Uncle Sam wants you, to broadband

....and for good reasons. The way FCC has taken up the task of making broadband every citizens right foretells its importance. The broadband is probably the next "industrial revolution" and FCC wants to make sure that it has the right tools and data to bring this revolution to masses. The mechanism it wants to evoke is competition to lower the prices and incentives to bring private sector investments. The tools it wants to use is the power to allocate spectrum and yes the eternal source of never ending cash flow, tax payers money, will be used as development funds. Hey 10 Billion in 10 years to bring high speed data to my premises, is better than using 100, no ...200 Billion dollars to basically insure an agency, that insures me, well that's a "technical" discussion of other sort.
The task to reduce prices of wireline by bringing about competition from wireless, through increased spectrum allocations and developments seems plausible. But the task is much harder then it seems. First the top speeds of LTE and WiMAX download/upload don't and can't match the peak speeds of wireline as Cable, PON or DSL. But for most practical purposes, I would say they can and will compete. But the real problem is the cost of laying infrastructure and then the two to maximum three players in big metros, to one and none players in rural areas.
The recent price hikes and data plan manipulations by AT&T highlight this problem, and we can also see similar moves by Verizon and Sprint to limit data usage or pay to "stream" as much as you want.
The FCC wants to get a better handle on pricing and competition and it will start collecting pricing data to decide the best remedies. Data collection is first, then it is 500 MHz spectrum, 30o MHz of which will go to mobile but all in due time of 10 years, which is not bad, since it accompanies a plan to spread digital literacy. We should see some of the broadband "stimulus" fund money, aka Connect America Fund going to the Digital literacy Corps.
...This post is to barely scratching the surface of one chapter of the plan...but hey we have 10 years to catch up ...