FCC to Get Hours-Long Broadband-Plan Briefing at September Meeting
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and key staffers developing the National Broadband Plan will provide a briefing that’s expected to last four hours or longer at the Sept. 29 meeting, we've learned. The review of the plan is modeled on updates during projects by consultant firms such as McKinsey & Co. Leaders of the commission’s broadband team are expected to speak during the briefing. A number of recent top FCC hires came directly from McKinsey, which also employs former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who was Genachowski’s boss at the commission.
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Kenneth Robinson, an aide to former FCC Chairman Al Sikes, said many questions about the plan remain unanswered. “I don’t understand the purpose of this plan, who’s the plan for?” Robinson asked. The FCC doesn’t control the broadband stimulus money, he noted. “The money is in the Commerce Department and the Agriculture Department. These are competitive bids over at the Commerce Department, so I hope the FCC’s not involved in deciding who’s getting a grant or who’s not getting a grant.”
Congress directed the commission, as part of the stimulus Act to submit such a plan to Congress by Feb. 17.
“It’s extraordinary,” a wireless attorney said of the lengthy broadband update. “The FCC is asking a lot of questions. They're doing a lot of stuff, but so far there has been no indication of where it’s pointing.”
Public Knowledge Legal Director Herald Feld said Genachowski probably thinks that the dozens of staff devoted to the plan have to show the progress being made. “You always have the big problem with a plan like this of how do you show motion,” Feld said. “They're running these workshops. They're doing all this social networking stuff, there’s this great hubbub of activity. The question is what do you have to show for it? … You need something serious that’s going to show folks there’s a lot of progress being made on a very difficult assignment.”
Feld said the downside to devoting an entire meeting to the briefing is the questions that are starting to be asked. “This is now Genachowski’s third meeting as chairman, and there has not yet been a single substantive order that has come out,” he said. “There’s a lot of old business that has been on hold for a year or more. … There are a number of things on which the clock is ticking.”
A report midway through the project will give commissioners a chance to make preliminary judgments and guide development of the plan, said Curt Stamp, president of the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. That could mean fewer protests over the text of the plan from commissioners next year, he said. Stamp said he doesn’t remember the commission ever having done such a lengthy progress report, but “the FCC has never been tasked with such a monumental and important assignment.”
The broadband team shouldn’t be criticized for wanting to do a four-hour briefing, considering the size of the job and the looming deadline, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “It is far more important what is said at the meeting than how long the meeting takes,” he said. “Hopefully, there will be a two-way exchange so we can begin to see what the commissioners are thinking about the choices they will have to make, at least to get a sense of the framework or perspective that will guide their thinking.” Commissioners should ask the team what data they don’t have, why they need it and how it will affect their decisions, he said.