Our first ever national broadband plan gets unveiled tomorrow, and while we've covered a lot of the leaked details about the plan -- the real specifics have yet to be unearthed. The FCC has been very busy the last few weeks selling this plan without getting too specific -- and the agency continued that trend today with a broadband plan preview (pdf). We've stored a copy of the FCC's full plan executive summary here (pdf) for those interested. The preview again repeats the FCC's goals -- most of which have been already unveiled during various FCC interviews or editorials over the last few weeks:

Above all else, the plan is a call to action to meet that challenge for our era. -FCC broadband plan architect Blair Levin

• "Connect 100 million households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second service."

This is repeatedly cited as the "cornerstone" of the FCC's proposal, though the goal is something we've noted could happen organically over the next ten years without the FCC's involvement, largely thanks to Verizon FiOS and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades (cable passes 125 million homes, most of which can be easily upgraded). This goal is, frankly, show business.

• "Affordable access in every American community to ultra-high-speed broadband of at least 1 gigabit per second at anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and military installations."

While projects like Internet 2 already fuel a lot of institutions -- the FCC isn't clear on how they hope to bring these speeds to smaller community buildings and universities. While taxpayers have poured $25 billion into the Universal Service Fund (USF) since it was created in 1998, recent data from the American Library Association indicates that more than 60% of U.S. libraries lack adequate bandwidth to serve visitors. The FCC plan will be revamping the USF, but the USF is very broken, and specifically how the FCC hopes to fix it has yet to be made clear. More on that below.

• "Ensure that the United States is leading the world in mobile innovation by making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available for licensed and unlicensed use."

The (debate over the national broadband plan) went online with 131 blogposts that triggered 1,489 comments; 181 ideas on IdeaScale garnering 6,100 votes; 69,500 views on YouTube; and 335,000 Twitter followers. -The FCC

Again, details are murky, however. After a few early debunked rumors that the agency would be forcefully grabbing spectrum from broadcasters to give it to 4G operators (read Sprint, AT&T and Verizon), The agency has only so far proposed a plan that involves broadcasters voluntarily giving up spectrum so it can be auctioned off -- and most broadcasters aren't interested. There's no word on reform that would prevent incumbent operators from dominating said auctions, either.

• "Move our adoption rates from roughly 65 percent to more than 90 percent and make sure that every child in America is digitally literate by the time he or she leaves high school."

The most "feel good" of the FCC's agenda items. The majority of this goal will involve "digital literacy" efforts aimed at informing the public about the benefits of broadband. Though as we've noted -- some of these are little more than taxpayer-funded industry equivalents of the dairy industry's "got milk?" campaign. Recent FCC data indicates that 22% of the nation's 100 million non-broadband adopters say they either don't have the skills to use broadband, or are afraid of the dangers of going online. The FCC figures one way to shore up our adoption numbers quickly without really doing much is simply through industry-driven "digital education" campaigns.

• "Bring affordable broadband to rural communities, schools, libraries, and vulnerable populations by transitioning existing Universal Service Fund support from yesterday’s analog technologies to tomorrow’s digital infrastructure."

We've heard from numerous sources that the plan will employ a new USF fee levied on all broadband users and used to fund rural expansion, but it's not clear yet how much that's going to be. Estimates have pegged the new charge at $1 per user, though it could be higher once the check comes due. Given the USF's history of poor FCC oversight, the specifics behind the USF reform being planned will be very important (and will probably require a legal degree and 20 years in the sector to fully understand). We will again repeat that AT&T and Verizon have spent much of the last two years lobbying for the kind of USF "reform" that gives less money to small companies, and more money to them -- so draw your own conclusions tomorrow with the final product.

• "Promote competition across the broadband ecosystem by ensuring greater transparency, removing barriers to entry, and conducting market-based analysis with quality data on price, speed, and availability."

As we know some at the FCC are tired of hearing us repeat, while the plan continually makes reference to helping push "affordable" service into communities, early leaks indicate there's no part of the plan that really addresses limited competition in many communities (the primary reason prices are high). The agency has made it very clear that the plan shouldn't really rattle the status quo, and that the agency isn't willing to stand up to incumbent carriers on major competitive issues. A Harvard researcher responsible for a recent FCC-commissioned study that found open access was one solution puts it this way:Barring some last-minute shocker, all indications are that the FCC's solution for competition is very heavy mascara. The "transparency" efforts the agency mentions may include requiring ISPs to no longer advertise "up to" speeds -- but to advertise the connection's median provisioned speed. But transparency itself isn't a magic bullet to help competition. Meanwhile, the $350 million effort to map U.S. broadband spearheaded by the NTIA has been lobbied into paste by major carriers, who won't have to share public data on regional price. That means no publicly-verifiable information on competition -- so...

• "Enhance the safety of the American people by providing every first responder with access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable public safety network."

Given the fairly easy political support for an emergency network that functions outside and beyond the often regionally-congested existing networks, this has been one of the less controversial aspects of the agency's plan. At least until bidding and project building time comes around and the check comes due. The FCC pegs the emergency network's price tag at $6.5 billion just to build, though how this will be fully funded and how the bidding and building process operates have not yet been made clear.

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If you're thinking this all sounds well and good but lacks substance -- you'd be right. The primary goal in this preview is to sell the plan to the bailout-weary public, carriers, the press, and to Congress. The FCC tries to appease the public and Congress by proclaiming the plan accomplishes a lot by spending very little. The FCC tries to appease carriers by proclaiming the plan is only aimed at improving government efficiency and "encouraging private activity." From the FCC's executive summary:What the plan really does won't be made clear until the full plan is not only released, but we've all had time to read it. The devil, as usual in DC telecom policy, will be in the finest of details -- and we should finally be getting some tomorrow.