New Website Makes It Easy to Comment on FCC's National Broadband Plan

Google and the New America Foundation have streamlined the process for commenting on the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, producing a new discussion page where you can submit ideas and read and vote on the comments of others.

"Public participation in this process is critical," their press release says. "Now that the Commission has officially opened this proceeding, and with a new Chairman at the helm, we think it's time to give people the opportunity to learn about the issue and to weigh in with their thoughts."

"Two weeks from now we'll take the most popular and most innovative ideas," the announcement adds, "and submit them to the official record at the FCC on your behalf."

It's a safe bet that one of the winners of that election will be Google's own comments on the FCC's Broadband Plan. A summary of those remarks was always the first post we saw when we visited the site.

"Install broadband fiber as part of every federally-funded infrastructure project," says Google attorney Richard Whitt. "Most of the cost of deployment is due to tearing up/repaving roads. Laying fiber during public works projects already underway would dramatically reduce costs."

Google submitted the longer version of those comments last month. Basically the idea is that whenever any kind of repair has to happen to government property, or something is put up or torn down, broadband fiber installation should be part of the process. "Laying fiber—or even simply installing the conduit for later fiber deployment . . . during the construction or repair of roads and other public works projects will dramatically reduce deployment costs," Google says. "And it's just good common sense."

The filing also calls for the deployment of fast Internet connections to all libraries, schools, public housing facilities, and health care centers in the country (Microsoft has submitted similar comments). Google also recommends that the government provide incentives for ISPs to lay out multiple fibers as they build new networks. "These unused fibers could in turn be leased or sold to other network operators, increasing competition along with deployment."

Anyway, the comments on the Google site are coming in fast—almost a thousand as of when we last checked, and the site has only been open for an hour or so.

We have a dream that some day, somebody at the FCC will do something like this in the name of the public good. The Commission has a perfect location for it in the form of a new beta site called broadband.gov, and, well, hope springs eternal.

For now, if you want to read the comments that have been submitted formally and directly to the FCC regarding its plan, they're here. And you can load up your own remarks here (the number for field 1, "proceeding," is 09-51).