In July the FCC announced that, in the context of a its own broadband planning, it had commissioned the Berkman Center to do a study of the state of broadband development worldwide.
A draft – Next Generation Connectivity:A review of broadband Internet transitions
and policy from around the world – has just been published. The FCC is asking for comments before Nov 16.
Specifically, the Commission seeks comment on the following:
1. Does the study accomplish its intended purposes?
2. Does the study provide a complete and objective survey of the subject matter?
3. How accurately and comprehensively does the study summarize the broadband experiences of
other countries?
4. How much weight should the Commission give to this study as it develops a National Broadband
Plan?
5. Are additional studies needed along the lines of the Berkman study?
6. Please provide any other comments on the Berkman study that you deem relevant.
A CircleID article notes the following excerpts:
From the report:
“Our most surprising and significant finding is that ‘open access’ policies—unbundling, bitstream access, collocation requirements, wholesaling, and/or functional separation—are almost universally understood as having played a core role in the first generation transition to broadband [dial-up to broadband] in most of the high performing countries; that they now play a core role in planning for the next generation transition [faster and always available connectivity]; and that the positive impact of such policies is strongly supported by the evidence of the first generation broadband transition.”
Further more:
“We find that in countries where an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors that entered using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition which, in most cases, contributed to strong broadband performance across a range of metrics.”
An Arstechnica article notes the reports’s emphasis on open access – to the extent of recommending structural separation: