Is Cheap Wireless Broadband for Real This Time?
As the FCC reveals more and more details of the forthcoming National Broadband Plan, it is hard to keep up with the details. The hype at Tuesday’s “Digital Inclusion Summit” was mostly about the need for a “Digital Literacy Corps,” but Chairman Genachowski also suggested the Commission would propose setting aside some spectrum for free or low-cost wireless. RoadMAP’s first response was this sounded like the plan from our friends at M2Z, but GigaOm reports that it is something different. But what?
Is Cheap Wireless Broadband for Real This Time?
The FCC said today that as part of its National Broadband Plan it might allocate spectrum for a free or low-cost wireless broadband network as a means to help address the affordability of broadband for poor people. If all this sounds familiar to you, maybe you recall the efforts of M2Z Networks, a Kleiner Perkins backed venture that tried to offer filtered, low-cost broadband using WiMAX.
A source at the FCC assures me that the agency’s efforts, which will be detailed next week when the National Broadband Plan comes out, are not similar to M2Z’s plan. M2Z wanted to offer free subscribers dialup-like speeds of 768 kbps and would have provided filtered access to the web. The source said the FCC’s plan would offer speeds “that are real broadband” and would likely involve using proceeds from the Universal Service Fund reform to offset the cost of building out a network.
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