Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski promised a broadband plan will offer bold ideas and ways to encourage more competition in areas like Internet video on TVs, although he offered few details.

“One of the things we’re looking at hard in the broadband report, and everywhere, is the extent and nature of competition,” he said during a session at the Consumer Electronics Show. “What are the things we need to do, what are the barriers we need to remove, to facilitate competition?”

For Americans who don’t subscribe to broadband because they don’t own a PC, the agency is looking at making it easier for consumers to get online video on their TVs, Mr. Genachowski said.

“Can the TV be part of the solution to broadband?” he asked.

Mr. Genachowski said the agency has been discouraged to see how few options Americans have for getting online video on their TVs without buying new DVD players or other set-top boxes.

“We want to make sure that the TV and the boxes that are attached to it are open to innovation,” he said.

Online video competition is just one area under scrutiny by the FCC, which is in the midst of a year-long process of crafting a national broadband plan.

Earlier this week, Mr. Genachowski asked Congress for another month to deliver the plan, which is expected to lay out policies for the government to adopt in hopes
of ensuring all Americans have access to high-speed, affordable broadband service.

The plan is expected to call for the government to overhaul a $7 billion annual federal phone-subsidy program to cover broadband and for the FCC to devote more airwaves to wireless broadband services, among other things. Agency officials have released few details about the plan, however, and the delay is expected to allow Mr. Genachowski and his aides more time to line up support for the plan in Congress.

Some public-interest groups have been privately raising concerns with FCC officials about the coming plan, based on some public comments made by Blair Levin, the FCC official in charge of writing it.

In a televised interview, Mr. Levin suggested that the agency is looking at setting a goal of ensuring that rural America has broadband speeds of anywhere from 3 mbps to 4 mbps instead of the 20-mbps to 50-mbps service that some consumer advocates have suggested.

Ensuring that all Americans have access to at least 3-mbps service could cost upwards of $20 billion, the FCC estimates.

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