BDAC Can't Agree on Infrastructure Deployment; California Takes Heat
California and localities were in the hot seat at Tuesday's FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee meeting. BDAC members don't agree whether a working group should focus on wired or wireless broadband, and on whether consumers who haven't adopted broadband in…
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areas in which it's available could be convinced to do so. An item in Friday's issue will discuss this in more depth; subscribers to Communications Daily can read about it here. Meanwhile, localities shouldn't underestimate broadband infrastructure deployment as a form of disaster preparedness, said Wireless Infrastructure Association President Jonathan Adelstein and Doug Dimitroff of the New York State Wireless Association. States should recognize the public safety advantages of better broadband access and “welcome deployment,” Adelstein, a former Democratic FCC commissioner, said in discussion of the disaster response working group's (WG) coming report. If infrastructure is insufficient, there won't be recovery, said Dimitroff, former NYSWA president. The report is expected to be finished in March, said Red Grasso, who chairs the WG and represents the North Carolina Department of Information Technology. No state is more difficult to build broadband infrastructure in than California, said Adelstein, referencing recent public safety power outages and wildfire threats. It's “shocking” that a state subject to those plus earthquakes and storms isn't encouraging broadband deployment, he said. California and other localities reject broadband buildout over unproven public safety claims about RF radiation, and then aren't able to rely on broadband during “a real and proven danger,” said Adelstein. “They didn't think of that when they were listening to a handful of people making spurious claims.” The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) didn't comment Wednesday. The WG on increasing broadband investment in low-income communities found it challenging to define low-income areas, deployment and broadband, said Connected Nation CEO and subgroup Chair Tom Ferree and Wireless ISP Association CEO Claude Aiken. Though the subpanel tentatively defined broadband as 25/3 Mbps downstream/up, the final report could have “aspirational goals” of faster speeds as a standard, Ferree said.