After sitting with the FCC's National Broadband Plan for a week, we have a pretty good idea of the good, the bad and the absent. It is too soon to call the plan a success or a failure though, because, as Plan Czar Blair Levin put it, "The plan is in beta, and it always will be." That is, the near 400-page document sent to Congress last week isn't so much an "action plan" as it is a "plan for an action plan." The final judgment of this effort can't come until we see how the FCC actually goes about implementing it.

That said, what did the FCC deliver? Well, frankly it's a mixed bag, a mile wide but three inches deep.

To be sure, the plan does represent a shift from how our government has traditionally approached broadband policy. The plan embraces the idea that broadband Internet is no longer simply an entertainment service, and instead is critical for “economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life.” That’s a smart and important approach, and it shows that the FCC understands why its mission is so vital. And the plan does contain many good ideas, and if the FCC follows through, it could improve the lives of millions of Americans.

But in numerous instances these ideas are barely fleshed out, ignoring or side-stepping some of the more vexing issues that the FCC will surely face trying to turn paper into policy. The plan sets some laudable goals, but it is hard to see how the recommendations in the plan will result in the realization of those goals. Ultimately, it seems that the plan failed to include "a detailed strategy for achieving affordability" of broadband. Though it acknowledged the lack of competition in our broadband markets, the FCC punted confronting this problem to the often dead-end recommendation of "collecting more data."

The broadband market in America suffers from two critical failures: high prices and low speeds. These are domestic problems—we have major digital divides in rural and urban America in both affordability and quality of service. But they are also international problems—we are falling behind our global competitors in the quality, affordability and adoption of our broadband networks. These market failures are simply unacceptable: Not only must we ensure that all Americans have high-speed services at reasonable prices, we must quickly close the gap between the United States and the world’s leading broadband nations.

Rather than aggressively trying to close these gaps, the plan sets modest goals that don’t get us close to other industrialized countries. The FCC’s plan proposes two goals for broadband access to be reached by 2020: a “universalization target of 4 Mbps [megabits per second] download and 1 Mbps upload,” as well as a goal that “100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 Mbps and actual upload speeds of at least 50 Mbps.” It sounds impressive, but further scrutiny reveals this to be a paltry goal.

Did you know that most of Japan’s population has already had broadband at 30 Mbps for the last four years? Or that Finland has set a goal of 100 Mbps universal connectivity by 2015? South Korea already has 1 Mbps and is aiming for 50 Mbps by 2013. Even with the national broadband plan, America is being left in the dust. Other countries are achieving Internet speeds now that we’re aiming for in a decade. If we’re not keeping up with the industrialized world now, where will we be in 10 years? Check out this graph that shows that other nations are ahead of us and will continue to be. (link to graph on page three).

Even as we’re shackled to some of the slowest broadband speeds, we pay the most for fast service: in some cases, $145 for 50 Mbps. In South Korea, people pay an average of $26 per month for speeds that our double our “fastest” speeds. It’s even cheaper in the United Kingdom: $28 per month for 50 Mbps.

In theory, we could opt for a different Internet service provider with better prices, except most of us do not have much of a choice. We have one or two companies to choose from – and the FCC doesn’t propose any bold action to increase competition in the telecom market. The FCC does propose some meaningful changes, including data roaming, opening up the set-top-box market and fixing problems with special access services. These changes could help a lot – but they can’t really fix the duopoly problems in this market. As the plan notes, 96 percent of households in the U.S. have access to two or fewer wired broadband services. More aggressive actions are needed.

Read a more comprehensive critique of the plan by Free Press and the New America Foundation here, and stay tuned for more in-depth analysis of the plan to be released at the Free Press Policy Summit on May 11.

The stakes are sky high for the FCC to get this right. The future of U.S. telecommunications will be determined by the outcomes of the FCC proceedings coming out of the National Broadband Plan. We need to keep up the noise level and let the policymakers know that we care about broadband access. The FCC must take the hard steps to get all Americans hooked up to high speed, affordable broadband.