**STATEMENT OF**

**ACTING CHAIRMAN MICHAEL J. COPPS**

Re: *A National Broadband Plan for Our Future*, GN Docket No. 09-51

Today we commence a national dialogue on how we as a nation can make
high-speed broadband available, affordable and easily useable to
citizens and businesses throughout the land. This is a good news item.
In spite of the fact that it springs in part from an economic downturn
that has put a lot of our fellow citizens on the ropes, it signals that
at long last we are getting serious about making our citizens and our
country more competitive, prosperous, and fulfilled. It means that we
are coming to grips with the fact that we have a long way to go to get
high-speed, value-laden broadband out to all our citizens. It means that
we are beginning to understand that real economic and social progress
needs to be fueled by both vigorous private enterprise ***and***
enlightened public policy. The missing ingredient until this year has
been the enlightened public policy.

This Commission has never, I believe, received a more serious charge
than the one to spearhead development of a national broadband plan.
Congress has made it crystal clear that it expects the best thinking and
recommendations we can put together by next February. If we do our job
well, this will be the most formative---indeed
transformative---proceeding ever in the Commission's history.

Broadband can be the great enabler that restores America's economic
well-being and opens doors of opportunity for all Americans to pass
through, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular
circumstances of their individual lives. It is technology that
intersects with just about every great challenge confronting our
nation---whether it's jobs, education, energy, climate change and the
environment, international competitiveness, health care, overcoming
disabilities, equal opportunity---the list goes on. Enabling our people
and our enterprises through value-laden broadband can spell the
difference between just muddling through if we're lucky and opening the
way to many more years of U.S. prosperity and world leadership.

When I arrived here in 2001 and called for the Commission to engage in a
serious dialogue about the future of broadband, it was unclear whether
such a dialogue would occur. On many occasions over the intervening
years, I talked about how the country lacked a national strategy; how we
lacked even the essential data on which to build a viable strategy; and
how we were paying way too high a price because of a cavalier approach
to an urgent national problem. But that was then and today is now. We
have new national leadership committed to broadband and we have economic
dislocation that has awakened many people to the need for a decidedly
new direction. But we're not going to get to where we need to go without
a road map, and it's that road map that we begin designing today. We
begin at last to do what we should have done years ago---make a plan for
how the United States becomes the world's broadband beacon.

Broadband products and applications, both fixed and mobile, have already
fundamentally changed the way Americans go about their daily lives. Many
of us---primarily in relatively well-off urban areas---have become at
least familiar with the promise of broadband to communicate with family
and friends, to telework and bank, to interact with government, to get
news and information, and many other applications. Yet all this progress
is only a small part---just prologue---to what this technology is going
to do to change our lives in the years ahead. Think about the impact
high-speed connections can have on students of all ages and in all areas
who could access distance learning, research, or job retraining. Or
telemedicine networks that can manage medical records, save lives and
improve the standard of well-being for Americans living in areas that
lack access to the breadth of medical expertise, specialty care, and
advanced medical technologies available in other areas. Think about a
nationwide, interoperable public safety system to help first responders
see us through hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards and man-made disasters.
Think about smart grids for energy efficiency. New tools to gauge and
even slow climate change. The list goes on. In fact, it would be a far
shorter list if we enumerated those aspects of our national life that
will ***not*** be impacted by high-speed, value-laden broadband.

So we launch today. Our Notice of Inquiry seeks to be open, inclusive,
out-reaching and data-hungry. It seeks input from stakeholders both
traditional and non-traditional---those who daily ply the halls of our
hallowed Portals, those that would like to have more input here if we
really enable them to have it, and those who may never have heard of the
Federal Communications Commission. It will go outside Washington, DC to
rural communities, the inner city and tribal lands. It will go where the
facts and the best analysis we can find take it. It will look at
broadband supply and broadband demand. It will look at broadband quality
and affordable prices. It will endeavor to better understand, and
hopefully build upon, the cross-cutting nature of what broadband
encompasses, beginning with an appreciation that it brings opportunities
to just about every sphere of our national life. And it can also
consider, in addition to the many opportunity-generating characteristics
of broadband, how to deal with any problems, threats or vulnerabilities
that seem almost inevitably to accompany new technologies. Ensuring
broadband openness, avoiding invasions of people's privacy, and ensuring
cybersecurity are three such challenges that come immediately to mind.
We have never in history seen so dynamic and potentially-liberating a
technology as this---but history tells us that no major technology
transformation is ever a total, unmixed, problem-less blessing.

Going forward, we will distill the information that enters this NOI
funnel with our eyes on the prize---a national broadband plan that is
focused, practical and achievable. Instead of trying to resolve every
contentious issue that has fueled so many years of seemingly-endless
debates over telecommunications---debates that have too often deflected
us from the progress we should have been making---we will go in quest of
practical suggestions that can be deployed in time to respond to the
economic and many other challenges facing us.

It's a huge task that we undertake today. Every Bureau in this
Commission will have a role to play in the development of the national
broadband plan. I expect everyone here will put their best effort
forward to realize the objective we seek. And I hope all
stakeholders---and that means whoever wishes to be heard in this
critical public policy discussion---will respond to the NOI. Commenters
need not---indeed cannot---respond to all the many inquiries we raise,
nor should they feel compelled to. Single out those areas where you feel
you can make a contribution and share your insights and suggestions with
us. If there's a question or a dimension of the problem that the NOI
misses, we want to hear about that and have your ideas there, too. When
I say we strive to be inclusive, I mean really inclusive.

The preparation of this NOI has been a cross-cutting effort involving
just about every office in the Commission. I thank the Bureaus and
Offices for the hard work they have already put in---and I also use the
occasion to warn them we are only just beginning. I want to thank my two
colleagues, Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell, for their
participation and leadership and the many helpful suggestions they have
made to move this proceeding along. Their staffs have been great, too.
My own office has worked hard on this, too, and I want to particularly
commend Scott Deutchman for his efforts to bring people and ideas
together for our broadband mobilization---and mobilization it is.

Let me also recognize a few special guests here at the Commission this
morning: Dennis Amari from the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration and David Villano and Mary Campanola from the
Rural Utilities Service. Their presence here bespeaks the beginnings of
true inter-agency cooperation on the broadband challenge, an effort that
is already reaching out to include many other agencies of government at
the federal, state and local levels. We need the help of all of them. If
no sector is outside the new world of advanced communications, then no
agency should be, either.

You may have concluded by now that I think this is a pretty big deal. It
really is. You don't have to trust me about that---the President and the
Congress think so, too. And, judging from my meetings around the
country, I think millions of our fellow citizens get it, too. All these
folks are looking for the best possible effort here. That's what my
colleagues and I are determined to give them. Of course, if we want the
best possible product going out, we need the best possible data,
analysis and recommendations coming in. That's why I encourage maximum
public input into this critical public policy dialogue.