FCC National Broadband Plan: What It Means For You
The national broadband plan has arrived. After 36 public workshops, nine field hearings, 31 public notices that produced 75,000 pages of public comments, 131 blog posts, and 335,000 Twitter followers, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday finally released its 376-page plan for providing the country with broadband service.
The document – which was mandated by last year's stimulus bill – includes recommendations for broadband implementation over the next 10 years, touching on things like public safety, education, health information technology, spectrum, the economy, and more. But what does this mean for the average consumer? Will this plan actually affect you or is it just hundreds of page of bureaucratic nonsense?
We perused the document in its entirety this morning, and found a few things that could affect the average consumer.
Faster Internet for the Connected
The FCC's plans are not going to be implemented overnight. Most look down the road to 2015 and 2020. In addition to providing underserved areas with broadband access, the FCC also wants to increase the speed of existing service. Within five years, the FCC aims to have 100 million people hooked up to broadband service boasting speeds of 50 Mbits/s, and by 2020, the FCC wants 100 million people using 100 Mbps broadband service.
The plan also applies to mobile, and a good portion deals with spectrum. Many of the details are very technical, but in an effort to accommodate all the people who are expected to start using the mobile Web in the next 10 years, the plan calls for an additional 500 MHz of spectrum to be used
