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Market competition, regulatory restraint, and appropriate assessments should drive broadband technology towards increased coverage, better service, and better technology development.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was signed into law on February and is intended to “accelerate broadband deployment” to the 10 million Americans who do not have access to broadband. The bill provides $7.2 billion for extending broadband services to underserved communities across the country, so that rural and inner-city businesses can compete with any company in the world. As required by the legislation, the Commerce Department, FCC, and Agriculture Department have been meeting with stakeholders to develop a national broadband plan and will publish final rules and details in the next few months.

Although the United States recently experienced a rise in the world broadband rankings, there is still a great deal of work to be done. Broadband is the foundation for continued technological and economic leadership and it is critical that the U.S. show leadership in clearing roadblocks to broadband deployment and adopting innovative policies to foster demand. TechNet continues to work with the Administration and Congress to ensure broadband and internet policies remain a priority for our nation.

Key points include:

• Our current broadband infrastructure is not best in class internationally either in terms of penetration or speed. In fact, the U.S. continues to lag with countries such as Japan and France now ahead. We believe there are three major deficiencies to be addressed: lack of coverage in rural areas (est. 8-10% of households); lower quality in terms of speeds and latency (15th internationally in recent Oxford/Cisco analysis); and lower adoption rates (15th internationally in OECD penetration statistics).
• Broadband policy should encourage innovation and government should not pick winners and losers. Competition and the marketplace should drive the deployment of a range of broadband technologies and services to consumers, and the government should not pick technology winners and losers.
• Broadband policy also must take speed into consideration. Since the early part of this decade when TechNet called for a national broadband plan, we have urged policymakers to consider broadband speed in the United States as a key factor. Higher broadband speeds enable all types of new innovation and functionalities that will benefit businesses, consumers, educational institutions, health care and the overall economy. This includes facilitating the streaming data such as video faster file transfers, real-time collaboration tools and much more to support a broad range of Web-based applications. This includes download speeds of at least 20 megabits per second (Mbps), and ideally 50 Mbps or more, and upload speeds of 10 Mbps or greater.
• The goal of public policy, particularly the FCC’s finalized broadband deployment plan, should be to drive investment in that “last mile” of network. The most pressing issues are what will qualify as an “unserved” area as compared to “underserved” area – a distinction that could prove critical in funding decisions. Future policies should apply market-based approach in which broadband deployment is driven by competition in the marketplace unencumbered by excessive regulation.
• States and localities should promote streamlined laws and regulations that encourage broadband investment and interstate consistency should be achieved whenever possible. States and localities too often hinder broadband investment through excessive regulation, long delays, and inflated costs to providers. Legislation should limit the ability of local governments to impede access as well as encourage coordinated infrastructure development.
• Consumers will best be served if incentives are created for broadband providers to submit geographic coverage data for the creation of a comprehensive broadband coverage map. Up to $350 million of the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program within the recovery bill is designated for the development and maintenance of statewide broadband inventory maps. To ensure complete and useful data, incentives for providers to submit data should be tied to protections from unnecessary disclosure of corporate information.