The FCC’s Faulty Framework

By Brad

In response to the FCC’s 706 Broadband Report — particularly the report’s claim that broadband deployment is not “reasonable and timely” — Bret Swanson of Entropy Economics (he’s also one of our Broadband Ambassadors) writes:

Even if we stipulate the FCC’s framework, data, and analysis, we’re still left with the FCC’s own admission that between June 2010 and June 2011, an additional 7.4 million Americans gained access to fixed broadband service. That dropped the portion of Americans without access to 6% in 2011 from around 8.55% in 2010 — a 30% drop in the unserved population in one year. Most Americans have had broadband for many years, and the rate of deployment will necessarily slow toward the tail-end of any build-out. When most American households are served, there just aren’t very many to go, and those that have yet to gain access are likely to be in the very most difficult to serve areas (e.g. “on tops of mountains in the middle of nowhere”). The fact that we still added 7.4 million broadband in the last year, lowering the unserved population by 30%, even using the FCC’s faulty framework, demonstrates in any rational world that broadband “is being deployed” in a “reasonable and timely fashion.”

But this is not the rational world — it’s D.C. in the perpetual political silly season.