40% of the money consumers pay into the Universal Service Fund goes to fund the FCC's E-Rate program, which was designed to help deliver telecom services to unserved areas, and deliver broadband service to libraries. The program has doled out more than $25 billion since its inception in 1998, but as the government itself often acknowledges, the FCC has never really bothered to track how this money is spent. So when Ars Technica points to a new report by the American Library Association (pdf) noting that 60% of U.S. libraries lack adequate bandwidth to serve visitors, nobody should be particularly surprised. Simple availability is also an issue:In short, a lack of broadband options, a dysfunctional USF system and a lack of funds has the majority of our libraries without adequate broadband. As it stands, the e-Rate program has a $2.25 billion annual cap, one the American Library Association would like to see raised. Given the FCC only recently agreed that it might make sense to track where these billions go, you get the sense that maybe some reform and better record keeping might be in order first.

Earlier this month, the FCC, who's in the middle of designing a national broadband plan, issued a report (pdf) identifying seven major factors that are considered "critical gaps" preventing broader broadband deployment. Among the gaps identified are some correct and rather obvious ones, including the fact the USF doesn't fund broadband expansion, broadband may be unavailable or too expensive, spectrum is limited, or broadband is expensive to deploy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is seriously considering re-establishing some kind of open access rules, which would give new entrants access to incumbent infrastructure at reduced price. Open access was the central idea behind the 1996 telecom act, which required incumbent operators to share network access with smaller competitors in order to bolster competition as those upstarts grew into legitimate carriers.

Manassas, Virginia was the first US city to see a real, non-trial launch of broadband over powerline (BPL) technology. However, BPL has floundered the last few years because of its inherent potential for interference with amateur and emergency radio, its irrelevance in the face of next-generation speeds, and the unavoidable fact that many utilities simply didn't want to be broadband providers.

The FCC has long been an agency that has played fast and loose when it comes to using science and data to fuel its policy decisions. The agency for most of broadband's life cycle has been using outdated data, or inadequate data provided by industry lobbyists designed to make things look pretty and keep government out of their hair. With a new FCC and new boss Julius Genachowski, the agency has promised to be data driven. Yet Bruce Kushnick over at Harvard's Neiman Watchdog claims that in policy discussions, the agency's still using inadequate or old data -- sometimes more than a decade old -- to shape broadband and wireless policy.

As promised, the FCC today voted to impose a shot clock aimed at speeding up municipal approval for the placing of wireless towers. According to an FCC news release (pdf), the new agency rules impose a 90 day limit to states and municipalities to approve or deny collocation (tower sharing) requests, and 150 day limit to act on new tower placement requests. It's something the wireless industry has been lobbying for for a while. According to wireless industry lobbyists, (pdf) there's currently 760 new tower placement applications nationally that have been waiting for approval for at least a year, and 180 applications that have been waiting at least three years (though the industry has been known to play up government dysfunction for effect). Municipalities are expected to challenge the ruling in the courts over fears that they'd be ceding too much state zoning control to Uncle Sam.

Part of the problem with the FCC's current rules governing network neutrality is that they're so incredibly vague, they're useless when trying to crack down on anti-competitive behavior by ISPs. Were you the dubious sort, you might argue they were intentionally made that way to give the illusion that the FCC was engaged in a pro-consumer action when really just pandering to major carriers.

According to Amy Shatz over at the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is considering taking some additional spectrum from TV broadcasters and auctioning it to wireless carriers in order to beef up the nation's wireless broadband infrastructure. The idea, which may or may not be included in the FCC's national broadband plan (scheduled to be unveiled in February), could address what the FCC is calling "a looming spectrum gap."

As they're doing with most every other broadband industry subject, the FCC recently asked for comments regarding how people think the nation should best approach shoring up this spectrum shortfall.

According to Australia's Computer World, the FCC's Susan Crawford has been meeting with Australia's phone industry lobbyists to closer examine that country's plan to build a national fiber network. Back in April, Australia announced plans to build a A$43 billion ($31 billion) network under the banner of a new private/public company -- with the government selling their stake after five years. Such a plan would obviously be considerably more expensive here in the States, and would face relentless opposition from the biggest carriers. Hopefully the FCC won't be following Australia's expensive and likely futile effort to clean the Internet of all its naughty bits. The FCC's broadband plan is scheduled to drop in 111 days.

Today's the day that the FCC will begin the long and arduous process of hashing out the new network neutrality rules they announced they'd be expanding back in September. You can expect the signal to noise ratio today to be pretty high as lobbyists fire up their bullhorns and the talking points fly, but despite all of the coverage today, actual rules won't really be hashed out until next year.

While the United States FCC prepares to begin construction of new network neutrality rules tomorrow, users in Canada saw Canadian regulatory authority the CRTC issue some new network neutrality rules today. While the new rules don't prohibit Canadian ISPs from imposing the network management of their choice, they do force carriers to be wholly transparent with consumers, while giving retail customers thirty days and consumers at least 60 days before imposing any new traffic management.

AT&T recently told us they unsurprisingly support the FCC's existing network neutrality principles, given they're fairly wimpy and are currently are being challenged by Comcast in court. However, AT&T isn't too keen on the FCC's plan to add additional principles that would give the FCC the ability to actually enforce them or extend them to wireless -- nor is AT&T particularly thrilled by Congress's latest effort to impose network neutrality law.

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday the FCC was telling us that broadband competition in the United States was incredibly robust based on completely inaccurate data. But not only has the FCC seen a change in leadership, they've made a promise to actually base policy decisions on science, not just AT&T or Comcast lobbyist flow charts.

Last year Comcast faced an FCC investigation and endless media scrutiny for their decision to use packet forgery to throttle upstream P2P for all users. Cox dodged much of that media attention despite the fact they were busy doing roughly the same thing. That's in part because nobody noticed what Cox was doing (well, almost anybody). But it's also because unlike Comcast, Cox didn't lie about what they were up to when asked about it.

Just one day after the FCC's neutrality push and anti-competitive inquiries netted some substantive results, FCC boss Julius Genachowski gave a speech at the CTIA wireless industry trade show today in San Diego. In it, the FCC head repeated promises to get more wireless spectrum into the hands of carriers, and reiterated his plans to impose shot clocks in municipalities to help speed up tower builds.

As we noted yesterday, AT&T has announced that they'll finally let Skype work over their 3G network, after the FCC started investigating anti-competitive practices in the wireless industry. New FCC boss Julius Genachowski, for one, is pleased. "When AT&T indicated, in response to the FCC’s inquiry, that it would take another look at permitting VoIP on its 3G network I was encouraged," Genachowski said in a statement. "I commend AT&T’s decision to open its network to VoIP. Opening wireless services to greater consumer choice will drive investment and innovation in the mobile marketplace."

If you recall, AT&T and Apple caused waves back in March for crippling Skype for the iPhone so that it would only work via Wi-Fi. Why? Having it work over 3G would present a threat to AT&T voice revenues, and treating Skype VoIP as just data (which it is) is thereby prohibited under AT&T's deal with Apple.

You won't find a telecom executive or lobbyist who won't insist the sector they do business in is the most competitive sector to ever grace the planet Earth. It's a job requirement.

According to the latest information from the cable industry, just 443,000 American consumers are using CableCARDs, designed to allow users to break free of the obligation of using a rented cable (or phone) industry TV set top box. That fairly pathetic number is up from just 407,000 in June, despite the fact the cable industry says they've shipped more than 16.7 million set-top boxes with CableCARD functionality.

With 141 days left until the FCC is scheduled to unveil their national broadband plan before Congress, the agency today issued a statement and a 168 page slide show examining what they've accomplished at the halfway point. According to the FCC, they've conducted 26 workshops and hearings, where 230 different witnesses testified.