Happy 5th Anniversary, National Broadband Plan! Progress and New Questions in the Plan’s Review.

[Commentary] In March, the nation celebrated the fifth anniversary of the National Broadband Plan, a heralded assignment by the Federal Communications Commission to develop a comprehensive blueprint for technology advancement, broadband deployment, and broadband adoption. At a recent day-long conference hosted by Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, “The National Broadband Plan: Looking Back, Reaching Forward,” policy experts reviewed the Plan’s goals and accomplishments, and shared strategies for addressing those areas not yet achieved. The bottom line: The National Broadband Plan has come a long way in five years, but not surprisingly, there’s still more work that needs to be done to make the US broadband landscape even more competitive. Overall, conference presenters and attendees, including myself, acknowledged that broadband infrastructure investments have increased since the Plan’s release, leading to strong competitive growth in network availability and expansion.

In its five years, however, the Plan has more work to do in the area of broadband adoption. Progress is not being experienced by all. Low-income, disabled, older and minority households still lag in their adoption of new technologies, particularly as both the perceived lack of relevance and high cost of broadband act as deterrents to their use. Second, it’s important for government to understand that the task of converting millions of Americans into broadband subscribers requires substantial public-private partnerships. Finally, with digital literacy framing the comfort level for online use, it’s critical that we debunk what we’re really talking about. We should also be exploring digital literacy programs that address head-on the intuitive nature of broadband use. For example, Millennials and school-age youth tend to just figure things out when it comes to new technology, and that’s without a handbook. Sooner rather than later, we will all have to figure it out as well. Solving the broadband adoption crisis was probably not going to happen in five years, but at least we’re making some progress and beginning to ask a set of different questions. Getting government to start doing things differently as outlined in the Plan will take a little while longer, too. But what is so exciting about the celebration of the National Broadband Plan’s fifth anniversary is that we’ve actually made it around the track at least once in what is proving to be a marathon instead of sprint.