How the telecoms industry provides broadband services to consumers could be drastically changed following recent step by the US telecommunications regulator to get the public to define what ‘broadband’ is.
The drafting of a national broadband plan by the Federal Communications commission is currently underway and is due to be submitted in mid-February to Congress. During this time the FCC is looking for input from the public and has issued a fact finding notice on its website.
A study into the competitive nature of the wireless industry in the US will also get a public notice issue on its website at some point in the near future said the FCC.
Another inquiry by Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the FCC, into why a recent voice application from Google for the iPhone was reject by Apple has led to this recent notice to look into the wireless industry as a whole.
An FCC meeting will take place next Thursday, with all five commissioners in a new administration in attendance for the first time, which will talk about charges on the monthly bills of subscribers along with the general state of the wireless industry.
It is believe that the new administration will want to take a fresh look at whether more affordable prices and higher quality services can be made available to the public and this latest inquiry is hoped to show this.
There are a number of issues that regulators are currently trying to determine, like accessibility, increasing subscribership, affordability and speed, and the notice for the public to define broadband will help them to do this.
How regularly this definition should be updated is also one of the questions that has been posed by the FCC, noting that “A static definition will fail to address changing needs and habits.”
Source – Reuters