Welcome to our live blog. The meeting will begin at 3PM EDT. In the meantime, check out our Open Meetings page where you will be able to see a live stream of the meeting and the slides used in today's presentation. We will also be live tweeting the meeting here. If you're on Twitter yourself, you can join the conversation by using #FCCopen.

3:11pm EDT
By any standard, we are on countdown. There are only twenty-seven days to go until the Broadband Plan is to be submitted. This is the last Open Commission meeting before that big day. This is the last time the Broadband Team will present in front of the Chairman and all four commissioners. The National Purposes Team will present today. They cover portions of the plan relating to the impact of broadband on healthcare, education, energy and the environment, government and civic engagement, public safety, and economic opportunity. They will identify the gaps that exist in these areas and they will provide a framework for their coming recommendations. Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioners Copps, McDowell, Clyburn, and Baker, representing the FCC’s top brass, will give them insight and suggestions. 

In addition to his Wired for Social Justice speech, Blair also delivered a speech last Friday on privacy issues in the National Broadband Plan to EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center).  In the speech, Blair discussed the dynamics of private data in the applications market, as well as the pending public notice on privacy.  Full text of the speech is below.

Thank you.

I particularly want to thank Mark, whose work I have followed for years and who has been both visionary and relentless in pushing on an issue which has always been important and, as I know you all know, will only be more so in the future.

I want to start with what my team was asked to do.  As many of you know, in the Recovery Act, Congress set aside more than 7 billion dollars for NTIA to establish a grant program designed to provide a short-term stimulus to fund broadband infrastructure build-out.

In addition to that program, Congress asked the FCC to develop a Plan for the long-term development of broadband in America. It asked us to evaluate those grants, and analyze the most efficient and effective mechanisms to get broadband infrastructure to all Americans. 

But Congress asked us to look beyond networks, too. 

It asked how we could achieve greater affordability, and increase adoption of broadband by Americans everywhere. 

It asked how broadband could advance a number of national purposes: energy, health care, public safety and consumer welfare, among others.  And it asked how to ensure maximum utilization of broadband, and how to realize its transformative potential.

Many still focus only on the first question—how can we get the fastest networks to the most number of people?

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This past Friday, Blair Levin, Executive Director, Omnibus Broadband Initiative, delivered a speech entitled 'Wired for Social Justice.'  Blair spoke at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council's Broadband and Social Justice Summit this past Friday. 

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When President Eisenhower was desegregating schools and the Armed Forces, he said: “there must be no second class citizens in this country.”

No one in this room would argue. But as society changes, the attributes of citizenship can change as well.

And so in every age the question must be asked anew: “Are our policies contributing to a form of second class citizenship?”

This is a question we have spent a great deal of time—difficult time—working on as we try to develop a national broadband plan.

And that is what I want to talk about today.

I want to have a frank conversation about how we can ensure that in a society in which citizens increasingly interact, transact, communicate, collaborate, contribute and work online, digital citizenship is denied to no one.

Over the last thirty years, we have seen increases in income inequality, residential segregation and social isolation, and the concentration of disadvantage.

The number of neighborhoods today with a dangerous poverty rate—poverty above 30%-- is higher than it was in 2000.

In areas with a dense concentration of poverty, jobs disappear. Opportunity disappears.  The American tradition of justice, of achieving the American dream, emphasizes equality of opportunity – of having access to equal sets of resources that can enable us, our families, our children to succeed.

Let me be clear: access to high-speed Internet, even when paired with the digital skills needed to use it, is not a guarantee of such opportunity – it also requires values such as hard work and diligence that neither technology nor government can provide.

But broadband can help people get access to better jobs, better education, better health care information and improved government services.

And those services should be accessible anytime, anywhere, not requiring a day spent traveling to and waiting in line at government welfare offices in the midst of a workday.

This is no theoretical exercise. Connecting those previously excluded can bring real results.

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As we draw closer to the March 17th date for release of the plan, we’re getting more and more excited about our effort and how the plan is beginning to take shape.  I gave a glimpse of what we are thinking today with respect to energy and the environment at the Clean-Tech Investor Summit in Palm Springs  Below are my remarks; comments welcome!

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Good Morning.  I’d like to give a little background about why I’m here.  Congress recognized that this country was long overdue for a national broadband strategy, and in the Recovery Act, Congress identified three national broadband objectives, and asked the FCC for a plan to achieve these objectives. First, they asked how broadband could be made available to all Americans.  Second, they asked how broadband could be made more affordable, and how adoption could be increased. About 93 million Americans are not connected to broadband today.  Third, Congress asked how broadband and advanced communications could be used to achieve other national priorities such as health care, education, energy efficiency and energy independence. There is also explicit mandate in the Recovery Act about a national broadband plan encouraging private sector innovation and investment.

Around 50 people joined the FCC to work on this plan, from industry, academia, government, the investor community—and hundreds more within the FCC have been active in preparing the plan. This is a plan that is designed for the unique attributes of the American broadband ecosystem. It is a data-driven plan, with input from across all America.  We’ve held 44 public workshops, and field hearings, issued 31 public notices, and received tens of thousands of pages of comments.

Having invested in IT, telecom, and clean-tech companies for a number of years, I jumped at the opportunity to be a part of this historic process, and have been honored to lead a small team looking at how broadband can help with our national energy independence and energy efficiency goals.  As part of the process, we’ve been speaking with telecom carriers, electric utilities, technology vendors, federal and state energy officials, entrepreneurs, and yes, even VCs too. 

The national broadband plan will be delivered to Congress and the American people by March 17th.  It will contain a series of specific recommendations to the FCC, to the Administration, to Congress, and to the States. I want to take this opportunity to discuss with you where we are in reaching some of our important findings and conclusions.

First and foremost, broadband and advanced communications will play an important role in achieving our national goals of energy independence and efficiency, serving as a foundation of smarter electric grids, buildings, homes, and vehicles that collectively can prevent up to a gigaton of carbon emissions by 2020.  Broadband alone cannot solve the country’s energy and environmental challenges.  But it will be an important part of the solution, as a platform for new applications and new business models.

I want to focus today on where broadband and advanced communications can make the greatest impact on energy and the environment: 1) modernizing the electric grid and 2) unlocking energy data to promote innovation in the smart home and smart building.

Modernizing the grid is critical for our economic prosperity, our national security, and our commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  The smart grid, as it’s often called, is the great enabler that will allow us to accommodate renewable power, energy storage, and distributed generation at mass scale.  A smarter grid will be necessary if we want to lead the shift towards light-duty vehicle electrification, an important step in reducing our dependency on foreign oil.  A smarter grid will speed recovery from national disasters and terrorist attacks, self-healing by re-routing power around faults, rather than allowing them to cascade and bring the grid down.

The record from the public proceedings is clear:  the smart grid needs reliable, secure, and pervasive communications, including wireless broadband.  Pervasive connectivity to sensors, substations, and switches are critical to transforming the grid into a two-way network of both electricity and information. 

The first section of our plan addresses this need, and will make specific recommendations for bringing mission critical broadband connectivity to make the grid smarter. Broadband networks that could accomplish this task include commercial networks, private utility networks, and shared networks with public safety agencies.  There is no single solution that will work for all regions, applications and types of utilities—our plan will recognize this and pursue multiple solutions.  First and foremost, we will look at how to remove impediments and disincentives to using commercial networks. We will also look at how the FCC can best work with wireless telecommunications providers to improve the ability of commercial networks to provide service during emergencies, not only to attract mission-critical smart grid traffic, but also consumers who rely on wireless networks.  Finally, we are exploring ways to encourage private networks built by utilities to operate in the same band, in order to drive down costs, and to drive open, non-proprietary standards.  There is a range of ways we can do this, but one path, for example, involves working with NTIA to look at federal spectrum bands.    

The second section of the plan will address how broadband, when combined with access to energy information, can unleash the energy innovation economy in homes and buildings.  Pervasive access to the Internet brings innovative competitors, technologies, and business models to the smart home and smart building, letting large cable companies and small web start-ups compete alongside the utilities for demand response, home automation, and energy management services.  Broadband is what lets a company like EnerNOC offer demand response services—essentially creating a virtual power plant from sophisticated software and reliable broadband.

Our review of the record suggests that to facilitate this innovation will require both interoperability standards and policies that provide customers robust access to their own digital energy information.

Smart Grid standards, as many of you know, is the focus of an effort at NIST.  Of particular interest for many of you, NIST is coordinating the development of data formats for how energy information can be communicated into a home, either via a smart meter or over the Internet.  These open standards are necessary to build a secure and interoperable Smart Grid, and they are critical to help ensure the smart home is plug’n’ play, increasing the ease of use and energy savings for all Americans.

But the record suggests interoperable standards are not sufficient, if we want to unlock the innovation potential of the smart home and smart building.  It appears that we also need policies that result in utilities providing their customers and their customers’ authorized third parties access to their own digital energy information, in open machine readable formats.  Some states have been out in front here – with the California Public Utility Commission recently announcing a decision to mandate its large investor owned utilities to provide digital energy information to consumers, including real-time energy information by 2011. Pennsylvania is another state that is aggressively pursuing these policies.  But other states are moving slowly.  We are reviewing how best to urge them to move fast with providing real-time information from smart meters, as well as past bill information over the Internet. For example, the federal government could help speed this effort by rewarding states and utilities with strong data access policies in its grants and loan programs. If such efforts don’t work, there are other options such as national energy data accessibility legislation.  Our energy and environment challenges are great and speed in providing such data is an urgent matter.

I think we can all agree real-time information and communication is the way people and systems work today.  You can check your frequent flyer miles, get real-time traffic alerts, or check your bank balances, all from your iPhone.  I don’t need to preach to this audience about the power of real-time information – if you listen carefully, you can hear the quiet peck of blackberries in the back row.   And maybe the front row as well. . Real-time feedback is what lets people make better energy decisions. Perhaps more importantly, real-time feedback in standard digital formats will allow companies to innovate new products and services that will help customers “set it and forget it,” saving energy and money on electric bills with a minimum of fuss.

The record tells us that most people get paper bills for energy, or at best, electronic PDFs.  We have 8 million smart meters today, going to 80 million by the end of the decade, according to FERC.  But most of the smart meters today, and even many of the ones planned for the coming years, will not provide real-time data to consumers, much less authorized third parties.  This raises the obvious question: It’s your energy use, and your dollars going to pay for the infrastructure – why can’t you have your own digital energy information?  And if you want to release your energy consumption information to someone who wants to sell you ads, or wants to analyze your energy usage and suggest energy efficiency investments, why should the utility hold you back?  What about generation mix information—maybe a company would like to measure its carbon footprint in real-time? Or consumers might want to charge their vehicles with green power? What about all the demand side applications we can’t think of right now?

It’s not the government’s role, any more than the utility company, to pick the winners and losers in thermostats, appliances, energy displays, and building technologies.  As we think about the plan, we believe we must aspire for policies that facilitate the ferocious competition that drives innovation.  Companies, technologies, and business models will compete for your investment capital and compete to deliver value for customers.  Many companies will fail, yes, even those in your top-quartile portfolios.  The ones that succeed will build new industries, create new jobs, and also help our country achieve its important national energy goals.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today, and I look forwarding to working with you.

Very early in the process of developing the National Broadband Plan, we recognized the impact that exploding growth in wireless broadband usage would have on spectrum policy. Though the Plan will make recommendations spanning many areas of spectrum policy - including getting spectrum "in the pipeline" to market and fostering more productive use in existing broadband bands - there's no getting around the need to reallocate some spectrum from current uses to broadband use.  We must get more spectrum out there for broadband if we want a world-leading broadband infrastructure.

The perception, reinforced by recent press articles and television commercials, is that any such reallocation effort creates “winners” and “losers”. So, the public discussion about spectrum policy has centered on reallocations and, more specifically, reallocation from TV broadcasters.  It’s just more interesting and tangible to talk about or report on something that could have winners and losers… human nature, I suppose.  I hesitate to perpetuate this over-emphasis on one aspect of spectrum policy, but given the attention it’s received, I do think it’s important to explain our current thinking.

The most attractive spectrum for wireless broadband is below 3.7 GHz; since broadcast TV bands occupy 294 MHz within that sweet-spot, they have naturally been one of the areas we are examining. For example, on average there are 20 full-power TV stations in the top 10 markets; they directly use only 120 MHz of the 294 MHz allocated to broadcast TV. Across all markets, they only directly use on average 54 MHz (9 channels) of the 294 MHz total.  Naturally, we asked the question – is there a more efficient way to deliver free over-the-air TV and reallocate spectrum for broadband use?

In trying to answer this question, we have followed 3 core principles:

• Preserve free, over-the-air TV
• Reallocate a portion of the broadcast TV bands to broadband use
• Establish a market-based mechanism to effect that reallocation

Initially, we identified a set of scenarios that would meet those principles through various means.  We analyzed the impact of each scenario on consumers and spectrum reallocation, gathered feedback on the scenarios from broadcasters and other stakeholders, and absorbed thousands of pages of public filings, analyst reports, and other research material – all to refine and narrow options.  Sounds a lot like a typical strategic planning process, huh?

Where have we landed?  Of course, the process is not done yet, but our current preference is to establish a voluntary mechanism through which owners of broadcast TV stations could choose what they want to do with the spectrum they current license.  Some may choose to retain all of it; some may choose to share bandwidth with another station for continued high-definition, standard-definition, and/or mobile DTV broadcasts; some may relinquish their license to pursue alternative business models.   Station owners could receive a share of the auction proceeds from the spectrum they relinquish.  We would repack remaining stations in the most efficient manner, and reallocate the spectrum “freed” to flexible, broadband use.

I hate to disappoint, but such a mechanism wouldn’t create winners and losers, only winners and… more winners.  Broadcasters would win more options in a challenging business and investment climate for the industry; consumers would win more innovation in wireless broadband services and continued free, over-the-air television; auction winners would win capacity to meet customer needs (but pay for that capacity, of course).

Like any strategic planner would, we continue to explore other alternatives if the voluntary mechanism doesn’t receive Congressional authorization or result in sufficient spectrum reallocation – e.g., changes to the broadcast architecture to reduce spacing between channels, auctions of overlay licenses, mandatory channel sharing options. 

Those alternatives are fraught with complexity and tradeoffs.  We can get out of the “winners and losers” mindset if we actively support and pursue a voluntary, market-based mechanism to effect the reallocation of spectrum to meet the country’s future needs for wireless broadband.

 By Jordan Usdan, Attorney-Advisor, Broadband Task Force

 The FCC is making a determined effort to understand the global broadband ecosystem and to extract relevant lessons from the international broadband experience.  These efforts have included holding two workshops in partnership with the FCC’s International Bureau: International Lessons and Global Broadband Connects America and the World; visiting or teleconferencing with regulators, academics and companies in over a dozen countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America; and posting for comment the Berkman Center’s study of broadband throughout the world.  Today the FCC is releasing a companion video with this blog post of short snippets of our trip to Europe.

Last week at the Commission meeting, the Broadband Taskforce outlined key gaps in broadband service that need to be addressed. There are connectivity gaps in the healthcare sector that I think are important and worth highlighting.

This is the third in a four-part series of blogs on Diversity and Civil Rights Issues in Broadband Adoption and Access.  The full biographies of all participants can be found at http://www.broadband.gov/docs/ws_diversity/ws_diversity.doc.

What is the federal government compelled to do, and what is it prohibited from doing to promote access and adoption for all Americans in the National Broadband plan?  That was the topic of the second panel in the workshop on Diversity and Civil Rights Issues in Broadband Access and Adoption.  As FCC Commission Michael Copps said in opening the panel, "This is where the rubber really hits the road."

The panel featured a range of lawyers and scholars wrestling with the thorny issue of federal action that might target those groups that do not have access to broadband or are not adopting broadband, while adhering to the constitutional mandate of equal protection for all Americans.  The panelists discussed the different legal review standards applied to racial and ethnic minorities as compared to Native Americans or the poor, the challenges in subsidizing religious groups, and what other federal agencies have done to address the different needs of distinct American communities.

Allen Hammond, a law professor at Santa Clara University, focused on the FCC's responsibility.  Relying on the preamble to the Communications Act, Sections 706 and 257 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Professor Hammond argued that "the Commission is required to facilitate inclusive, non-discriminatory, affordable access to broadband in a reasonable and timely manner, and if access is not reasonable and timely, to take immediate action to accelerate deployment by removing barriers to investment and promoting competition." 

University of Pennsylvania Professor and former Chairperson of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Mary Frances Berry noted that "race is the bugbear in the room." According to Dr. Berry, to meet the judicial standard or review applied to race-conscious measures, also known as strict scrutiny, "What you've got to do is make sure that you prove that there is a compelling governmental interest and make sure that you show that you narrowly tailored whatever you do in this plan, and that you tried every alternative possible, that you are monitoring what you are going to do, and that whatever you're doing is of short duration."  Dr. Berry repeatedly emphasized the importance of "overwhelming evidence."  She ended on an encouraging note, saying that it was "possible for the FCC to develop a plan that will ensure success, meeting the needs of all our people and exercising the FCC's responsibility." 

Thomas Henderson, a long-time civil rights attorney, argued that the FCC "can act with an awareness of race . . .  so long as you're not classifying people or treating people differently."   However, he added, although "race-neutral remedies are sometimes disparaged and seen as not effective, there are lots of reasons to consider them thoroughly.  One, you can get a lot done through race-neutral means.  Secondly, they can be really useful in identifying where the real barriers are.  And the third thing is employing them and using them provides a very good basis for race-conscious actions if you need to take them."

David Honig, Executive Director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, and chairperson of the Diversity Advisory subcommittee on constitutional issues, referred the FCC to the advisory committee recommendations to replace the current eligible entity designation with a program like those used in state university systems, also known as a full file review.  Honig proposed that an entity might be considered eligible for a credit if it has overcome a disadvantage.  "The overcoming of which is predictive of entrepreneurial success."  According to Honig, credit would be given to those who could demonstrate some social disadvantage, such as "disadvantages that derive from having experienced racial discrimination or gender discrimination or the various disabilities that, unfortunately, attend veterans' status or living in certain geographic areas or certain kinds of disabilities."  

Geoffrey Blackwell, of the Chickasaw Nation Industries, the National Congress of American Indians, and Native Public Media is also a member of the Diversity Advisory Committee.  He noted that Native Americans could also be considered in the proposed full file review program.  Blackwell noted that "the Commission has very good tools... developed over the last 10 years that it can draw upon" to increase broadband access and adoption on Tribal Lands, such as the Enhanced Tribal Lands Lifeline and Link-Up Program "that created significant rises in the telephone penetration rate in Indian Country."  According to Blackwell, because of the special status of sovereign Native American Tribes, strict scrutiny would not apply. 

Professor Mara Einstein of Queens College and the Stern School of Business at New York University argued that whatever policy the FCC considered needed to take into account the economic fundamentals of media in the U.S.  Dr. Einstein argued that it was especially important to recognize that "when it comes to revenue generation, new media looks exactly like old media, and this economic model is anathema to content diversity." 

She gave various examples of "why the market can't or rather won't solve the problem of the digital divide" as it relates to generating content that might spur adoption.   Dr. Einstein suggested that the government "fund and promote categories of content without specifying what exactly the content should be."

Henderson proposed that there were measures that the FCC could take now to advance diversity and equal opportunity in any National Broadband Plan that contemplates direct federal employment to advance either deployment or broadband service.  Specifically, Executive Order 11246 requires a federal contractor not to discriminate.  In addition, with respect to any federal contracts with private employers, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act provides that recipients of federal financial assistance are prohibited from discriminating. 

Henderson also suggested that the study conducted by the Department of Transportation would be a useful guide.  That study resulted in the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.  A program upheld in the federal courts as being constitutional.

All the panelists agreed with the importance of gathering data to guide and support any regulatory action.  But they also noted that the FCC has to avoid its tendency to develop rules in silos without fully appreciating the impact of all its policies. As Professor Hammond put it, "You can't implement [diversity] policy without taking into account what you're doing in the rest of the regulatory space."

Professor Berry echoed Commissioner Robert McDowell's opening comments about the inevitability of litigation aimed at whatever rules the FCC eventually adopts, and urged the Commission to anticipate "who is likely to bring a legal attack, understand why would they bring it and what are they likely to argue, and to know how to repel them before they do it."

Virtually everyone agrees that the current universal service program is broken.  But how to fix it – that’s the $64 million question.  Oh, make that the $7 billion question and growing.  At the same time, universal service has the potential to help provide affordable broadband everywhere.  But if we are going to make that happen, we can’t explode the size of the fund in the process.   It’s not telephone companies that pay for universal service.  It's you and me and everyone else in America that pays.   We have to decide as a nation what exactly we are trying to achieve with the universal service fund and how we can best direct those resources to benefit consumers.