I want to thank Chairman Copps for his leadership in bringing an excellent and comprehensive item to us so quickly.  At this critical time in our nation’s history, this far-reaching NOI asks the right questions.  It seeks input from all stakeholders as to how we can design a broadband plan that brings the promise of technology to everyone.  For those of us who have long hungered for a meaty discussion of how to craft a national broadband plan, today we set the table for a feast.

Broadband is no longer a luxury.  It is essential if we are going to maximize the potential of every citizen to contribute to our social, cultural and economic life.  We need the full input of every citizen, whether they live in rural, insular or other high-cost areas, whether they live in  economically challenged sections of our inner cities, whether they are persons with disabilities, whether or not they speak English, and regardless of their income level.  We need everyone’s voice to create a truly national plan that leaves nobody behind.

To make our plan more than just words, we must start by upgrading our communications infrastructure in every corner of this country.  And we must do a better job of making innovative communications technologies more widely available and affordable.  It’s clearly in our economic interests to do so; but it is also in the interests of our health care system, our environment, our education system, our energy grid, our transportation network, our public safety agencies – in fact, broadband will help us address almost every big challenge we face.  Other countries around the world have long recognized this.  At long last, we have a President, a Congress and a FCC that do, as well.

To address our communications needs, we’ll need to rededicate ourselves to the tall tasks of expanding access to broadband services and modernizing universal service.   We will harness the talents of everyone in this country to maximize our economic growth, improve our quality of life, and uplift our democracy and the values we hold dear.

To be clear, we are not substituting Government policy for market discipline.  Any successful broadband strategy will rely primarily and extensively on the private sector to drive deployment and investment.  We need to encourage capital investment, and find ways to facilitate access to the capital markets in these challenging times.  A true public-private partnership will require far greater focus from our policy leaders to succeed.  We need all players to work together.

On the government side, to reach its full impact, any strategy will need to involve proper coordination across all levels of government.  On a Federal level, it will require unprecedented interagency coordination, which we are already seeing on a scale that dwarves any efforts in the previous Administration.  Given the cross-cutting impact of broadband, this will involve far more agencies than just the ones we usually associate with telecommunications, such as the FCC, NTIA and RUS.  A major role is needed by numerous departments including Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, the Small Business Administration, and the Federal Trade Commission, to name a few.  This will require coordination at the White House level.  And the Federal government will need to coordinate with efforts by our partners in state, local and tribal governments.

And of course we recognize that any effective effort will rely heavily on wireless broadband as the wave of the future, and a key element to reach hard to serve areas.  Considering America’s ever-increasing appetite for reliable broadband services and applications from mobile devices, the role that wireless will play in our nation’s overall broadband deployment efforts is undeniable.  There is a clear need for focused efforts on spectrum efficiency and management, which will require a thorough spectrum inventory, as many in Congress are now proposing.  The future success of our economy demands that we promote the expansion of communications infrastructure and focus our energies on optimizing our spectrum resources.

A key part of any meaningful broadband plan must be accurate, reliable and detailed data on broadband deployment.  I am pleased that today’s item, among many other important questions, asks how we can build on our current data collection methods to determine who is participating in the broadband revolution, and who is not, including those in tribal lands and rural areas. It is only with these data – which we should have been collecting all along – that we can make sound policy decisions.  Today’s NOI reminds us that we have also been charged by Congress to develop a comprehensive rural broadband strategy under the 2008 Farm Bill with our partners at the Department of Agriculture.  I look forward to working with my colleagues on that important plan, which is due to Congress next month.

Broadband is now the critical infrastructure of our economy and our democracy.  In the last decade, we have seen the doors of civic participation and economic opportunity blown open by the power of the Internet.  And not one of our citizens should be left out of the revolution.  But let’s be clear, this won’t happen overnight. It will take contributions from every sector – private, public, non-profit and in partnership. Yet it is reassuring to finally have leadership at every level of the Federal government that truly understands the importance of these digital connections.  This Notice recognizes the need to pursue a comprehensive strategy that involves improving broadband deployment, availability, affordability, adoption, competition, and cyber security.

This Commission has never, I believe, received a more serious charge than the one to spearhead development of a national broadband plan.  Congress has made it crystal clear that it expects the best thinking and recommendations we can put together by next February.  If we do our job well, this will be the most formative—indeed transformative—proceeding ever in the Commission’s history.

Broadband can be the great enabler that restores America’s economic well-being and opens doors of opportunity for all Americans to pass through, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of their individual lives.  It is technology that intersects with just about every great challenge confronting our nation—whether it’s jobs, education, energy, climate change and the environment, international competitiveness, health care, overcoming disabilities, equal opportunity—the list goes on.  Enabling our people and our enterprises through value-laden broadband can spell the difference between just muddling through if we’re lucky and opening the way to many more years of U.S. prosperity and world leadership.

When I arrived here in 2001 and called for the Commission to engage in a serious dialogue about the future of broadband, it was unclear whether such a dialogue would occur.  On many occasions over the intervening years, I talked about how the country lacked a national strategy; how we lacked even the essential data on which to build a viable strategy; and how we were paying way too high a price because of a cavalier approach to an urgent national problem.  But that was then and today is now.  We have new national leadership committed to broadband and we have economic dislocation that has awakened many people to the need for a decidedly new direction.  But we’re not going to get to where we need to go without a road map, and it’s that road map that we begin designing today.  We begin at last to do what we should have done years ago—make a plan for how the United States becomes the world’s broadband beacon.

Broadband products and applications, both fixed and mobile, have already fundamentally changed the way Americans go about their daily lives.  Many of us—primarily in relatively well-off urban areas—have become at least familiar with the promise of broadband to communicate with family and friends, to telework and bank, to interact with government, to get news and information, and many other applications.  Yet all this progress is only a small part—just prologue—to what this technology is going to do to change our lives in the years ahead.  Think about the impact high-speed connections can have on students of all ages and in all areas who could access distance learning, research, or job retraining.  Or telemedicine networks that can manage medical records, save lives and improve the standard of well-being for Americans living in areas that lack access to the breadth of medical expertise, specialty care, and advanced medical technologies available in other areas.  Think about a nationwide, interoperable public safety system to help first responders see us through hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards and man-made disasters.  Think about smart grids for energy efficiency.  New tools to gauge and even slow climate change.  The list goes on.  In fact, it would be a far shorter list if we enumerated those aspects of our national life that will not be impacted by high-speed, value-laden broadband.

So we launch today.  Our Notice of Inquiry seeks to be open, inclusive, out-reaching and data-hungry.  It seeks input from stakeholders both traditional and non-traditional—those who daily ply the halls of our hallowed Portals, those that would like to have more input here if we really enable them to have it, and those who may never have heard of the Federal Communications Commission.  It will go outside Washington, DC to rural communities, the inner city and tribal lands.  It will go where the facts and the best analysis we can find take it.  It will look at broadband supply and broadband demand.  It will look at broadband quality and affordable prices.  It will endeavor to better understand, and hopefully build upon, the cross-cutting nature of what broadband encompasses, beginning with an appreciation that it brings opportunities to just about every sphere of our national life.  And it can also consider, in addition to the many opportunity-generating characteristics of broadband, how to deal with any problems, threats or vulnerabilities that seem almost inevitably to accompany new technologies.  Ensuring broadband openness, avoiding invasions of people’s privacy, and ensuring cybersecurity are three such challenges that come immediately to mind.  We have never in history seen so dynamic and potentially-liberating a technology as this—but history tells us that no major technology transformation is ever a total, unmixed, problem-less blessing.

Going forward, we will distill the information that enters this NOI funnel with our eyes on the prize—a national broadband plan that is focused, practical and achievable.  Instead of trying to resolve every contentious issue that has fueled so many years of seemingly-endless debates over telecommunications—debates that have too often deflected us from the progress we should have been making—we will go in quest of practical suggestions that can be deployed in time to respond to the economic and many other challenges facing us.

It’s a huge task that we undertake today.  Every Bureau in this Commission will have a role to play in the development of the national broadband plan.  I expect everyone here will put their best effort forward to realize the objective we seek.  And I hope all stakeholders—and that means whoever wishes to be heard in this critical public policy discussion—will respond to the NOI.  Commenters need not—indeed cannot—respond to all the many inquiries we raise, nor should they feel compelled to.  Single out those areas where you feel you can make a contribution and share your insights and suggestions with us.  If there’s a question or a dimension of the problem that the NOI misses, we want to hear about that and have your ideas there, too.  When I say we strive to be inclusive, I mean really inclusive.

The preparation of this NOI has been a cross-cutting effort involving just about every office in the Commission.  I thank the Bureaus and Offices for the hard work they have already put in—and I also use the occasion to warn them we are only just beginning.  I want to thank my two colleagues, Jonathan Adelstein and Robert McDowell, for their participation and leadership and the many helpful suggestions they have made to move this proceeding along.  Their staffs have been great, too.  My own office has worked hard on this, too, and I want to particularly commend Scott Deutchman for his efforts to bring people and ideas together for our broadband mobilization—and mobilization it is.

Let me also recognize a few special guests here at the Commission this morning:  Dennis Amari from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and David Villano and Mary Campanola from the Rural Utilities Service.  Their presence here bespeaks the beginnings of true inter-agency cooperation on the broadband challenge, an effort that is already reaching out to include many other agencies of government at the federal, state and local levels.  We need the help of all of them.  If no sector is outside the new world of advanced communications, then no agency should be, either.