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You are hereThe FCC’s IP Transition: Two Key Perspectives
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2013-11-22 11:11
Kudos are due to FCC Chairman Wheeler for quickly announcing that “it is time to act with dispatch” on the IP transition, and putting that into swift action. As the FCC refocuses on the IP transition, some important perspective is warranted. First, the consumer-driven transition to IP in the marketplace is already three quarters complete.
Simply, at least three quarters of Americans already have transitioned to IP, and given current IP transition trends, virtually all Americans will have transitioned to IP by 2017, the FCC’s own timing goal to shut down the TDM copper architecture in the transition to IP networks, per the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. Importantly, the pace of the marketplace IP transition is increasing as the economics of IP are increasingly improving with Moore’s Law and as the economics of the rapidly obsolescing copper PSTN are increasingly deteriorating as fewer and fewer Americans subscribe to a system designed to operate for everyone. Second, the U.S. Government and FCC’s successful transition to IP is now in its 20th year.
In sum, the effective IP transition set in motion by the Clinton Administration in 1993, when it privatized the Internet backbone, is now at least three quarters complete in the marketplace, and is on pace to be functionally complete by the FCC’s 2017 goal in the National Broadband Plan. The FCC’s IP transition task now is to synch up with the pace of the marketplace’s transition to IP and to smoothly and appropriately complete the FCC’s part of the IP transition by the FCC’s deadline of 2017. The FCC could not be in better hands to achieve this IP transition goal by 2017. That’s because FCC Chairman Wheeler was a key leader in the Federal Government’s last big technological transition, the DTV transition from analog to digital TV, and that transition went smoothly and was very successful. Chairman Wheeler’s lessons learned from the successful DTV transition should help the FCC’s IP transition to go smoothly and successfully as well. # # # # # Modernization Consensus Research Series Part 1: Implications of Google's Broadband Plans for Competition and Regulation - Part 1 Modernization Consensus Series [1-28-13] Part 2: Developing Fundamental Consensus for the IP Transition - Part 2 Modernization Consensus Series [1-29-13] Part 3: Why Europe is Falling Behind America in Broadband - Daily Caller Op-ed -- Part 3 Modernization Consensus Series [2-13-13] Part 4: Will the New FCC Chair Be a Modernist or Nostalgist? Part 4 Modernization Consensus Series [4-2-13] Part 5: The FCC Transition - Part 5 Modernization Consensus Series [5-7-13] Part 6: The Modern FCC Competition-Policy Linchpin - Part 6 Modernization Consensus Series [10-21-13] Part 7: A Modern Vision for the FCC - New White Paper - Part 7 Modernization Consensus Series [10-31-13]
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