Four Questions for the FCC's Scott Wallsten, lead economist for the broadband plan

Scott Wallsten is the economics director for the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Task Force.

1) On disparities in access between low income and high income households and rural and urban households, he says, "You can see that the people who are least likely to have broadband are the poorest people. The gap between lowest income and highest income is much bigger than the rural-urban gap. You can also see that poor people who live in rural areas are much less likely to have broadband than rich people in rural areas. The plan has to look at both components."

2) On improving data collection, he indicates the Census Bureau may lend a hand.

3) On bringing fiber broadband to everyone, he says, "There just really aren't applications right now that need 100 megabits per second."

4) On where to find spectrum for wireless broadband, he says the FCC will have to "look and see where spectrum is used for things that aren't particularly valuable, where it wasn't acquired through an auction mechanism" and spectrum reserved for government use.