BY MIKE VIOLETTE
Reproduced with permission of IN Compliance Magazine
Original publication June 2015
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN!
Blow out the candles, already! The recent auction of Advanced Wireless Spectrum raised $41 Big Ones (that’s $41E9) for the US Treasury. Now, spectrum is a little like real estate and as Will Rogers once said: “I had been putting what little money I had in Ocean Frontage [because] they wasn’t making any more…” If there were spectrum futures, I’d recommend placing a buy. AT&T, apparently, thinks the same way, having dropped nearly one-half of the record bids.
Part of this haymaking for the Feds is the result of the FCC’s “National Broadband Plan” or “The Ominbus Broadband Initiative.” In 2010 the FCC released a plan to increase the availability of spectrum for broadband deployment in the United States. Some of the initiatives have had an immediate impact. Others have languished or have been overtaken by events. What has happened since is that the Commission has made hundreds of MHz of spectrum available for all kinds of mobile, IoT and M2M uses. This has caused some difficulties for incumbent users and created opportunities for innovators.
This article will provide an update of how the plan is being implemented.
Read full Article: FCC’s Broadband Plan Turns Five