I may have been overly charitable to the authors. They acknowledge that 5 out of the 7 million unserved households will soon be covered by 4G; and in principle they seem to agree that it's a possible substitute for fixed line. But at the same time they say investments on top of what the market plans to provide “may be necessary” to reach the 4mbps goal. Depending on the details I could end up finding their flavor of universal service unsavory also.

I think you're right about the 250,000 number being there for a reason. I wouldn't doubt that a number of units somewhere around there still lacks a voice connection. Anyone have the stat handy?

I was also wondering about the question of a marginal 250,000 from satellite providers. I don't know if it's a spectrum thing but I sure hope the team gave that some consideration.

I may have been overly charitable to the authors. They acknowledge that 5 out of the 7 million unserved households will soon be covered by 4G; and in principle they seem to agree that it's a possible substitute for fixed line. But at the same time they say investments on top of what the market plans to provide “may be necessary” to reach the 4mbps goal. Depending on the details I could end up finding their flavor of universal service unsavory also.

I think you're right about the 250,000 number being there for a reason. I wouldn't doubt that a number of units somewhere around there still lacks a voice connection. Anyone have the stat handy?

I was also wondering about the question of a marginal 250,000 from satellite providers. I don't know if it's a spectrum thing but I sure hope the team gave that some consideration.

My point about 4 mbps was simply that it does not reflect what the “typical” user buys in the marketplace today. If the goal is to equalize opportunities using what people buy in the markeplace as a baseline, 4 mbps is excessive — a mistake driven by taking “average” to mean “typical.” But of course that could change in the future.

I'd have been delighted if the plan had justified the 4 mbps on the grounds that 4G mobile broadband will soon provide that speed. That would mean the plan would have acknowledged that 4G wireless is a suitable substitute for wireline broadband. And that means the number of households where broadband is not available would be the number that are outside the footprint of 4G wireless, not just the ones outside the footprint of DSL, cable, and fiber. Assuming 4G wireless quickly achieves the same footprint as 3G, that means the number of households without 4 mbps broadband will soon be less than half the number the plan claims.

Regarding the cost of serving the final 250,000 housing units, I think it's clear that the FCC staff tried their best to calculate the actual cost, and I'm looking forward to seeing the full paper released. Reading between the lines, it sounds like they might also agree that using $14 billion to subsidize very expensive wireline 4 MB broadband for those last 250,000 homes is pretty unreasonable. (Usually in these kinds of reports, a number like their calculation of the cost of serving the last 250,000 homes wouldn't even make it into the report unless the authors put it there because they wanted people to think carefully about whether this is a good idea!) So, my comments about the most expensive homes were not so much a criticism of the report as they are a caution that we should read the whole thing carefully rather than just pay attention to what makes it into the headlines. Overall, I'm impressed with the number of reality-based caveats that made it into this report.

The report's claim about satellite capacity was made in regard to serving all homes without broadband, not just the 250,000 most expensive. Does the industry have capacity to serve another 250,000 customers? Somebody in the satellite industry shout out and let us know!

We should also be careful not to take “capacity” figures as fixed. If there's enough demand, more capacity can be built, though in the satellite case I don't know if the capacity constraint is a spectrum issue or a hardware issue.

Yes the 4 Mbps goal is arbitrary, but it’s not too high.

First, you’re ignoring 4G mobile broadband entirely. From day one, WiMax and LTE basically match the plan’s goal for “actual” throughput. By 2020 they will be even faster, and will likely cover the entirety of the present 3G footprint you cite (it will by then be a history map). Like their predecessors, these networks are being financed with private capital.

Second, the benchmark is not overly ambitious compared to those that have been set abroad, in light of the timing. Seven of the nine foreign plans reported on page 135 have deadlines that already passed or that will be reached this year. The only one that is comparable is Australia, at 2 Mbps by 2018. You’re right, the authors aim to overshoot that one. Personally I’m comfortable expecting more from our industry than the Australians can from theirs but perhaps you disagree.

Third (perhaps prior to the above in reason) it’s likely that a decade from now the speeds of a “typical” fixed line broadband connection will be substantially higher than what we are seeing today. As such, 4 Mbps will probably be on the low-end of what is useful for many future applications (think 768 kbps now). But you don’t have to take my word for it. The authors recommended the FCC review this benchmark every four years, so it can adapt (even downwards, in theory) as our information about the market improves.

You should also give the Broadband Task Force more credit regarding the math behind the $56,000 named to connect each of the final 250,000 units. They are obviously aware of satellite broadband, stating “while satellite can serve any given household, satellite capacity does not appear sufficient to serve every unserved household” (p 137). Until the group releases the “Broadband Availability Gap” paper they cite (which presumably details the methodology behind the estimates), it’s only fair to assume they put more thought into their work than taking current market prices and multiplying them by the number of unserved homes.