Two FCC commissioners showed up to a Senate hearing yesterday and argued that the US is in dire need of a "national broadband strategy" that would bring universal access and more competition to the increasingly-important broadband market.

Despite the assurances of a Progress & Freedom Foundation senior fellow that US broadband was a robustly competitive market and companies should actually face fewer government regulations, neither Commissioner Copps nor Commissioner Adelstein (both Democrats, and the only two commissioners who spoke at the hearing) agreed that things were so simple. The reason: regulation of the broadband market is currently at a low ebb compared with earlier rules that required line-sharing, yet the US continues to fall behind its international competitors.

Critics have attacked particular studies for perceived methodological flaws; Copps forcefully made the point, though, that the US has been dropping year-over-year in such surveys, even when the methodology of a particular survey remains the same. He also pointed out that such data doesn't come from a single study. Instead, a whole host of recent studies has ranked the US no higher than 11 when it comes to broadband penetration.

Report US ranking FTTH Council, "Asia Lead the World in FTTH Penetration" (July 18, 2007) 11 Robert Atkinson, "The Case for a National Broadband Policy" (June 2007) 12 OECD, "Broadband Statistics to December 2006" 15 ITU, "Broadband Statistics for 1 January 2006" 15 ITU United Nations Conf. on Trade and Develop., "Chapter 3, the Digital Opportunity Index" 20 Website Optimization, LLC, "US Jumps to 24th in Worldwide Broadband Penetration" (August 21, 2007) 24

The solution, according to both commissioners, is not some kind of "command and control" economy or a huge new set of federal regulations. Both commissioners instead talked about the importance of having the FCC gather accurate broadband data (it currently defines broadband as anything faster than 200kbps in one direction and gets only ZIP code-level demographic information) and the need to spur "meaningful competition" through tax credits and other investment subsidies.

"Only rational competition policies can ensure that the US broadband market does not default into a stagnant duopoly," said Adelstein, "which is a serious concern given that cable and DSL providers now control approximately 96 percent of the residential broadband market."

One of the tools that the FCC itself can use to make such competition a reality is "open access" rules, and the FCC has applied several of these to parts of the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction. Still, wireless looks several years out from providing truly mainstream broadband access to more than the geekerati and those who fly in business class. To that end, Copps called for using the Universal Service Fund to help pay for universal broadband service. "It worked for plain old telephone service and it will work here," he said.

Adelstein called for a "National Summit on Broadband" at which the federal government and the private sector would come together in peace, love, and understanding to sing "It's a Small World After All" and give group hugs (not an exact quote). This is an exact quote, however: "Just as the Pilgrims used the Mayflower to reach the new opportunities in Plymouth Harbor and the 19th-century pioneers relied on stage coaches and railroads to settle the western US, entrepreneurs are using broadband infrastructure to reach beyond their current horizons." A national strategy could help spur even more entrepreneurial activity, in Adelstein's view.

While the rhetoric might be a bit too inflated for its own good, it's good to see that at least some FCC officials are taking the problem seriously and hope to see the US back at the top of the broadband charts soon. Copps, Adelstein, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin (a Republican) were the forces behind the recent "open access" requirements, and the auction rules have already shaken up an entire industry. Whether the open access experiment lives up to the hype remains to be seen.

The market is also making progress of its own toward offering an alternative to the cable/DSL duopoly. WiMAX is showing signs of living up to its early promise of offering wide-scale wireless broadband, though it will be years before WiMAX is widely available outside urban areas and interstate highways. Most Americans would welcome a third broadband option, and they won't care especially if government rules or uninhibited market forces bring it to them. Let's hope that, one way or another, the dream becomes a reality.