At a learning roundtable at the Midwest Rural Assembly titled, "Broadband Regulation: What Title II Reclassification Means to Rural America" we tried to answer some tough questions: What does broadband access mean to rural America? How do different rural communities think of broadband access? What costs do rural communities bear that the urban areas don’t? Although, these questions are of central importance to rural America they are of little importance to the future of broadband. Why? The topic of broadband regulation has largely become a question of jurisdiction.
Pursuant to the 1996 Communication Regulation Act, the question of whether or not the Federal Communications Commission has regulatory authority over broadband has been anything but clear. Is broadband a communication service and therefore regulated by Title II or is it an information service and therefore not required to comply with Title II regulation? Without answering this question we won’t be able to talk about the more difficult questions of what to do about broadband access in rural locations, according to Parul Desai (Media Access Project) and Edyael Casaperalta (Center for Rural Strategies). We discussed the National Broadband Policy (proposed FCC regulation), but both Desai and Casaperalta stated that even if they thought the new policy to be wonderful, it will be locked up court because it’s impossible to know if the FCC has the regulatory authority to enact any of its proposals.
Desai and Casaperalta advocated for the importance of FCC regulation on broadband and mentioned some other possibilities to increase rural access to broadband. But in the end this roundtable was dominated by a single theme: The FCC needs to make clear its regulatory authority over broadband. Until this happens all wheels are simply spinning.
By Andrew Gross
