This is the first in a series of blogs on the progress being made by the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee. The FCC created five working groups to make recommendations on rule changes needed to better promote broadband deployment. Today’s blog discusses the subcommittee considering model codes for states.

This draft report is roughly in the form of legislation recommended for adoption by states. This report largely reads like a wish-list of regulations wanted by the big ISPs. There are a few ideas in here that have been widely discussed for years along with some new ideas. I could write ten pages talking about the nuances of this draft report, but here are some of the highlights:

• State Goals. The goals are innocuous and have a state pledging to promote broadband everywhere including in rural areas. But there is one interesting twist over the existing goals that a number of states have adopted that defines broadband as bandwidth adequate to meet the person, business, educational and economic needs of the state. This differs from current goals that often set a specific download speeds as the goal.
• Statewide Franchising. The proposed regulations would do away with all local franchising and establish one statewide franchise authority. This is something that a number of states have already adopted. The proposed regulations have more teeth than most existing such rules and eliminate a locality from imposing any kind of restrictions on a broadband service provider.
• Access to Government Assets. The rules would create a centralized Network Support Infrastructure Register in which local governments would have to list every asset that might be of use for broadband providers. This would include rights-of-ways, towers, buildings, etc. Governments would then have to provide access to these assets to any communication provider at affordable rates set by the state.
• One Touch Make Ready. The rules contain one of the many variations on one-touch make ready for attaching to poles. These rules allow for short time frames for existing wire owners to comply with an attachment request before allowing an attacher to connect to poles using pre-approved contractors.
• New Hoops for Municipal Broadband Infrastructure. Cities and counties must jump through a lot of hoops before building any broadband infrastructure. For example, before building a fiber to connect government buildings they would have to seek permission of the State through a process called a Minimum Network Specification Notice. Commercial providers would be able to intervene in this process and offer to build some or all of the desired infrastructure. This would largely stop municipalities from building private networks to serve their own needs and would let ISPs instead build the facilities and bill the municipalities for the use.

Municipalities would also have to jump through a series of hoops before being able to build a broadband network to serve customers. For example, a city would have to prove that what they propose could not be done better through some kind of public-private partnership or by a commercial provider. These kinds of restrictions have been pushed for years by ALEC, and where they are enacted they effectively stop municipalities from creating a broadband business.

Any broadband facilities built by a municipality would have to be made available on a cost-plus lease basis to a service provider. This would include dark fiber, towers, and space inside of government buildings.

• Preempt Building Owner Rights. The rules require that building owners must provide access for communications providers to create a ‘network access point’ inside or outside of a building.
• Priority for Wireless Infrastructure. The proposed rules would prohibit localities from restricting the deployment in any way of wireless towers or small cell site.
• Paying for Rural Broadband. The report supports the idea of State Universal Service Funds and a new Rural Broadband Deployment and Maintenance Fund that would be used to support rural broadband service providers.

In summary, this represents the same wish list we’ve seen from the big ISPs and from their lobbying arms like ALEC. While many states have adopted some portion of these rules, nobody has adopted them all. It’s fairly obvious that the recommendations from this sub-committee are being driven by the big ISPs.

It’s worth noting that these sub-committees are advisory and the FCC doesn’t have to do anything with their recommendations. In this particular case, since these are proposed state rules the FCC would not have the authority to implement most of these recommendations, so these are really a ‘model’ set of regulations that the big ISPs would love to see enacted at the state level. However, by generating this through the FCC process these recommendations will be touted as being blessed by the FCC.