The FCC, which acts on this issue under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act plans to submit a plan to Congress in early 2010. They must finalize a plan for submission to lawmaker by February 2010. 

 

In a meeting held yesterday, FCC Chairman Michael Copps said that the process of providing the U.S. residents with access to broadband will be "open, inclusive, out-reaching and data-hungry." The meeting had the main goal of setting the stage for further public debates on this subject. 

 

"If we do our job well," said Michael Copps when announcing the FCC’s intention of improving broadband. “This will be the most formative--indeed transformative--proceeding ever in the Commission's history."

 

The agency will be open for public comments for the next 60 days and in the next 30 days it will reply the comments. The FCC plan is most of all about finding and implementing the best, efficient and effective policies to give Americans broadband. Also, the Commission is weighing related topics such as consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety, homeland security, community development, health care, energy, education, worker training and job creation, private investment, entrepreneurship, and economic growth.

 

The FCC has been given a budget of $7.2 billion as stimulus money to get the job done, something the Commission didn’t accomplish very often. With the U.S. carriers already lining up against this in order to protect their status quo, many U.S. residents including my self fear that this would end with a few more billion of dollars wasted.