Broadband News
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100Mb to 100m: USA publishes its National Broadband Plan
16 Mar 2010 | 10.59 Europe/London
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has unveiled its plans today to give 100m American households 100Mb by 2020. The National Broadband Plan would bring next generation access speeds to 90% of Americans and also give schools, hospitals and military facilities a 1Gb connection.
It is estimated to cost in the region of $350bn or £233bn but there has so far been no official guidance on how the plan will be financed other than the promise of $7bn from President Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Package. Experts are now predicting that the balance between public and private funding for the remainder of the cost of the project is likely to be a major sticking point.
With the American Government struggling with huge deficits, following the recession and bailing out some financial institutions, finding additional tax dollars to spend on the programme will be difficult with neither of the political parties wanting to be seen to be backing cuts in one area of public life to be replaced by high spending on broadband.
Spectrum issues for the US, just like us
Rather like the Digital Britain programme, there is no one technology hailed as a proverbial silver bullet and so there is expected to be a heavy reliance on mobile broadband to reach citizens in far flung communities.
Hence the FCC is planning to sell off 500Mhz spectrum, currently mainly belonging to television companies, such as NBC and ABC. These companies have publicly stated they would need a lot of persuasion to give up spectrum and would need to be cut in on the proceeds of an auction as recompense. This would appear to be the direction the FCC is headed in addition to also freeing up ‘Block D’ spectrum which it failed to auction in 2008 because of too many restrictions. Anyone bidding in 2008 had to agree technology standards with the emergency services and so the spectrum was regarded as unattractive. It is now expected these restrictions will be lifted or substantially relaxed as the FCC has vowed not to repeat, what it confesses was, an earlier mistake.
It is estimated to cost in the region of $350bn or £233bn but there has so far been no official guidance on how the plan will be financed other than the promise of $7bn from President Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Package. Experts are now predicting that the balance between public and private funding for the remainder of the cost of the project is likely to be a major sticking point.
With the American Government struggling with huge deficits, following the recession and bailing out some financial institutions, finding additional tax dollars to spend on the programme will be difficult with neither of the political parties wanting to be seen to be backing cuts in one area of public life to be replaced by high spending on broadband.
Spectrum issues for the US, just like us
Rather like the Digital Britain programme, there is no one technology hailed as a proverbial silver bullet and so there is expected to be a heavy reliance on mobile broadband to reach citizens in far flung communities.
Hence the FCC is planning to sell off 500Mhz spectrum, currently mainly belonging to television companies, such as NBC and ABC. These companies have publicly stated they would need a lot of persuasion to give up spectrum and would need to be cut in on the proceeds of an auction as recompense. This would appear to be the direction the FCC is headed in addition to also freeing up ‘Block D’ spectrum which it failed to auction in 2008 because of too many restrictions. Anyone bidding in 2008 had to agree technology standards with the emergency services and so the spectrum was regarded as unattractive. It is now expected these restrictions will be lifted or substantially relaxed as the FCC has vowed not to repeat, what it confesses was, an earlier mistake.