FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski continues to grease the rails for the National Broadband Plan. His latest stop: Wired.com. (Actually a Wired reporter visited him, taking note of an iPhone and Nick Carr’s book The Big Switch:Rewiring the World from Edison to Google on the coffee table in the big man’s office.)
In the interview, Genachowski confirmed that the National Broadband Plan would recommend the transition of the Universal Service Fund supporting rural telcos to broadband. More importantly for the rest of the telecom industry, he also implied that support for the traditional phone network would be phased out within the next decade. Genachowski said:
The universal service fund over the last several decades has promoted near-universal deployment of telephone service in our country. It needs to be transformed to a broadband universal service fund. That’s the path that we’ll lay out in the broadband plan, transforming it over time so that it doesn’t support yesterday’s communications technology but supports tomorrow’s. We’ll be suggesting options to do it over 10 years or faster.
If rural telcos get to phase out yesterday’s communications technology (i.e., the PSTN), it would appear the FCC will also have to grant AT&T’s wish to make the same move—assuming of course, that the FCC has the authority to actually make any of these changes.
While promoting his goal of bringing 100 Mb/s to 100 million households, Genachowski also foretold the possibility that U.S. consumers will give up their wired broadband service in exchange for high-speed mobile data service, he said:
As the next generation of mobile broadband rolls out, if we can get it to roll out quickly, if it rolls out universally and if it hits high enough speeds, it could become a legitimate substitute for people who have wired broadband in the way that wireless telephone service is becoming a substitute for wired.
Genachowski’s comments about wireless broadband substitution came in response to a question about how he would make broadband more affordable. His answer: competition—a topic he also brought up in an address yesterday about the role of broadband in small businesses.
But if anyone was expecting to see a return to network unbundling or other major pro-competition moves, that doesn’t seem to be part of the plan. Genachowski instead seems to have great belief in the power of knowledge. The plan’s recommendations about competition, he hinted, will focus on better informing consumers. “Consumers are confused about their services and the price. They’re confused about what speeds they’re actually getting, they’re confused about what they’re paying for. As part of a competition strategy, increasing the transparency to consumers empowers consumers to make the market work.”
