The FCC chairman hinted at increased small business opportunity, but that only tells part of the story. There are some significant benefits for businesses--particularly small and medium businesses--with broader, more universal access to broadband data, especially if broadband speeds are also increased in the process.

Businesses looking to cut communications and travel costs by solutions are going to need the larger bandwidth. VoIP is much less forgiving of slow or dropped data packets than standard data, and streaming video and video conferencing are even less so.

Expanding high-speed broadband to more U.S. homes also benefits business. The trend for the past five to ten years has been an increase in the number of employees working remotely from home offices, even if it's only on a temporary or flexible basis. The faster the connection from employee homes to the network resources inside the company network, the more productive the remote worker can be, and the more seamless the work experience will be no matter where the employee is operating from.

The goals of the FCC broadband plan are admirable, and the FCC should be commended for putting forth such an ambitious vision. It remains to be seen how much pushback the FCC might get from existing broadband providers, or if the FCC plan will be enough to convince Congress to back it with funding.

Tony Bradley is co-author of . He tweets as , and can be contacted at his .