FCC Consumer Advisory Committee

I am sitting at the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee, of which NYCwireless is a new member. This is an interested collection of folks, representing industry, consumer organizations, and assistive organizations.

So what is the CAC? It is an organization within the FCC that is made up of 55 representatives from the outside who make recommendations to the FCC about a number of issues.

There are a number of people on the CAC that are interested in addressing the issues that NYCwireless is dealing with, especially with low-income and underpriviledged service, spectrum and other policy, municipal broadband and wireless, and universal access.

There are really two interesting things going on with the CAC:

  1. The FCC is a very open agency regarding input from the public (both industry, organization, and general population), and
  2. Organizing 55 people is a very difficult process.

Each of these 55 people on the Committee have lots of experience working through organizations, yet since so many of them haven’t worked together before, and since the organizers haven’t done a whole lot to facilitate working together other than giving everyone a microphone, this seems like its going to be a relatively slow process working through this Committee.

Also, of interest is that the FCC requires an incredible amount of security process to get into and out of the building. I would hazard that this for good cause, but they actually require that all computers are turned on and demonstrated to actually work, and that all cell phones and PDAs also be shown to be functional. This is really the level of device checking that should be required whenever you check these devices. They also have a great Wi-Fi network that’s provided for free.

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Published:
6.10.05 @ 3pm

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