If you were placing bets with yourself about which Small Business Committee would venture to hold a hearing once the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its broadband plan, your wait is over. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) convened that hearing at the end of last month. For the most part, the hearing ended up being a platform for both Senators and witnesses to discuss a few topics of particular concern to them all. Those topics included small business exporting, general help for small businesses because “we are not leveraging our small firms” to spur economic recovery, as Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) put it. And Susan Walthall, Acting Chief Counsel for the SBA Office of Advocacy, testified about the need to be vigilant and protect the place of small broadband providers in the marketplace, as those small players are often the only ones who will venture into rural areas shunned by the big boys.

All of this was good stuff and it is reassuring that the relevant parties seem to be paying at least some attention to small businesses. That said, those relevant parties also seem to have missed some of the most salient points about universal broadband access and where it will matter the most. FCC Chairman Julius Genakowski testified that small firms pay three times more for broadband service than large firms — but do they? Many home-based online microbusiness owners opt for residential service rather than business service. Do they get counted? How many online microbusinesses really are e-commerce enabled? The estimate of 25% seems very low. In the end, the evidence suggests that the smaller the business, the more likely they will be heavily reliant on the Internet for doing business. Clearly, lawmakers need to connect with online microbusiness owners; if they don’t, their attempts to get information on how small firms use the Web will be seriously lacking and incomplete.