OPASTCO tenacious in opposition to National Broadband Plan

The people at OPASTCO are still talking to me after I wrote an editorial this week that was critical of some things they’ve recently said – in particular a report they published following what I felt was a somewhat flawed survey of their members on the topic of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and related developments.

OPASTCO President John Rose took some time yesterday to review the organization’s key concerns about the National Broadband Plan with me. He also posted some of the same information in the “comments” section of my post, where you can read his thoughts first-hand (scroll toward the bottom after clicking here).

The most compelling of OPASTCO’s arguments, I believe, are:

· The National Broadband Plan’s goal of ensuring that all Americans can get broadband at speeds of at least 4 Mb/s is too low to support some of the plan’s other goals, particularly those involving education and health care. And although the National Broadband Plan calls for reviewing bandwidth requirements every four years, OPASTCO thinks a yearly review would be more appropriate.

· If small carriers are required to move off rate of return regulation and into a price cap approach, they could have difficulty obtaining the funding from lenders that would be required for them to continue to invest in their networks. Lenders liked the predictability that the rate of return approach offered, and without that predictability they will view loans to small carriers as more risky.

· OPASTCO is also concerned that despite the National Broadband Plan’s recognition that intercarrier compensation reform would need to go hand in hand with Universal Service reform, the organization has not seen intercarrier compensation given commensurate priority.

Rose and I had a spirited discussion about why the National Broadband Plan settled for just 4 Mb/s as the target speed for the proposed broadband Universal Service Fund. I said I thought it was because the plan crafters didn’t want the size of the fund to grow -- and 4 MB/s was the most they believed they could afford based on the size of the current fund. As I write this, it occurs to me that the FCC may be particularly reluctant to increase the size of the USF because of the uncertainty surrounding whether the commission has the authority to use the USF to cover broadband, which could require Congress to get involved.

Rose acknowledged that if OPASTCO were to achieve all of its goals, the size of the Universal Service Fund would have to grow. But he believes the economic benefits would justify the extra costs. “Not letting the fund grow is not in this country’s best interest,” he said.