Last month, the new Federal Communications
Commission chairman, Kevin Martin, cited increased broadband deployment
as his top goal for the agency an agenda with which we wholeheartedly
agree.
According to a recent FCC report, the
number of U.S. broadband subscriber lines grew by 34 percent last year;
nonetheless, the United States still ranks between 10th and 15th among all
nations in broadband coverage.
We must do better, and we're glad to
see that President Bush recognizes this need. In a speech last year, he said,
"We ought to have ... universal, affordable access for broadband technology by
the year 2007, and then we ought to make sure, as soon as possible thereafter,
consumers have got plenty of choices when it comes to purchasing the broadband
carrier."
Therein lies the rub. In Bush's
statement and in the FCC policies begun under former Chairman Michael Powell and
continued under Martin, the White House is putting the cart before the horse. To
achieve universal, affordable access, we must first have healthy competition,
such as that which the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to deliver by
carving out a space for Competitive Local Exchange Carriers, or CLECs, to offer,
as Bush put it, "plenty of choices" across the existing lines of local monopoly
carriers.
Instead, the FCC and the incumbent
carriers have, respectively, been squeezing the CLECs between the rock of
reduced regulatory relief and the hard place of arguably predatory pricing. And
Martin, emboldened by the recent Supreme Court decision that upheld the FCC's
authority to shield cable providers from sharing their lines, has signaled his
intentions to continue squeezing.
As a result, we've seen the number of
players in the broadband field dwindle, leaving a string of cable and Baby Bell
duopolies that use service bundling and low first-year fees to hide the fact
that broadband isn't getting significantly more affordable.
While we still view line sharing as the
best current means to foster broadband service competition and innovation, the
line-sharing ship appears to have already sailed, as it were, thanks to FCC
policies.
However, other approaches exist
wireless, for example. We urge the FCC to be wary of the protectionist
pleadings of established wired carriers opposing the spread of wireless
last-mile broadband connectivity; we urge the Bush administration to fund
accelerated development of so-called smart-radio technology, which will maximize
the flexibility and efficiency of spectrum sharing with minimal
interference.
Such actions would give the FCC and the
Bush administration a chance to demonstrate that deregulation can, in fact,
result in gains not just for entrenched monopoly players but also for consumers
in the form of more choices and for new entrants in the form of more
opportunities to play in the broadband service market.
