The Glaring Omission in FCC’s National Broadband Plan

In all 376 pages of its national broadband plan, the FCC omitted one topic considered ripe for inclusion: net neutrality. After all, the agency’s Harvard University-commissioned study found that most high-performing countries abide by open Internet access rules, to great business success. And even though the FCC is considering making net neutrality law in a separate proceeding, many observers had expected the subject to make an appearance in the Congressionally mandated project too. But that didn’t happen, raising the question of whether the FCC made a wise decision or took the easy out.

The FCC chairman and his national broadband team are leaving potential net neutrality regulation to a separate proceeding.

On March 16, a month after the original due date, the FCC sent its long-awaited report, “Connecting America: A National Broadband Plan,” to federal lawmakers. Topics run the gamut, from wireless spectrum allocation to mobile data roaming and much, much more. The one matter that remained unaddressed, although alluded to, was the one that has polarized, even paralyzed, the communications industry for the past five years – network management and freedoms. Commenting on the national broadband strategy, Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell called the absence of direct discussion on net neutrality “the elephant in the room,” adding, “Although the plan does not take a position on that proceeding, I take this opportunity to reiterate my serious concerns regarding this agency embarking on such a serious journey.”

The national broadband plan’s creators, led by Blair Levin, knew net neutrality demands would have held up the FCC’s ambitious push to have 100mbps broadband connections to 100 million households by 2020. So, even though the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard found that open access policies including unbundling, colocation and wholesale rules promote competition in more heavily regulated countries, the FCC skirted the matter altogether.

Levin justified the move to Ars Technica in early March. In the United States, he said, there’s “a different relationship between the regulators and the industry,” whereas, in other countries, “when a regulator says to do something, what happens is that, within a very reasonable, short timeframe, those things are done. What happens in the United States is that, when a regulator says something – I'm not complaining about it, I'm just pointing out reality – it's challenged in the courts and you have a time lag.”