Is the FCC serious about broadband deployment?

[Commentary] Rarely has an agency exhibited a greater degree of schizophrenia than the Federal Communications Commission did last week, when it issued its Eighth Broadband Progress Report (Broadband Report) and its Special Access Report and Order.

One decries the lack of broadband access for the 6 percent of the US population that lives in the most sparsely populated areas. The other encourages America’s largest enterprises to perpetuate their use of non-broadband networks throughout the US. On the one hand, in its Broadband Report, the FCC refuses to tell Congress that our country’s broadband deployment is reasonable and timely, despite access by 94 percent of Americans to high-speed broadband, defined as download at 4 megabit per second (Mbps) and upload at 1 Mbps (4/1) over wired networks. On the other hand, in its Special Access Order, the FCC suspends its rules governing pricing flexibility in the special-access market. This is a market that the FCC sizes at $12 billion, providing mostly 1.5 Mbps connections, mostly to large enterprises and government but also to some small businesses. How can America expect to deploy broadband at gigabit speeds throughout its vast expanse, if its largest businesses insist on using 1.5 megabit lines as the building blocks for their networks? The FCC is making heroic efforts to encourage the least educated, poorest, oldest American citizens to adopt broadband. Does it want to encourage our largest corporations to do so much less?

[Kovacs is a Visiting Senior Policy Scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy.]