FCC Asks For One Month Extension For Broadband Plan

Updated: March 25, 2011

The FCC is going to miss a mandated deadline of February 17th for delivering a plan to ensure that all Americans have access to a 'high-speed, affordable' broadband service. So it has asked for a one month extension to complete the plan. This is the same plan that underlies the FCC's additional plan to transition all phone calling from the old PSTN to VoIP. The FCC asked for public input to that plan in December but has revealed almost nothing of what it intends to recommend. So far it is known that they intend to recommend an overhaul of the Federal phone-subsidy program and that some airwave space gets reallocated for the provision of wireless broadband (presumably for broadband access in remote areas that will be difficult to wire).

So far many of the FCC Commissioners have not seen specifics of the plan and it is not clear whether or not they need to approve it before it is passed along to Congress. Google, in its Public Policy blog said that it is happy for the FCC to have more time since it is important that the plan should be done right. Google went on to say that it hopes that the plan reflects short term goals of bringing high-speed access to every American as well as longer term goals of creating significantly higher bandwidth availability.

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