Broadband competition: Is this as good as it gets?

At the same time, Levin said 4G wireless rollouts in 2010 or 2012 could represent a significant change in the competitive landscape. “That is a far more significant competitive threat than I think people realize,” he said, adding that, for wireline providers feeling the sting of wireless substitution, “The worst, in wireless, is yet to come.”

Levin, who is rumored to be a potential candidate for an FCC appointment should Barack Obama win the presidency, also made some predictions about the telecom agenda of a Democratic administration. Ubiquitous, affordable broadband will be a priority for an Obama administration, Levin said, and Obama’s FCC would likely be charged to move very quickly on that agenda. But when asked by Telephony what exactly might constitute “broadband” in that context, Levin said defining the term will be an “interesting challenge” for policymakers because broadband is “constantly evolving.”

“Part of it depends on what feature sets happen in the future,” Levin told Telephony. “I don’t think we’ll define universal service as that necessary to carry Cisco’s telepresence, for example. But we may get to a level of video; who knows. I think there’s a growing consensus that universal service, as it is today, ought to [allow one to] be capable of doing Web-surfing, VoIP, information gathering – those kinds of things. And we want that to be available in roughly 100% of the country. And we’d like to achieve penetration rates similar to what we’ve achieved in voice. How do you do that? There are lots of uncertainties and lots of reasonable debate.”

“Here’s the way I think service providers will think about it,” he continued. “What is the level of support -- what is the speed which qualifies you that I can achieve but disqualifies some of my potential competitors? In other words, if you can achieve 3m, but your wireless guys are never going to get there, you want that to be, in order to qualify, you want that to be the level.”