money, unless you're okay with literally *training them*, like suggestible little puppy dogs, to defraud taxpayers.

Re:Right.

[MickyTheIdiot]

It's not socialism when giving money to a corporation. At least that's what I gather.

Re:Right.

[ceoyoyo]

Indeed. That's usually seen as a step towards corporatism, which is the economic wing of fascism, which is usually considered as far right, the opposite of socialism, which is on the left. Or in the middle, if the term "socialism" is being used in the context of American politics.

Policies can only help competition so far

[BadAnalogyGuy]

When you have an industry with high entry costs due to infrastructure needs, you are going to end up with only a few companies after the shakeout occurs. Therefore, any policy that is designed to enable consumer choice and universal access is only useful to create an environment where competition will briefly flourish before degrading to the same old 2 or 3 dominant companies own the entire market.

If the government truly wants to encourage competition, they would provide funding to under-performing companies and startups. This would lower the entry costs and provide a balance to the giants who would normally run roughshod over the smaller guys.

Re:Policies can only help competition so far

[Geoffrey.landis]

If the government truly wants to encourage competition, they would provide funding to under-performing companies and startups.

Wow. Give money to the companies that perform worst. You know, I'm sure that there's a flaw in that idea somewhere.

Re:Policies can only help competition so far

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government truly wants to encourage competition, they would provide funding to under-performing companies and startups.

Wow. Give money to the companies that perform worst. You know, I'm sure that there's a flaw in that idea somewhere.

There is. But that didn't stop the government from handing out free money to the banks did it?

Re:Policies can only help competition so far

[ceoyoyo]

Or just do what a government is supposed to do - build things like infrastructure, which are too big and expensive to be undertaken efficiently by multiple competing private interests.

Re:Policies can only help competition so far

[DJRumpy]

IMO, If they want to truly encourage competition, they need to separate content providers from access providers. That will free up access providers to do what they should be doing best. Competing for business at the lowest rate possible. It would also remove some of the political bullshit and insane antics that new entry's in the market have to go through just to be able to drop a single line.

Re:no

[dagamer34]

Wow, tax & spend? What is this 1992-2000 when the government was fiscally responsible?!?! In the new millenium, the government is all SPEND SPEND SPEND. You best check yo'self!

According to Public Knowledge, this isn't enough..

[langelgjm]

Their president has said, "Nothing in the outline presented this morning would increase competition. Reforming universal service and supporting municipal networks are worthwhile goals, but they would do nothing to reverse the slide caused by eight years of misbegotten telecommunications policies that have crippled most meaningful broadband competition for consumers. There was no discussion of opening telecommunications networks to competitors. There was no discussion of structural separations of carriers into wholesale and retail components. These are the factors that Harvard’s Berkman Center told the FCC in a study a mere two months ago were the reasons other countries have surpassed ours – they are using policies we discarded."

Gigaom has a better article

[jonsmirl]

FCC Takes on Cable But Not Carriers With National Broadband Plan

The actual presentation from the meeting is included in the article.

I am anxiously awaiting for this to be approved: "Mandate a home gateway device. Require MVPDs to provide a small, low-cost device whose functionality is to bridge the proprietary MVPD network elements (conditional access, tuning & reception functions) to common, open standard, widely used in home communications interfaces; enables a retail navigation device to operate on all MVPD platforms."

I'm hoping that means unencrypted channel streams in-house over Ethernet.

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