Looking Back on Ten Years of the National Broadband Plan with Blair Levin

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Blair Levin reflects on the FCC’s 2009-10 National Broadband Plan, arguing it succeeded by hiring a strong, diverse team, using an open fact-finding process, and advancing spectrum policy and broadband adoption. He says the biggest gaps were weak data infrastructure, lack of institutional ownership, and insufficient focus on using broadband to deliver public goods. Looking ahead, he argues the next broadband agenda must address competition, privacy, misinformation, and the growing role of networks in crisis response and public services.

Main Topics: What the National Broadband Plan got right (Priority: 5/5): Levin credits the plan’s success to hiring a talented, diverse staff, a transparent process, and asking the right core questions about access, adoption, and public-good applications of broadband. Spectrum policy and the broadcast incentive auction (Priority: 5/5): He identifies spectrum as the plan’s clearest policy success, especially the broadcast incentive auction, which freed major amounts of spectrum, supported 4G rollout, and later benefited 5G deployment. Data, mapping, and institutional capability (Priority: 5/5): Levin says the FCC lacked a durable system for collecting trusted data, and that broadband policy would be better served by institutions modeled more like BLS/BEA for consistent statistics. The changing nature of the digital divide (Priority: 5/5): He argues rural broadband remains important, but the larger divide is increasingly adoption, affordability, literacy, and especially the gap between broadband’s potential and how it is actually used to deliver services. Broadband as infrastructure for public goods (Priority: 4/5): Levin stresses that broadband should be used more effectively for healthcare, education, job training, and public health, citing crisis tools like coronavirus information and job-search platforms as missed opportunities. Competition, platforms, and a new policy era (Priority: 4/5): He says a future broadband plan would need to include constraints, not just incentives, because broadband is no longer universally viewed as unambiguously good; issues like antitrust, misinformation, and global regulation now matter. What could be improved in a future plan (Priority: 3/5): Levin notes gaps in the original plan, including receiver standards, empirical work on wireless substitutability, and more rigorous study of adoption and competition dynamics.

Key Arguments: The plan succeeded because it hired well, worked transparently, and allowed facts to change minds rather than starting from ideology. The FCC’s biggest failure was not building a durable, trusted data ecosystem; broadband policymaking needs a BLS-like institutional capability. The broadcast incentive auction was the plan’s most successful policy outcome, freeing spectrum efficiently and enabling major wireless deployments. Broadband policy should be judged not only by network deployment, but by how well the network improves delivery of healthcare, education, jobs, and public safety. The rural digital divide is real, but over time fixed wireless, satellites, rural co-ops, and other technologies may narrow it substantially. Adoption remains a larger challenge than many policymakers acknowledge, but its drivers—affordability, relevance, and digital literacy—are hard to isolate empirically. Future broadband policy must include constraints and governance questions because platforms can spread harmful misinformation and are now central to social and economic life. A new plan would need to be more global and more focused on platforms, privacy, competition, and the obligations of dominant firms and government alike.

Data Points: Team size: 70 people - Levin says the National Broadband Plan hired a very strong and diverse team of around 70 staffers. Time available: About 6 months - He says the project was officially given a year but effectively had only about six months. Spectrum in pipeline at start: 50 megahertz - Levin recalls that when the plan began, only 50 MHz was in the pipeline. Average download speed in 2010: 4.1 Mbps - He cites this as the average download speed at the time of the plan. Average download speed now: 96.25 Mbps - Levin uses this to show how broadband speeds improved since the plan. People brought online by Comcast Internet Essentials: 8 million Americans - He points to the program as a major adoption success emerging from the planning process. Policy horizon for spectrum planning: 10 years - He says the team spent 6-9 months discussing spectrum needs for the next decade with stakeholders across government. Potential cost savings from network sharing: 40% - Levin references McKinsey’s observation that network sharing in some countries reduced deployment costs by about 40%. Broadband adoption threshold discussed: 25 Mbps / 50 Mbps - He references a Wall Street Journal argument that many users do not need gigabit speeds for typical use.

Pivotal Quotes: "The first thing is, you know, higher wealth." — Blair Levin: He says the most important success factor was hiring an excellent, diverse team. "Policy is a football game. You're on a team. Nobody wins a play or a game with a single thing that only they do." — Blair Levin: He explains that the spectrum success required Congress, agency coordination, and prior proposals, not just the FCC plan alone. "Bandwidth is not the constraint on economic growth and social progress." — Blair Levin: He argues the policy focus should move from mere access speeds to better use of the network for public goods.

Implications: Broadband policy is shifting from deployment alone to governance, data quality, adoption, competition, and public-service delivery. Future leaders will need better measurement, stronger institutions, and clearer rules for networks and platforms.