On Five Year Anniversary, National Broadband Plan Author Discusses Progress, Challenges

Blair Levin discussed the progress and challenges of the National Broadband Plan five years after he and his team completed it at the Federal Communications Commission. Levin was enthusiastic about progress on spectrum goals. At the time his team was working on the NBP, Levin said “there was no new spectrum available.” But today he said it looks like the FCC will meet the plan’s goals for freeing up additional spectrum. The plan called for 300 MHz of spectrum to be freed up within five years. Levin pointed to the recently auctioned AWS-3 band as spectrum that was made available after the NBP. He also praised the work of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to find spectrum in government hands for re-purposing and he pointed to plans for spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band as another important achievement.

With regard to driving fiber deeper into the network, Levin said “the big news is what cities have been doing” -- a reference to the success that dozens of communities have had in persuading Google and traditional carriers to build ultra-high-speed broadband networks. Since leaving the FCC after the NBP’s publication, Levin’s efforts have been largely focused in this area, where he heads up the Gig.U initiative to bring gigabit networks to university communities.