Despite the fact that over 95% of Americans have access to broadband, and the fact that this near ubiquity has been achieved in a remarkably short period for a country that is so large and which has such broad rural areas, the Commission's majority is not satisfied. And it won't be -- because only a finding that broadband deployment is not 'reasonable and timely' will provide the support they are seeking for more broadband regulation.

And the Commission's refusal to acknowledge, and to take into account, the substantial progress made in deploying mobile broadband further robs the report of credibility.

With the broadband glass indisputably 95% full, it is now clear that Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel are perfectly happy to denigrate what has already been achieved for the sake of using the 5% still to be accomplished as a prop for their regulatory designs. This surely is not what Congress intended when it asked the Commission to compile broadband deployment reports."

Randolph J. May, President of the Free State Foundation, is a former FCC Associate General Counsel and a former Chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. Mr. May is a nationally recognized expert in communications law, Internet law and policy, and administrative law and regulatory practice. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly articles and essays on communications law and policy, administrative law, and constitutional law. Mr. May is the author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform. He is the editor of the book, New Directions in Communications Policy, and he is co-editor of other two books on communications law and policy: Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform.

For Mr. May's most recent Perspectives from FSF Scholars, "The FCC Should Conform to Rule of Law Norms," click here.