FCC: Congress to Get Broadband Plan March 16

The FCC, which had to move the Feb. 17 deadline for the
broadband plan to March 17, now plans to beat that new deadline by a
day.

After announcing that the plan would be outlined at its
public meeting March 16, it would not make much sense to hold off giving it to
the Hill until the next day, an FCC source confirmed. So March 16 will now be
the delivery date rather than St. Patrick's Day.

The FCC has already been previewing large chunks of those
recommendations in public forums over the past couple of weeks and FCC Chairman
Julius Genachowski will continue that trend when he addresses the National
Congress of American Indians in Washington
Tuesday (March 2).

He plans to outline the plan's recommendations for improving
broadband access to tribal lands.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.