There was a mix of good and awful policy on the table last Thursday as the Federal Communication Commission’s broadband deployment advisory committee (BDAC) heard from its five working groups. The BDAC was created by Ajit Pai shortly after he got the nod to be Donald Trump’s FCC chairman. Its job is to offer advice on how to speed up broadband deployment by breaking down legal, regulatory and bureaucratic barriers. Although there are nuggets of sound policy to be found, what it came up with mostly reads like wish lists written by telecoms lobbyists.
The committee and working groups membership is top heavy with big (and mid sized) telecoms companies and their lobbyists, but there are some bright lights as well. Cities are represented, but by policy-level people, not by people with muni broadband or other industry expertise.
And it shows.
The five working groups dealt with competitive access to broadband infrastructure, model code for municipalities, model code for states, removing state and local regulatory barriers and streamlining federal siting. The results are, to put it kindly, uneven.
The worst showing was from the model code for states group. It pretty much wants to ban municipal broadband ventures, although instead of coming out and saying so, it recommends first running projects through a gauntlet of preferred options, including subsidising incumbents. Few muni broadband proposals would survive it. The state model code group also recommends preempting local ownership of broadband-relevant assets, including dark fiber. If a city owns dark fiber or light poles, private companies could commandeer them at will for a price far below market value.
The muni code group, on the other hand, had some worthy ideas about streamlining permit processes and, contrary to the state group, recommended local governments should maintain control of municipal property.
The working group looking at state and local regulatory barriers produced a lengthy indictment of the sins committed against broadband and wireless companies, and took an analytical, but sympathetic, look at federal preemption of pretty much anything that might upset a telecoms lobbyist.
There are many recommendations for streamlining federal processes, but the P word – preemption – didn’t come up. That would be unneighborly, I suppose. The group looking at competitive access focused primarily on pole attachment issues, with one touch make ready rules at the top of the list.
A few recommendations, mostly preliminary, were adopted by the full committee, with the meat of the proposals expected to get a full review in January. What happens after that – or even, before – is unclear, although if the the effusive reaction of commissioner Michael O’Rielly is any indication, the FCC majority will cherry pick the policy bits that support the positions they’ve espoused all along, and run with them.