FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has appointed 29 members to the Commission’s newly created Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). The committee’s mission is to give advice and issue recommendations to the FCC on how to speed up broadband deployment by reducing and eliminating regulatory obstacles to infrastructure investment. Chairman Pai has tapped Quintillion CEO Elizabeth Pierce to serve as Chair of the BDAC, and Kelleigh Cole, Director of the Utah Broadband Outreach Center in the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, to serve as Vice Chair. A full list of BDAC members is available here. The BDAC will have five working groups: (1) Model Code for Municipalities; (2) Model Code for States; (3) Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure; (4) Removing State and Local Regulatory Barriers; and (5) Streamlining Federal Sitting. Additional members will be selected to the working groups at a later date. The BDAC’s inaugural meeting, scheduled for April 21 at 10 am, will focus on introducing members, delegating initial assignments, and providing more information about the working groups. In addition, the committee will begin discussing strategies for accelerating broadband deployment. The Commission will provide live audio and/or video coverage of the meeting at www.fcc.gov/live.
