Telecom Sense

TeleComSense Congratulates Meredith Attwell Baker On Her Appointment To The FCC!

One week ago, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Meredith Attwell Baker to fill the empty Republican seat on the FCC, vacated by former Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate.  As usual, TeleComSense is fashionably late in congratulating Ms. Baker.  No kidding, though, while I wouldn't call Commissioner-designate Baker "straight outta CompTel", I first got to know her when she was the legislative advocate for Covad Communications--a CompTel member company.  Since then, though, Meredith has gone on to a successful career at the highest levels of telecom policy making.  She was the Acting NTIA Director under President Bush, and will now pull off the rarely-accomplished "exacta" of telecom policy positions--NTIA director and FCC Commissioner.  Meredith is a talented, experienced, well-respected, and collegial policy professional.  She will do well as a Commissioner, and the public is lucky to be able to benefit from here expertise.  I wish her only good things in her new role as FCC Commissioner.  Good Luck, and Congratulations, Commissioner-designate Baker!

The FCC's Broadband Plan: Is the Grass Greener in a "Green Field" or a "Brown Field"?

At today's open meeting, the FCC gave an update on its process for developing a National Broadband Plan.  The Commission's explanation of the development of a National Broadband Plan, and the benefits that such a plan promises, upon implementation, was truly inspirational. . . and a very befitting way to kick off the Fourth of July weekend.  The only thing that could have made the presentation more inspiring would have been the addition of Lee Greenwood's, "Proud To Be An American" as a background track. 

All kidding aside, though, the prospect of a National Broadband Plan is an exciting proposition, and has, naturally enough, led to a lot of excited and ambitious "castles in the air" type conjecture (though not in the pejorative sense of the expression).   Seriously, I'm impressed by the way Chairman Genachowski is going about developing a broadband plan.  He couldn't do better with his choice of a person to shepherd the plan along--Blair Levin.  I wasn't able to find Blair's bio on the Commission web site, but, if you're reading this, I shouldn't have to.  Blair is one of those few people that, if you've been around the telecom policy world for any time at all, even if you don't know him, you know he knows what's going on--and probably understands the implications a lot better than you!  At least this is the case when the "you" is me, anyway. 

The other thing Chairman Genachowski--with less than a week on the job--got right was the "broadband.gov" web site to allow a lot of transparency into the development of the broadband plan, and to allow for maximum inclusion of ideas by all concerned parties.  Finally, on the web site, I'd like to draw the reader's attention to the excellent presentation by Blair Levin on the process that has already been developed to begin the iterative process of creating a National Broadband Plan. So, I am kind've encouraged that the Commission is not looking at the broadband plan as a totally "green field" project that can be undertaken without regard to first fixing existing problems.  Still, this being Washington, nobody gets a free ride--except for, like, on their birthday, or political appointment day, or some other special occasion.

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