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."

Re:Right.

[MickyTheIdiot]

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

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

[langelgjm]

Their president has said, [publicknowledge.org] "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 [gigaom.com]

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.

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.