Let's Be Patient With The FCC

I've been thinking about something recently: I think we're being too hard on the FCC and the deliberate pace they're setting crafting a national broadband policy.

Take for example their not including a representative from a municipal broadband deployer on their broadband deployment workshops. I, like many others, got worked up into a bit of an uproar over that perceived slight.

And yet just yesterday I learned through a comment to that article from Chris Burns, GM for Burlington Telecom, a municipal full fiber operator in Burlington, VT, that the FCC did in fact invite him to participate in those workshops.

Now, this doesn't completely wash the FCC's hands of the matter as I still have to question why they couldn't find another municipal representative, I'm not sure why they didn't just say what happened when they started getting criticized, and I still think they should be facilitating a deeper analysis of the good and bad of municipal broadband.

But at the same time this highlights that we shouldn't assume anything. For me, this suggests that it's time we take a step back, give the FCC the benefit of the doubt, and let this process play out a bit further before jumping to conclusions that the issues that are most important to us are being ignored.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where this pent up frustration comes from.

For years the FCC has been perceived to prioritize the interests of incumbents over the interests of communities. For years advocates of municipal broadband have felt marginalized by everyone in DC. For years we haven't had a national broadband plan that clearly defines the public interest in this space.

And I certainly have my doubts about the process of crafting a national broadband plan that's taken place so far. I sometimes wonder if these workshops are more dog-and-pony show than substantive discussions, and I worry that we're still stuck with the same dynamic of everyone shouting their positions at government while tearing down the arguments of others and the FCC's left stuck having to play referee and to sort through the static to find underlying truths.

I'm also feeling some pressure over the limited timeframe we have left to craft this national broadband plan. I can only imagine what seeing that clock tick down must be like at the FCC.

Yet, I also can't ignore that we're really only just getting this process started. The FCC's admitted that they're in full fact-finding mode right now and that they will be for at least the next month or so. In other words, they don't even have all the facts on the table yet from which to make decisions. So we're a ways away from them establishing anything concrete in terms of what's going to go into the plan.

And on the upside, I've gotten a clear sense that they truly are open to any and all ideas. Basically they're at a point know where they're willing to listen to anyone that can make a coherent, data-driven, justifiable argument.

So in many ways I see the onus as not just being on them but also that we all share the responsibility of crafting a national broadband plan.

Because of this I'd like to suggest we stop gnashing our teeth over perceived inaction by the FCC and put on hold our fears that this process has already been derailed so as to focus all of our energy and attention on developing our own arguments and building coalitions of support behind concrete ideas we want to see included in the national broadband plan.

Let's be patient with the FCC and give them a chance to do right by the country. That's not to say we don't hold them accountable, but instead to suggest that they've really only just begun this process and we should let it play out a bit longer before calling foul no them.

Because we can't afford to waste time lamenting when there's so much work to be done in pushing the intellectual ball forward to insure we end up with the best possible national broadband plan forward.