According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC is seriously considering re-establishing some kind of open access rules, which would give new entrants access to incumbent infrastructure at reduced price. Open access was the central idea behind the 1996 telecom act, which required incumbent operators to share network access with smaller competitors in order to bolster competition as those upstarts grew into legitimate carriers. A combination of inconsistent regulation and incumbent lobbying ultimately resulted in the U.S. scrapping the idea, though other countries (like France) were able to make the idea work.

Last month, the FCC ruffled feathers when an FCC-funded study by the Harvard University's Berkman Center suggested that such open access policies, when supported by consistent regulation, resulted lower prices, improved broadband penetration, and better service for consumers. That study was quickly set upon by industry lobbyists and their various policy mouthpieces, notes the Washington Post. The National Cable And Telecommunications Association quickly attacked the report as both biased and unreliable:Of course the National Cable and Telecommunications Association itself is no stranger to the idea of fitting the science to the political agenda, so their lamentations on the subject ring a little hollow. Given said companies spent millions of dollars and the better part of the last decade derailing the last effort to impose these kinds of sharing obligations, they're no doubt daunted by the possibility of having to do it all over again.

Manassas, Virginia was the first US city to see a real, non-trial launch of broadband over powerline (BPL) technology. However, BPL has floundered the last few years because of its inherent potential for interference with amateur and emergency radio, its irrelevance in the face of next-generation speeds, and the unavoidable fact that many utilities simply didn't want to be broadband providers.

After buying the flailing network from companies who once heralded it as proof BPL was a major broadband player, the city has spent a total of $1.6 million on it, and pour in an additional $100,000 or so every month. With city residents lured away by faster alternatives, leaders have had the network on life support for months, and are still debating over whether to pull the plug: story continues..

The FCC has long been an agency that has played fast and loose when it comes to using science and data to fuel its policy decisions. The agency for most of broadband's life cycle has been using outdated data, or inadequate data provided by industry lobbyists designed to make things look pretty and keep government out of their hair. With a new FCC and new boss Julius Genachowski, the agency has promised to be data driven. Yet Bruce Kushnick over at Harvard's Neiman Watchdog claims that in policy discussions, the agency's still using inadequate or old data -- sometimes more than a decade old -- to shape broadband and wireless policy.

As promised, the FCC today voted to impose a shot clock aimed at speeding up municipal approval for the placing of wireless towers. According to an FCC news release (pdf), the new agency rules impose a 90 day limit to states and municipalities to approve or deny collocation (tower sharing) requests, and 150 day limit to act on new tower placement requests. It's something the wireless industry has been lobbying for for a while. According to wireless industry lobbyists, (pdf) there's currently 760 new tower placement applications nationally that have been waiting for approval for at least a year, and 180 applications that have been waiting at least three years (though the industry has been known to play up government dysfunction for effect). Municipalities are expected to challenge the ruling in the courts over fears that they'd be ceding too much state zoning control to Uncle Sam.

Part of the problem with the FCC's current rules governing network neutrality is that they're so incredibly vague, they're useless when trying to crack down on anti-competitive behavior by ISPs. Were you the dubious sort, you might argue they were intentionally made that way to give the illusion that the FCC was engaged in a pro-consumer action when really just pandering to major carriers. Regardless of why they're murky, the entire reason for the FCC re-crafting these neutrality rules is to design more concrete guidelines that actually, well, work.

The new rules are only just getting cooked up at the FCC, but a group of law professors have taken an early look and say there's a serious problem: namely that, you guessed it, they're so murky and vague that they might not actually be useful.