NCTA: FCC Needs To Look Inward For Deployment Problems

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association has told the Federal Communications Commission that if it wants to promote advanced telecommunications, arbitrarily raising the speed definition and imposing Title II regulations aren't going to help. The cable trade group also called for a third-party examination of what the government has gotten for the $28 billion in federal spending on extending broadband to unserved areas that has been spent since the commission first concluded in 2010 that deployment was wanting.

While the FCC has found in the last four Sec. 706 reports on advanced deployment that high speed broadband is not being made available to all in a reasonable and timely fashion, it has failed to point any fingers at itself, said NCTA. In comments sought by the FCC on how it could better ensure such timely deployment, the cable trade association said that, "amazingly," nowhere in the latest 706 report "does the Commission acknowledge its own role in failing to rectify the alleged problem."