June 2009 Archives
There's an old business adage that those who fail to plan are planning to fail. The adage came to mind this week as I looked over the untold thousands of pages of comments filed with the FCC as public input to their Congressionally-mandated "National Broadband Plan."
Because for the most part, it seems that the usual cast of characters filed the usual comments, most of which have been filed as "comments" in every FCC proceeding for the past 15 years.
The companies want out from under regulations. The telecom attorneys want more contentious policies that will earn them bigger fees. The whack jobs on the left want to give everyone everything for free, or at least to ensure that no company ever makes a profit. The whack jobs on the right want to know what happed to the Moral Majority.
The problem is that none of these add up to a coherent plan. None of them is even actually very useful in creating a plan.
We should have had a national broadband plan back in 1993, when the commercial Internet was first created and the contracts let to private companies to develop it. Or in 1995, when we created the massive update to the nation's telecom laws. Or even in the late Nineties, when we flailed around trying to pretend that broadband over telephone copper wires should be regulated differently than broadband over cable copper wires.
All that said, it would be delightful if what we got was a real plan from the FCC for the future of broadband. One with research, and a mission statement, and goals and strategies and a budget.
That's not what we will get from this process, for any number of reasons. First and foremost, there doesn't seem to be anyone at the FCC who knows what a real strategic business plan looks like. If they did, we would have had one by now. Second, all of the input is being made by inside-the-beltway lobbyists and pundits. And third, by the time the thing is finally flopped on the table before Congress like a dead fish, there won't be any money left to implement it.
I don't envy Julius Genachowski or the other commissioners their task, but neither do I have much sympathy for them. What they will be driven to produce will be a wish list rather than a plan. It will seek to balance the competing interests of all the parties in a way that most pleases the political lords in Congress and the administration. No one gets more than their fair share, everyone gets a little something. Just balanced enough to avoid making anyone too angry. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
That's not a plan, because it will fail to set substantive goals or outline real strategies to reach those goals. If it did so, it would raise a ruckus among the lobbyists and self-appointed advocates because goals and strategies have to be based on real facts rather than political dogma.
So we will fail to plan; and thus plan to fail.
