FCC Should 'Aim Higher' in CAF Broadband Expansion Efforts, Consultant Mattey Says
FCC Connect America Fund broadband efforts should "aim higher," said telecom consultant Carol Mattey. "We shouldn’t be satisfied if the net result of billions of dollars of expenditures is that 8 million or more consumers in CAF-eligible areas are assured…
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access to only 10 Mbps fixed broadband at some future date -- that’s markedly lower than what is widely available in urban areas today," she blogged Tuesday. "If all the companies currently required to deploy broadband meet their obligations, about 70,000 consumers will gain access to 25 Mbps or better broadband by 2020, and an additional 750,000 consumers or so will newly gain access to 25 Mbps or better by 2026. That’s only 820,000 in total that will newly gain service meeting the FCC’s definition of broadband. Meanwhile, other CAF recipients must offer 10 Mbps service to about 7.3 million consumers by 2020, and another group of CAF companies must newly offer this service to 765,000 consumers by 2026." She said CAF deployment numbers are "hard to figure out, because the FCC hasn't published a national summary" of its programs. "With the current interest in data and transparency, it's important for the FCC publicly to track the progress achieved with the Connect America Fund as a whole," she emailed us Thursday. "The public doesn't care whether their area is served through Phase II, A-CAM, or any of the other components of the Connect America Fund -- they just want to know when they'll get service. That's why it's important to take a step back and ask, big picture, what are we accomplishing."