Bring the United States mobile broadband pricing in line with the rest of the world. 

The United States has the highest pricing for broadband access in the world. It also has the most confusing set of mobile broadband plans found anywhere. Don't let carriers confuse consumers with extra charges and small print. Simplify contracts with plain language and simplify plans with plain terms. Serve the consumer, not the carrier.

Net Neutrality Is Vitally Needed, even in Cities 

SImply this: do NOT hand the future of a healthy internet to private telecommunications companies to run as they see fit. They have already proven themselves to be only concerned with profit maximization, pure and simple. They want to stifle growth and competition, and have already tried to do so. Lobby money is no way to administer the largest global communication network ever.
I live a mere 10 miles from San Jose CA, heart of Silicon Valley, in Morgan Hill, and I am a mere 2 miles up a road from the main street in town, and I CANNOT get broadband. There is NO cable out here, NO dsl (apparently I am 50 feet too far away from the central switching station) and I have been relegated to dial-up for ten years. This is absurd, inconvenient and shows one not need be in rural Kentucky to be missing out on boradband. It happens in the cities as well, affordability is one key, availability is another. The government needs to apply its legal power to defining the next generation of broadband in the interests of its PEOPLE, and not the corporate lobbyists who are only looking for more money. The Internet is far too important for this.
I suppose this is a rant and not a new idea and as such I apologize. I am adamant the Net Neutrality law must be passed, enforced and written with the entire population in mind, rather than business and reelection money concerns. Thank you.

Do not fund satellite broadband or puny 768k/200k service  

For the past six years my wife and I have lived in a rural area and worked out of our home. We've survived (barely) with satellite broadband, and are now paying $100 a month for service from HughesNet. It claims to be about 1.5m down / 300k up, but often fails to perform to that spec. There are times when we have to drive almost 30 minutes to a coffee shop where we can get a WiFi connection when the satellite connection is inadequate. I would say two things about deploying broadband to unserved and underserved areas through the national broadband plan.

1. Due to its latency, a satellite connection is not true broadband and should not receive funding. Some applications like telephony and VPNs don't work at all (so much for telecommuting), and others like video streaming work so-so at best and often provide a degraded picture in this supposed age of HD TV. Moreover, HughesNet imposes a ridiculously low traffic limit on its users, although it refuses to disclose exactly what it is.

2. The notion that 768k down / 200k up should be considered as acceptable broadband speed as we move into the second decade of the 21st century is ludicrous. It would be a colossal waste of government money to fund projects which deliver such a low level of service. I already get that speed from Hughes and it's totally inadequate as a broadband standard moving forward. In an area where broadband is available from cable or telcos, no vendor could sell a 768/200 service to anyone. At a bare minimum, any federally-funded project should require 5m/1m, and even that is pathetic compared to the service offerings now widely available, and even more so in light of the new higher-speed services now being rolled out by cable.

The FCC needs to look forward. Satellite broadband and 768/200 service should be relegated to exhibits on old technology in the Smithsonian.

Move from "advertised" to "actual" speeds 

I recommend that we move from measuring broadband performance (download and upload speeds) from "advertised" performance an ISP provides an end-user to "actual" performance at PEAK times that an ISP provides an end-user. While the end-users' true performance will vary based on a number of other issues (back-end connections, devices, etc) there are methods today to accurately track and measure the "actual" performance, and the marketplace will come up with new variations to meet demand.

Promote Telecommuting - Reduce Time and Energy Waste 

Broadband access can play a much larger role in ameliorating profligate energy waste through reducing the need for daily physical office worker commuting. Yet many municipalities don't take into account telecommuting and remote presence when trying to plan for greener urban-suburban land use and transit. The paradigm of physically moving masses of office workers back and forth every day is clearly coming to an end, but that does not mean people must be concentrated into close living hives in order to achieve resource use efficiencies - significant numbers can telecommute. Unfortunately, we seldom see telecommuting promoted among the green planning alternatives. Increased broadband access, telecommuting, and remote presence should be promoted as a resource efficient alternative to physical commuting and hyper dense urbanizing.

Local Monopolies needs to end. 

Make illegal localized cable/internet monopolies to allow a truly free market.

Catching up with Korea 

Korea spent billions of dollars bolstering their broadband infrastructure and it shows. Their internet culture is ubiquitous. People watch TV shows & streaming news on their mobile devices on the subway! We need to catch up.

Stop bundling of devices and service 

It is almost impossible to determine what the real cost of mobile broadband service (or for that matter cell phone service).

All the companies seem to want to bundle phones/PDAs/Computers/NewWidgets with their service. Why can't they just sell service. Then, companies that sell devices can just sell devices. And the best services will survive and the best devices will survive.

All that survives now is the best advertising hype... which is worthless noise.

Ensure Community Networks are not Preempted 

At a minimum, communities must be allowed to invest in their own networks. No community should be hamstrung by federal or state laws that prevent it from building a network when the community decides existing options are inferior and harming their vitality. Forcing some communities to beg for connectivity is degrading and un-American. If a community wants to build it themselves, they should have that right.

Make broadband affordable and competitive by eliminating price gouging at the wholesale level. 

Want to know why high speed Internet service is so expensive in the US compared to the rest of the world? Or why many ISPs must throttle, ration, and/or cap bandwidth usage to avoid being unprofitable? Many, if not most, American citizens do not realize that it's because the wholesale costs which providers themselves must pay are needlessly high. Because the FCC has not yet acted on the issue of "special access" pricing, incumbents who control the "middle mile" have been able to foreclose competition, collect monopoly rents, increase what nearly everyone pays for broadband (especially in rural areas), and slow deployment by making it economically difficult or even infeasible.

This is something which the FCC could do today, even before the Broadband Plan is released; in fact, it could report positive progress to Congress as part of the Plan if it did so. (It has had a docket open on the issue since 2005.) The FCC should act now within its current authority, and -- in the plan -- ask Congress to extend its authority in this crucial area. It's necessary to serve consumers.

Is the FCC aware that this site has no privacy policy? 

This site, broadband.ideascale.com, is an official link from the FCC's broadband.gov site and has been announced as an official FCC website. However, it does not have any link to a privacy policy. Moreover, it is asking commenters and topic starters to include an email address or open an account. If the user supplies this personal information, it is not displayed on the main page, but part or all of it is accessible by RSS (in the case of comments) and it appears also to be availabe through the API. There is no warning that this will occur, which should be part of the privacy policy.

Promote Competition and Remove  

It would be great if there were true competition in the broadband market. I live in Phoenix Arizona and you have the option of Cox Communications as your internet and television provider or switching to poor quality satellite internet and television. Essentially Cox is the ONLY choice here in Phoenix if you have any sort of speed requirements to your internet connection (such as live chat, streaming any sort of content, online games, video conferences, VoIP, etc.)

I connect my cell phone to my computer and use that as a modem instead of using Cox. My cell phone provides faster internet connection and is drastically cheaper (about 20 bucks cheaper). Unfortunately, my cell phone's connection is not always stable. It's efficient for most use, but any sort of live content typically results in my connection being lost and having to reconnect and reload the content. There is no reason that my cell phone should be cheaper and faster than a broadband WIRED connection - regulations need to be put in so that Internet Service Providers stop restricting the amount of data transferred for users. If there is available bandwidth, the paying customers should be allowed access to as much as they need. If this results in a drastic slow-down for other customers, then the Internet Service Provider should take this as an indication that their service is not sufficient for the needs of its clients and it should add more cables to handle the additional requirements. Then perhaps the industry will invest in cheaper and higher-capacity data transfer designs to accommodate the higher demands while still turning a profit.

Net Neutrality Plain and Simple 

Support a broadband initative that allows internet users the unrestricted ability to access any legal content through any protocol desired

Make Upload bandwith as much a priority as download 

Broadband must be truly two way fast. Upload and download. In order for the technology to grow the bar must be set high. And companies must be forced to stop making claims that are false when it comes to speeds. For example the term "up to" claims should be actual and tied to peak usage numbers. Also two way high speed is needed, companies that offer a high download speed but and extremely low upload speed do their customers a disservice by claiming to be "high speed internet" Certain things like "downloading" music work fine on the current model, but other applications like online gaming or HD video steaming suffer because of low upload bandwith. Broadband should mean fast up and down it should be at a rate fast enough both ways to support the most intensive transfers of information. If we set the bar low we will not grow, if we set the bar high the innovation and new services that will come from a truly fast network are unlimited!

Let the public in on public hearings 

At minimum the public should receive three weeks advanced notice on any FCC public hearing. This is the least the FCC can do to fulfill its commitment to transparency and public participation in creating the National Broadband Plan.

Require advertisement of average user speed and advertisement of caps! 

"Up to 32 Megs speed!", I kid you not, my ISPs ads have used that vocabulary and that claim. They of course meant megabits, not megabytes, but their service certainly doesn't give me 4 megabytes download speed - EVER! I get at most 2.5 MiB/s.

If I dare use that speed for too long, my entire connection is throttled to 500 KiB/S.

And apparently they have a very limited mentioning of their monthly bandwidth caps.

I think this stuff needs to be advertised blatantly. "Average speeds of 20 megabits a second download, 2 megabits a second upload, and 80 gigabytes traffic a month! No hosting services allowed."

Encourage Wireless Companies to Unlock Phones at End of Contracts 

Most people like purchasing cheaper, subsidized cell phones. Carriers are able to do this because they will regain some of the lost cost of buying a phone over time with a contract. However, once a contract is up one should no longer be forced be locked in with the same carrier on a cell phone we bought. The FCC should encourage wireless companies to allow phones to unlock the phone's sim card slot so it can work with other networks after the contract has ended. Since the consumer fulfilled the contract and owns their phone, one should be allow to it on any network he/she wants.

End the lockdown of mobile devices. 

If I bought a computer, I would expect to be able to utilize all the functionality of that computer. Why are phones different?

Many phones have GPS receivers built in. Many of these are disabled by the carriers. You may re-enable the receivers by paying a monthly fee to the carrier. That is wrong.

The same is true for applications. Many carriers only allow applications that have been signed by them to be installed on my phone. This practice allows the carrier to charge the application developer a signing fee.

Both of these practices put the brakes on innovation in the US Mobile market.

Broadband connects remote areas to a world of knowledge 

Universal broadband access is imperative for us to become the equal-opportunity country we envision ourselves. Imagine the most remote hamlet in a rural corner of the country, with students taking German or Chinese language courses, advanced mathematics, and reading rare books published online. This would harness the brilliance of our best students and bring our struggling students untold opportunities.

Prioritize education. It should be one of the biggest selling points for this initiative. Get rid of the political bickering. We need universal broadband access now.

Carriers should serve people, then the other way around. 

Carriers need to provide IP connectivity and then get out of the way.
Net neutrality is critical. If the carrier gets to decide what content is appropriate or control the content I receive, then we will have eliminated one of the most significant aspects of the Internet - the ability to connect with any resource, anywhere on the Internet. Broadband must deliver the fastest pipes to the most people, not deliver the people to the carriers.

Adopt a Standard for an Open Home (Video) Gateway Device  

The concept of an open home gateway is one of the least noticed and most important of the components of a national broadband plan, and I believe the US is at a critical crossroads.

On one path is an incredible opportunity:
*to help close the digital divide,
*to create an entire ecosystem of connected TV that allow a freedom of communication that can quickly reach virtually all citizens,
*to create entire new industries for the US to pioneer

On the other:
*a widening of the digital divide that can undermine many, if not all, of the other national broadband efforts
*a real risk that the US falls behind other nations in the development of these new industries

TV sets have already reached the vast majority of homes that the national broadband plan hopes to reach. What is not yet clear is how the open home gateway provides the mechanisms to leverage those TVs into interactive devices that bring the richness of the Internet to those homes.

To understand this crossroads, it is instructive to look at the current situation of the connected TV. To the casual observer, it may appear that things are already moving along nicely and, indeed, my company, along with other numerous startups, major Internet companies and virtually every major electronics and computer brand has products and services for connecting the Internet to the TV. Likewise every major cable operator has initiatives to bring some form of the Internet, albeit typically limited, to the television.

But a closer look shows numerous signs of trouble. The most obvious is that despite years of numerous rosy projections, clear consumer interest, and media declarations that “this is the year of the connected TV” overall penetration of Internet connected TVs remain astoundingly low. Also important is that the penetration of these devices remains almost exclusively in affluent, sophisticated homes where PCs and broadband connections have already reached. For many years these boxes have been trapped in the early adopter segment of the population . The conventional wisdom is that no device manufacturer has achieved the ease of use required to gain mainstream adoption, or that there is not yet a critical mass of content available. While this explanation may seem plausible when viewing individual efforts, it fails to explain, why, on a macro basis all of these efforts have failed to produce a true “breakthrough device”, particularly when one considers that the failures in this category are from the same players that have had broad success in penetrating markets with mp3 players, smartphones, netbooks and a host of other devices and services.

The reason for this failure is clear: these devices have been locked out of the predominant content delivery ecosystem, putting them at a tremendous disadvantage. Boxee, a moderate success story in the category, is illustrative of this point. Boxee has developed Set-top box software that presents Internet TV content ranging from studio-produced to user-generated in ways that work well for an interactive experience on the TV. Their open system has allowed hundreds of applications to experiment with interactivity and even integration with social networking services. This software has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of users and received accolades and won awards for its innovation and ease of use. Yet it remains hard to sell a Boxee device to a mainstream audience for a few reasons:

1) Hulu.com, a primary source of studio content for Boxee has repeatedly blocked Boxee's access to Hulu's content. Obviously, this creates a real nuisance for Boxee's users and has a particularly chilling effect on purchase interest on a device that commits them to Boxee.
2) The cost of the device remains high, $200-$300
3) The device is not integrated with another content source (ie cable or satellite) so its cost (or complexity) cannot be shared with another service, leading to yet another device and remote for users to deal with.

While the details may be different for each company, being locked out of the dominant content delivery system has created a chicken and egg situation that has marginalized everybody trying to penetrate this space. Because Hulu.com, or more accurately, the studios backing Hulu, are not willing to make a bet on Boxee or the like, they remain beholden to the conventional distribution mechanisms, which one can only assume have induced Hulu to block Boxee. Because the devices have been relegated to mostly niche status, they cannot leverage the necessary economies of scale to reduce selling price. Again, while the above described manifestations involving Hulu may be specific to Boxee, one can investigate virtually any other attempt to bring the Internet to the TV and they’ll find manifestations of being locked out of the dominant television distribution mechanism.

To test this, simply imagine your favorite Internet TV device if it was integrated into your cable system and could fully act as your set-top box. -- not a limited subset of what your cable set-top box does, and not some scaled back, proprietary version of itself integrated with your set-top box, but a fully functional version of Internet TV with access to all the content and capabilities of your set-top box. If you are like most, you no longer see a niche product, but one with plenty of mainstream potential.

All that being said, it would be only natural for the reader to wonder why the FCC would force one industry to open to another simply so one product category can flourish (presumably at the expense of another). The case for FCC involvement is that important benefits to US citizens as a whole hang in the balance.

To understand this, imagine two scenarios: In the first, things stay the way they are. The products and services surrounding the connected TV continue to advance at their current pace and remain isolated from operator distribution systems. Penetration of such devices will continue to inch along, perpetually appearing “near a breakthrough” but never actually achieving that breakthrough. Small teams of entrepreneurs will make incremental improvements to products and a small number of affluent, sophisticated households will get to enjoy the rich benefits of bringing Internet Television to their televisions.

In addition to what is lost by consumers, there is very real danger that the U.S. competitiveness in this vital and burgeoning space will be forfeited to other countries who do embrace a more open TV ecosystem. The early initiative has been seized by the UK, where the bulk of citizens receive Television via open, over-the-air signals and where the BBC is driving towards an open standard to unite Internet television and Internet television.

Even more compelling is to consider what US citizens will gain if we do have the foresight to move from the status quo to an open system. In this scenario, we can imagine a rush of activity among participants from every corner of the supply chain. We can imagine activity among manufacturers likely mirroring what happened with the set-top box converters as the government announced the digital cut over and corresponding subsidies for set-top boxes. The result was that previously expensive digital set-top boxes that were previously expensive became so cheap that many consumers were able to receive them basically for free with the subsidy. The impact to applications and services are likely to be even more profound. It’s easy to imagine a path as dramatic as the era ushered in by the Carterphone rulings which produced fax machines, modems and ultimately consumer adoption of the bulletin boards and ultimately the Internet.

Perhaps most important of all, though, is the potential for penetration into areas where US broadband has failed to reach thus far: homes on the wrong side of the digital divide. These are the lower-income, less sophisticated households that we risk further leaving behind if they cannot participate in the connectivity of a broadband Internet. An audience member at an FCC workshop I recently attended asked how he, a local small business owner, could reach his potential customer base when penetration of broadband Internet and even PCs were relatively low in his area. It struck me that there is no better tool for breaking out of the vicious cycle of digital poverty than by bringing the Internet to the television, a device they already have and use.

What may start out simply as improved, more efficient entertainment options, will inevitably lead to increasing participation in our connected world. With an open standard, innovators from community groups, businesses and governments will no doubt pull disconnected and isolated citizens into the participatory democracy in ways we can only imagine.


We urge the leadership of the FCC to make this happen by implementing a standard for the open home gateway that allow participation by all the stakeholders poised to make great use of a connected television.

Consumption Data Privacy 

Utilities and non-utility providers of energy management services and devices should be barred from selling individual or aggregated consumer electricity usage data to third parties.

Increase focus on more symmetrical connections, i.e. improved upload speeds 

Upstream internet speeds in the US are still abysmal. Much focus and discussion has been focused entirely on download speeds.

Disallow forced services 

Biggest example is with the iPhone. You cannot purchase one from AT&T to use on their network without subscribing to their iPhone data plan. If you only want to use it for voice and Wi-Fi, you are out of luck. They require this additional service charge. This is clearly not in the best interest of the consumer.
Likewise, if I wanted to get a phone and pay for data only, and use VoIP for the occasional phone call, I cannot normally do this, I still must pay for voice service.

Broadband plan must address needs of people with disabilities  

The FCC's development of a national broadband plan represents a unique opportunity to assure that the nation's investment in a broadband infrastructure is accessible to all Americans. The Plan is intended to guide the nation's effort to create new jobs and stimulate economic growth and opportunity by accelerating the use and impact of broadband technology. This investment is predicated on the transformative power of broadband as a robust anywhere, anytime communications and service network for commerce, culture and community.

The Commission has expressly stated that this significant leap forward in broadband capacity and services must address the needs of our must vulnerable, under-served and unserved fellow citizens. That definition must include people with disabilities. Technology can offer people with disabilities new opportunities for education and employment and the potential for greater autonomy and independence. However, unless properly designed and implemented, the same technology can present pervasive and potentially insuperable barriers to people with disabilities. Therefore this Plan must address the interfaces of applications and content that end users will be expected to use, operate and employ successfully. An approach that only focuses on and measures price, availability, and bitrate will not guarantee successful adoption and use by any segment of the population, especially citizens with disabilities.