Finally, the FCC has had it with "small ball"—and the agency is at last detailing some big-picture aspirational goals for US broadband. By 2020, the National Broadband Plan calls for 100 million homes to have 100Mbps Internet access, and the US should have the world's largest "ultra-high-speed broadband testbeds." In addition, Internet adoption rates should hit at least 90 percent—way up from the current 65 percent.

Broadband will also become a universal service like the telephone system of old—and FCC Chairman Julius Genachoswki promised today that even baseline service would be faster than the 1-2Mbps currently pushed by other countries.

Taking back the lead?



Genachowski provided a preview of the soon-to-be-unveiled National Broadband Plan today to a meeting of state regulators gathered in DC. After months in which we've heard only about modest targets and worthy but mediocre goals for the NBP, Genachowski made clear that the final plan would push for "ambitious but achievable" results.

The goal is nothing less than to put the US back at the top of the pack when it comes to broadband. Though critics can quibble about the details of the overall US rank on broadband deployment and speed, Genachowski countered with the claim that "no one can argue that we are leading the world in broadband, or are even as close as we should be." The NBP will attempt to "close these gaps."

According to Genachowski, the plan will put an emphasis on smart grid technology, it will overhaul the E-Rate program that brings Internet access to schools and classrooms, it will finally recommend doing something with the 700MHz D block set aside for public safety, it will seek to free up more spectrum for wireless, and it will try to lower the cost of broadband buildouts "through the smart use of government rights of way and conduits."

But the marquee piece of the plan will be the call for 100 million US households to use 100Mbps broadband connections by 2020. When it comes to availability, this is not actually an ambitious goal. Verion's FiOS already passes 12.2 million homes and could easily scale past 100Mbps today if the company wanted to do so (the company said today that it can "currently" deliver "up to 400Mbps to all customers" if it so desired). Cable already offers high-speed Internet to 120 million US homes, and inexpensive DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades have already brought 50Mbps and 100Mbps speeds to millions.

The real issue here is not availability, but uptake. Of the 12.2 million homes passed by FiOS, for instance, only 3.43 million have subscribed to the service. And, while cable already reaches millions with blazing speeds, most people are still taking much slower speed tiers. If the FCC wants to get people to use high-speed services, it needs to encourage more price competition so that we can get the sort of speed/price equation already seen in places like Hong Kong.

To do that, the FCC is pushing super-high-speed test networks of the kind recently announced by Google. The idea is that these can serve as incubators for innovation, showing ISPs how to do things faster and cheaper, but also showing the public what is actually possible.

"We should stretch beyond 100 megabit," said Genachowski. "The US should lead the world in ultra-high-speed broadband testbeds as fast, or faster, than anywhere in the world. In the global race to the top, this will help ensure that America has the infrastructure to host the boldest innovations that can be imagined. Google announced a one gigabit testbed initiative just a few days ago—and we need others to drive competition to invent the future."

Another piece of the price puzzle is encouraging robust growth in mobile Internet services to put upward speed pressure on wireline ISPs. Though the speech talks about the importance of spectrum and the need to "lead the world in mobile broadband," it remains unclear what this means in practice.

What about mandatory line-sharing, suggested by the FCC's own commissioned study as one of the best ways to increase competition and drive down price? Genachowski didn't mention it, though recent reports indicate the FCC could be open to the idea. We would be shocked to see this happen, but Genachowski did go out of his way to say that "significant private investment" had not been enough, and that America's "broadband ecosystem is not nearly as robust as it needs to be."

Currently, the average US broadband speed is 3.9Mbps, putting the country in 18th place worldwide. At the current Census Bureau average of 2.6 people per US household, this means that Genachowski hopes to move 260 million Americans to 100Mbps broadband within a decade, a worthy goal given the huge number of people involved (early adopters and techies will of course be ashamed to be seen with 100Mbps connections by then, but this looks like a solid baseline for the general public).

Combined with the promised "once-in-a-generation transformation of the Universal Service Fund" and the pledge that a truly universal US broadband connection will be faster than 2Mbps, the National Broadband Plan may end up being an important document after all. The mechanisms behind many of these changes were not explained in the speech, and it remains unclear what the FCC will actually do to make its goals a reality (we will know more a month from now when the plan is released). But just having some decent goals can be helpful in itself.

For Genachowski, broadband isn't transformative in the way that interstates were transformative. No, this is bigger—think electricity—and building broadband pipes is "our generation's great infrastructure challenge."