National Broadband Plan Creates FCC Central Planning

The long-awaited National Broadband Plan, hot off the presses of the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, is an impressive document—if one is impressed by a federal agency grossly inflating its competence and proposing a vast expansion of its power.

It’s important to remember that Congress last year asked the FCC to do something relatively simple and straightforward after passing the “stimulus” bill: Propose ways the government might increase access to broadband and make it more affordable.

The logical response to that mandate should have been simple and direct. Considering the vibrancy of private investment in broadband ($60 billion last year alone) and the fact that 95 percent of Americans already have access to high-speed Internet service from at least four providers, the FCC needs to do little more than stay out of the way and reduce any government barriers to market competition.

Instead, the commission has come up with a nearly 400-page manifesto that would make government bureaucrats the gatekeepers of nearly every aspect of the digital economy and Americans’ experience online.

In fairness, the plan is not all bad. The FCC’s plan to “collect, analyze, benchmark, and publish” detailed information on the state of the broadband market in the United States could be helpful to consumers.

Another laudable recommendation involves encouraging television broadcasters to auction off about 20 channels’ worth of their unused spectrum for use in the wireless broadband sector. The devil will be in the details, however, since the broadcasters are reluctant to give away their property on the cheap and will resist heavy-handed tactics to do so. Market forces, not government bullying, should rule here.

But the bulk of the plan puts FCC bureaucrats into the role of “master and commander” of the Internet, micromanaging everything from privacy policies on the Web, the “set-top boxes” on your TV, to even spending money out of a new government fund to get phone companies to stop charging by the minute.

And some of the proposals are just silly and grossly wasteful. For instance, do American taxpayers really need to fund a new “National Digital Literacy Corps” to “organize and train youth and adults to teach digital literacy skills”? Can’t the small minority of Americans who have never used a computer or accessed the Internet just invite tech-savvy friends and family over for dinner and a primer? And don’t our public schools and libraries already teach this stuff?

This plan also brings up the question of jurisdiction. It seems a stretch to argue the FCC has a legal mandate to “modernize the electric grid with broadband” and “unleash energy innovation in homes and buildings by making energy data readily accessible to consumers.”

Those may be laudable goals but are hardly the job of an agency designed to regulate the airwaves and wired telephone service. In fact, it is still an open question, currently being litigated in federal court, whether the FCC has much jurisdictional power over broadband networks at all.

The National Broadband Plan states on page 29, “today’s broadband ecosystem is vibrant and healthy in many ways.” It will be less so if much of what the FCC proposes comes about.

History shows central planning schemes don’t work and are especially misapplied to a system as dynamic and complex as the digital economy.

James G. Lakely (jlakely@heartland.org) is co-director of the Center on the Digital Economy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of InfoTech & Telecom News.