Broadband advocate outlines eight steps to national plan

The Baller-Herbst law firm, a vocal broadband advocate best known as a supporter of municipal broadband, has published an eight-step plan to achieve a national broadband strategy.

Citing President Bush’s call in his 2004 presidential campaign for “affordable, universal broadband” by 2007, the firm stressed the urgency of a national strategy to retain the country’s competitive global standing in an age of information.

Any strategy would have to include a mix of approaches and technologies to address the country’s heterogeneity, the firm acknowledged. “A ‘one size-fits-all’ strategy would surely fail,” attorneys Jim Baller and Casey Lide wrote. “Fiber-to-the-home is clearly the best and most robust technology for high-capacity networks, but it is not economically feasible to deploy everywhere under today’s conditions. Certain trade-offs among fiber, wireless and other technologies will inevitably be necessary.”

Step one of the firm’s plan is to create a groundswell of support for a national broadband strategy at all levels of government and from all major stakeholders, including established telecom service providers. Federal, state and local governments should conduct hearings on the subject and propose resolutions declaring their support, the attorneys wrote.

Step two is to enact federal legislation that outlines key steps to take and includes a budget sufficient to enact those steps. But the federal government acting alone isn’t enough, Baller and Lide said. “The strategy we envision will be based on the best information available, viewed in imaginative new ways that are not tied to legacy political and legal structures, and will be the product of negotiation among the key stakeholders,” they wrote.

To that end, step three is for the federal government to appoint a non-partisan blue-ribbon task force to examine the matter. In addition to representatives from all levels of government, the task force would include “at minimum” a mix of incumbent and competitive telecom service providers; utility companies; residential and business consumers; representatives from the entertainment industry as well as the scientific, educational and medical communities; equipment manufacturers; “labor; the disadvantaged;” the public safety, homeland security and defense industries, plus “industries offering promising efficiencies from joint planning and development.” The task force should also include experts in related fields such as law, taxation and finance, the plan said.

The task force would set to work on step four, which is to set goals for the gathering and exchange of information in pursuit of their ultimate goals, which would not be set yet at this stage.

Step five is to gather information on available resources and needs from as many sectors as possible as well as to identify factors influencing the success of broadband deployment. In this step, the task force would also examine the efforts of other nations to promote broadband deployment.

In step six, various disparate sectors among the stakeholders would exchange information in the hope of discovering creative synergies and ideas. “Step six should not be rushed, as the interactions that it spawns are likely to be of tremendous value to all concerned,” Baller and Lide wrote.

In step seven, the task force would narrow down potential strategies to a manageable number and publish a document describing its findings. And in step eight, Congress would enact legislation based on those findings.

“To be sure, the established communications providers have a significant role to play, but it would be folly for the United States to leave such a critical matter to them alone,” Baller and Lide wrote. “We must develop a national broadband strategy now. We have not a day to waste.”