Now that Congress has received the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, the team that crafted the recommendations has started to disband. The departures come as lawmakers, many of whom are facing re-election in the fall, consider the plan. And while the experts brought in by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski crafted a roadmap to expand the unfortunate level of broadband access in the U.S., most of the heavy lifting remains to be done.
Under the 2009 federal stimulus package, the FCC formed the Omnibus Broadband Initiative (OBI) last year to figure out how to deploy ubiquitous broadband in the United States. The OBI group toiled for about seven months on the project and submitted the final product to Congress in mid-March. So, as lawmakers sift through the 376 pages of proposals, the FCC continues to address several “action items” in 2010 – with the direction of some of the people who created the broadband strategy, and without the aid of some of the others. That doesn’t necessarily mean the Broadband Plan will suffer.
“We had the benefit of a wide array of people with business, financial analysis, private equity, technical backgrounds, and that was enormously helpful in framing the issues and developing an initial snapshot of where we are today,” said Carol Mattey, who served as the OBI’s senior policy advisor on Universal Service Fund matters. Mattey will lead the wireline competition bureau as deputy chief and will stay trained on the USF.
Also enjoying stability will be the wireless bureau: John Leibovitz will stay on as deputy chief of that division, a title he held prior to his work on the broadband initiative.
The OBI was conceived as a temporary effort from the start, comprised of almost two dozen telecom attorneys, academics, and policymakers. Experts were asked to come, see and plan – not to conquer. There’s no question, however, that the commission is losing some intellectual firepower at a time when broadband adoption remains low in the United States, as compared to other affluent nations.
No Net Neutrality
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| Blair Levin heads to the Aspen Institute in Maryland. |
The biggest loss will be Blair Levin, chief architect of the National Broadband Plan. Levin, who served as chief of staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt from 1993 to 1997, will leave the commission on May 7 to become a communications and society fellow at the Aspen Institute, the same think tank Kevin Martin joined after he resigned as FCC chairman in January 2009.
“He’s obviously a knowledge source that you kind of hate to see go,” said Craig Settles, an independent consultant specializing in broadband. However, Settles added, “I think the people who felt the FCC should have developed rules that were more competition-friendly aren’t going to be disappointed.”
