The US Congress asked the FCC for a bold plan to achieve the bold vision expressed by the Congress.

To ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal. The plan shall also include:

d) a plan for use of broadband infrastructure and services in advancing consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, worker training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes.

We discussed this issue in our Big Think group and here are some comments.

Mark Cooper commented that Congress did not ask for a detailed, step by step plan, it wanted a big picture. The Obama administration desperately needs a bold vision somewhere, like JFK’s challenge to go to the moon within a decade.

Jim Baller added that this language requires the FCC to propose creative ways to use broadband connectivity as part of the solution to all of America’s major national problems. This is a clear challenge to the FCC to propose big, bold trans-sector approaches that will drive the deployment, adoption, and use of robust broadband connectivity, not just at the household level, but throughout the economy, in all areas of American life. The FCC has assembled an impressive national purposes team, and it will undoubtedly respond to this portion of the Act in some fashion.

Mark also suggested something along the lines of a declaration of a goal of achieving universal broadband service by the end of the decade—defining universal service as a level of penetration for broadband equal to the current level of penetration of telephone service (about 95 percent).

Another comment was that the fact that Congress asked for a ‘bold’ high level vision doesn’t automatically mean that it will also supports the implementation of it. The Supreme Court has noted in regard to the Telecoms Act that Congress intentionally makes legislation ambiguous and contradictory.