The goal of the workshops will be to promote an open dialogue between the FCC and key constituents on matters important to the National Broadband Plan. Key constituents will include service providers, equipment providers, applications providers, community groups, and other groups that have a stake in the future of broadband. Workshops will consist of meetings held at the FCC. The public will have the opportunity to suggest meeting topics and questions for the workshops. All meetings will be broadcast over the Internet when possible, and archived for viewing at a later time to ensure that everyone has access to the content.

The goal of this workshop is to explore the deployment of wired (i.e., cable, wireline, and broadband over powerline, or BPL) broadband infrastructure used to serve all types of end-users today and in the future. The workshop will examine the underlying economic and regulatory factors that currently drive those deployment decisions, and how the Commission’s national broadband plan could impact such decisions in the future. Panelists will discuss the state of deployment to provide last mile, middle mile, and Internet backbone services today and deployment planned as part of providers’ existing capital expenditure budgets. The workshop also will explore the relative importance of different factors to broadband providers’ network deployment and upgrade decisions, including the costs of deploying and operating the network, the anticipated revenue opportunities, other regulatory considerations that might hinder or encourage deployment, and how the level of broadband infrastructure investment is set within a provider’s overall budget for capital expenditures. Finally, panelists will discuss how the Commission’s national broadband plan should evaluate the adequacy of wired broadband deployment, including the technological capabilities of the networks, and how extensively and quickly, such facilities can and should be deployed.