The Federal Communications Commission's goal of expanding high-speed Internet over the next decade sets out to achieve on a national scale what North Carolina officials haven't been able to muster in rural areas and remote parts of the state.
But the FCC's plan, introduced Tuesday, is already brewing controversy because it would redistribute airwave rights from local television broadcasters to benefit Internet providers and telecommunications companies. The FCC says the nation needs more airwave spectrum to improve Wi-Fi, Wi-Max and other wireless forms of high-speed Internet.
The wireless component is key to the FCC's plan, because telecommunications companies have not been willing to invest in laying fiber-optic cable in areas where few people subscribe to costly broadband Internet service. This state has had limited success in pushing high-speed Internet into rural areas by paying subsidies to telecommunications companies that cover half the cost of fiber-optic cable installation.
The rationale behind the FCC's proposal is that over-the-air broadcast TV is dwindling, and high-speed Internet is becoming an essential public utility for this nation to remain competitive in health care, education and business.
In North Carolina, about 12.6 percent of the population relies exclusively on rabbit ear antennas or other forms of receiving over-the-air broadcasts. In the Raleigh area, the figure is 10 percent. But under the current system, cable TV transmits the same programs local stations broadcast over the air, so that reducing broadcasts would potentially reduce cable TV offerings.
"We don't want to give up any spectrum," said John Idler, general manager for WTVD in Raleigh. "Our spectrum allows us to put more content out there that's picked up by cable."
The FCC's proposal would require public hearings and congressional approval to become national policy.
Backers say that broadband expansion would prevent rural areas from being left behind the rest of the country when business meetings and doctor's visits become routinely conducted remotelyover the Internet.
More than 90 percent of the state has access to broadband Internet, but the figure is considerably lower in some rural parts of the state.
Mark Prak, a Raleigh lawyer for the N.C. Association of Broadcasters, said that expanding high-speed Internet could be a boondoggle with few benefits. He said that less than half the people in the state who can get broadband subscribe to the service. At the same time, he noted, anyone in the state can already subscribe to satellite television and satellite-fed Internet service.
"If you spend all the money in the world to wire up the rest of the state, the question is: Will anyone take it?" Prak said. "Some people don't have food, don't have clothing, don't have a computer."
