Broadband Council Proposals Will Be Important, but Follow-up Key, Panelists Say

“The country should be fiber ready, wireless ready, and consumer ready,” said Staci Pies, Google senior public policy and government relations counsel. She said Google, which has various fiber and unlicensed wireless projects in the works, plans to offer the BOC a lengthy list of proposals focused on improving industry access to infrastructure and rights of way such as poles and conduits. “We’ve run into a lot of issues,” Pies said, though she noted some cities had improved their processes.

CTIA Senior Vice President Tom Power said wireless companies continued to need help with locating cell towers. He said it often took industry two years to gain access to private property for tower construction but four years to gain access to federal property. Power said industry access was also complicated by differing agency processes, even when implementing government-wide mandates, such as historical and environmental preservation. Federal streamlining to facilitate access had helped some, he said, but more needs to be done. Whenever somebody proposes agencies adopt uniform standards for their processes, “Everybody says, ‘That’s great, but make it our process,’” he said.

Power said the BOC could make great recommendations this August, but sustaining the efforts was a major challenge. “If you’re a broadband advocate, you want broadband built into everything you’re doing,” he said, but most agencies don’t think much about broadband: “It’s not your day job.” Even worse, broadband deployment can be at odds with agency mandates. If there was one thing that comes out of the BOC process, it would be to do it again next year, he said: “You need to keep building it in.”

Blair Levin of the Brookings Institution agreed sustainability was vital. He said the need for follow-through was a hard lesson from the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan, which he coordinated at the agency. He said the FCC did a bad job of selling that plan to other agencies. “Dig once” policies to streamline fiber deployment were an example, because once a trench is dug the incremental cost of laying conduits is low and the long-term benefits are large, he said, but the FCC couldn’t convince the Department of Transportation to adopt them.

Levin said accountability was also needed, and he had suggested the FCC should publicly review the plan’s progress at its monthly meeting every March. “I told the chairman’s staff I would come in and admit mistakes,” he said. “But they didn’t want to be accountable.” And the lack of FCC accountability for its own plan undercut accountability at other agencies, he said. Levin said the government was doing a better job of making spectrum available for wireless but must do more to help drive fiber deeper into neighborhoods.

Pies noted the 2009 economic stimulus act, which funneled $7.2 billion in broadband grants and loans through the Department of Commerce’s NTIA and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS), the two agencies chairing the BOC this year. There’s no big new chunk of money, she said, so the BOC needed to look for ways to help federal, state and local authorities become more efficient and clear obstacles to private-sector broadband investments. “That’s where the money is going to come from,” she said.

The federal government can encourage best practices, Pies said, but “most of the work on the ground is in the cities.” Pies said Google’s fiber business also needed affordable access to pay-TV programming wanted by consumers. “We’re not asking for new regulations; we’re asking for reforms” that remove or revise existing regulations, she said.

Levin agreed localities are key. “We tend to want stories with a silver bullet, a villain and a hero, but in this space it’s really about doing lots and lots of things that lower costs and barriers,” he said. Levin credited Google fiber with sparking fiber responses from incumbent broadband providers. When Google first started its Kansas City project, the incumbents said they wouldn't respond, he said, but now that Google was targeting up to 34 communities for fiber deployment, the local telcos and even some of the cable companies decided to make upgrades. “I’m a big believer in game theory rather than regulation,” he said. Levin also said Google had done a good job of negotiating nontraditional agreements with cities that generated “asymmetrical” value creation through low costs and large benefits. “It’s 1 + 1 = 5,” he said.

Panelists said wider broadband adoption was hindered by cost and relevance for some consumers. Pies cited the need to promote digital literacy and access to hardware among consumers, with cities often wanting Google to do more, but it’s “really hard” without more community involvement. Power said agencies can help promote broadband adoption by prodding constituents to go online to access government services. Levin said he was troubled that the FCC push for using Lifeline USF to promote broadband -- starting with a speech by Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn -- had been portrayed in “partisan” terms. He said there was Republican support.

Levin questioned why the RUS was making loans to rural telcos based on assumptions that the FCC would continue their high-cost USF support indefinitely, and then raising threats of telco bankruptcies if it didn't. As a thought experiment, Levin suggested the RUS could offer to forgive every loan to rural carriers, if the carriers would agree never to apply for USF support again. Taxpayers would lose on the RUS loans that were forgiven but consumers would win through lower USF contribution fees, he said, though he hadn't crunched the numbers as to the net effect.