[1] The act did not give the FCC specific jurisdiction to carry out a national broadband plan or to amend the universal service provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but it required that the FCC draft a plan to "include a detailed strategy for achieving affordability and maximizing use of broadband to advance consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, employee training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes.
He predicted that without a reallocation, demand would exceed supply in 3–4 years, and noted that many minority and lower-income people depend on mobile internet as a primary connection.
[13][needs update] FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said the broadband plan was a prerequisite for smart grid technology, which he expected to reduce power plants' greenhouse gas consumption by 12 percent, the same as if 55 million cars were no longer driven.
Goal 6 implies access to demand-side opportunities such as turning on devices (such as sump or cistern pumps or battery chargers) that can use intermittent or off-peak power when it is available (more cheaply than at peak).
[14] To achieve Goal 6, appliances would need to communicate to the energy metering and management system and accept commands to change state.
[16] The U.S. has fallen behind Japan, the EU and South Korea in power grid technology, and has made it a national priority to improve its energy demand and supply management.
Consuming more energy per unit productivity than any other developed nation is no longer an option for the US according to the Obama administration which has made it a high priority to implement 'smart grid' technologies that are impossible to deploy without secure reliable and universal wired networking.
The prior Bush administration had made powerline networking a priority to ensure that broadband access would be at least co-extant with the power grid's reach.
Economist Robert Atkinson argues that such a plan will reduce the desire for companies to offer lower prices, better products, and better customer service, as well as lessening incentive to come up with new and innovative ideas.
[30] Commenters and state officials have raised the question of how agency proposals can be implemented so as to ensure rural areas do not experience deterioration or price spikes for existing telephone and cellular services.
Although the commission believed this status gave the ability to impose the necessary restrictions in order to implement the plan, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said this was not the case, in an April 2010 ruling.
[35] As a result, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski wanted to redefine broadband as a "common carrier", requiring equal access to all traffic as on roads.
Republicans in the United States Congress and at the FCC, and cable and telephone companies were expected to oppose the regulations necessary to make the broadband plan work.
Genachowski said regulations would "support policies that advance our global competitiveness and preserve the Internet as a powerful platform for innovation.
The United States ranked 15th out of 30 countries measured in broadband penetration; Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Sweden, Korea and Finland were well-above the OECD average.
In a paper addressing this issue, Rob Frieden argued that "the FCC and NTIA have overstated broadband penetration and affordability by using an overly generous and unrealistic definition of what qualifies as broadband service, by using zip codes as the primary geographic unit of measure, by failing to require measurements of actual as opposed to theoretical bitrates, and by misinterpreting available statistics.
[42] Repeating a similar goal from 2008, Obama stated he would ask the FCC to "connect 99 percent of America's students to high-speed broadband Internet within five years.
[44] According to the plan, one hundred million Americans do not have broadband at home and the U.S. continues to lag in Internet access speed.
The FCC brought out a plan and recommendations to address these problems, along with approaches to maximize the economic and social gains from broadband adoption.
This plan is specializing the role of broadband in education, health care, energy and the environment, government performance, civic engagement, public safety, and economic opportunity.
States should complement broadband deployment with digital education programs and fund community technology centers to ensure that residents of all ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and ages understand how to be producers as well as consumers of this new media economy.
The FCC recommendations also focused on helping states make broadband more affordable and increasing the training needed to encourage adoption, including: "Public policy makers throughout the world are faced with the need to update, replace, and/or revise existing regulations that govern the relationships between and among traditional video distribution platforms, such as over-the-air and cable/satellite providers, as the internet emerges as a viable video distribution platform.