Sidecut Reports

Anyone who’s followed broadband policy matters knows that the FCC’s previous attempts to define what broadband is and how much of it is around has pretty much been a joke. Now that the Bush Administration’s promise of broadband everywhere by 2007 is seen as nothing but a hollow promise, politicians are waking up to the fact that it would be a whole lot better if this country had an actual strategic plan for advancing broadband deployment.

But as Karl over at DSL Reports so wonderfully points out, relying on the current incumbents to draft that plan may not be such a good idea. Our friend Drew Clark, who is trying to build a broadband census of his own, also weighs in on the current kerfluffle.

(Hat tip to Stacey H at GigaOM for the link.)

It’s 84 PDF pages long, filled with attractive photos of fiber-optic cable as well as informative graphs, tables and statistics about broadband usage, pricing and geographical coverage. But without any active buy-in from players with skin in the game — meaning top legislators and the biggest communications providers — the California Broadband Task Force’s recent report is a massive waste of our time, offering a Fantasyland blueprint for a broadband nirvana that will likely never come to pass.

Why? Because without a political or private-sector champion, the task force’s guidelines will remain just that — guidelines — and will leave us here on the Left Coast no closer to better broadband then we were before the politically and economically correct assemblage of folks embarked on their year-long study of the obvious. Perhaps the well-researched topics and well-intentioned recommendations can become a starting point for real implementation plans, and if so, then the staffers and executive assistants who did the real work are to be commended for at least getting the ball rolling. But the reality of the situation — specifically the state’s current billions in budget deficits — says that without any active backers, the broadband plan won’t be anything more than a fancy-looking report for the foreseeable future.

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