Recap of House Oversight Hearing on Promoting Broadband Adoption and the National Broadband Plan

The House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held the fourth in a series of hearings addressing issues raised in the National Broadband Plan on Thursday, May 13, 2010. The hearing examined recommendations in the National Broadband Plan for increasing broadband adoption, including ways to ensure that all Americans are able to subscribe to broadband and ways to educate consumers about broadband's benefits.

Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) said that he would prefer legislation establishing targeted network openness principles to the FCC's proposal of applying Title II regulations to the transmission component of broadband. He noted that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposed "third way" is a light, and limited approach, but that "another path exists." He recommended a fourth way: if broadband providers want to try something else, "our door is open." He said he would be happy to talk with stakeholders both industry and network neutrality backers, about "the creation of a targeted set of principles to assure network openness" that Congress could enact into legislation. Chairman Boucher invited broadband providers and other stakeholders unhappy with the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to reclassify some aspects of broadband as a telecommunications service to work with Congress to seek a legislative fix.

Rep Joe Barton (R-TX) said that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposal to put the transmission component of broadband access under Title II common carrier regulations is "truly troubling" and a "'solution in search of a problem." Rep Barton said that Genachowski and President Obama are pushing Internet regulation as part of a broadband deployment plan when there is already a broadband-deployment mechanism in place and working: "the free enterprise system." Rep Barton expressed his frustration with the criticisms of the country's ranking in broadband, which has been invoked by the chairman and primarily Democratic legislators as one of the reasons the plan is necessary and overdue. "I'm sick and tired of being compared to Malta and to Liechtenstein. We can all look at a map. We ain't Liechtenstein. Bottom line: The FCC has now said that 95 percent of the country has broadband access and two-thirds have signed up. All without our beloved bureaucrats or the beleaguered Congress getting in the way. Chairman Genachowski, and all of us, should stay on that course."

Witnesses at the hearing (they get to talk, too) testified that the rising cost of high-speed Internet access and its uneven availability are the largest barriers to increased adoption of the broadband. Carol Mattey, deputy chief of the wireline competition bureau at the Federal Communication Commission said only 65 percent of American homes currently use broadband Internet access, but her agency hopes to increase that to over 90 percent by 2020. "This is an important and ambitious goal -- for instance, it took 30 years to get from roughly 60% to 90% adoption for telephone," Mattey said. "We are proposing to over just as much ground in a third of the time."

Rivkah Sass, director of the Sacramento Public Library System said visits have increased by 50 percent over the last year as more individuals use library computers to try to find work amidst a regional unemployment rate in excess of 13 percent. She said the library system does not have enough computers or bandwidth to accommodate the rapid increase in demand.

Both Mattey and Sass agreed when asked if the subsidies from the Lifeline program would help spur broadband adoption. However, ranking member Cliff Stearns (R-FL) disagreed that the program is necessary, noting in his opening statement that broadband is available to 95 percent of American households and that 65 percent of the population is using broadband at home. He argued that non-profit groups like One Economy would help boost education and adoption without government involvement.