WISPA Files Comments on National Broadband Plan “Challenges to Broadband Deployment Financing”

Last Friday WISPA filed FCC Comments on “Challenges to Broadband Deployment Financing”.

Many WISPA members contributed their suggestions and opinions to create this filing. To all of you (and the list is long) who helped; thank-you.

Without your time and your constructive suggestions (as well as your financial support), this filing would not have been possible.

This National Broadband Plan filing was important because private financing and government funding impact WISP growth as well as the growth of our competitors. Our filing makes the following major points.

1. Many rural communities do not yet have access to broadband (24 million households).

2. Without access to broadband, the best and brightest young people usually leave for bigger cities causing a “rural brain drain” that negatively affects rural economies.

3. WISPs who want to extend service to unserved and underserved rural communities need both better access to funding and better access to spectrum.

4. WISPA suggests several methods of improving WISP funding mechanisms, including the creation of a “Universal Broadband Fund”.

5. WISPA also suggests several methods of improving access to clean spectrum for WISPs. The availability of clean spectrum positions WISPs to benefit from more favorable funding options.

6. The FCC’s support and promotion of WISPA’s suggestions in the National Broadband Plan (including this filing) will help revitalize America’s economy.

Please take a few minutes to review the attached copy of WISPA’s filing. http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7020357236

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 5:03 pm and is filed under FCC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.