Much of Broadband Plan Well-Known, Gillett Says

NASHVILLE -- Much of what’s in the National Broadband Plan has been well-known, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said as the CompTel convention got underway. FCC Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa said part of the plan’s value is “saying what’s part of our vision and what’s not part of our vision.” The commission will set a period to carry out the plan’s recommendations, to make the process open, Gillett said. The intent also is “to give the feeling of knowing when your stuff is going to be addressed,” she said. “People understand you can’t do everything on the first day of the National Broadband Plan.”

Before the commission starts collecting data, it wants to be “very, very clear about the problem we're trying to solve,” de Sa said. Officials are trying to “be very crisp about the problem definition” and “the method by which the commission proposes to answer that problem.” After accepting comments, filings and data from various companies, the commission will figure out a hypothesis on special access reform, he said. “We're in the process of figuring out what we think the right hypothesis is. We will come out with an answer that says, ‘We've heard’ comments and ‘here’s the data we've collected.'” A rulemaking notice will follow.

The FCC must figure out “if the rules we currently have in place lead to just and reasonable prices,” Gillett said. “In order to do that, we ask what the product market is and what the geographic market is.”