The Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. agency that regulates the telecommunications industry, is becoming more media savvy by joining popular networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

The agency, which is conducting a series of workshops to hear from the industry and public on what the FCC's national broadband plan should include, is also urging the public to vote on which topics are the most important.

The public can vote on the FCC's IdeaScale page at http://broadband.ideascale.com/ and even add your own topics.

As of Friday the topic Broadband plan must address needs of people with disabilities is atop the list of issues that also includes deployment, fixed and wireless broadband, education, health care, investments, among others.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski repeatedly states that broadband is the infrastructure challenge of this generation. You can find his first online speech on Google Inc's YouTube -- http://www.youtube.com/fccdotgovvideo.

The agency has launched a blog at http://blog.broadband.gov, where the public can follow what has been discussed at the workshops and future workshop topics in the coming weeks.

In addition the FCC also launched a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/FCC and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/FCC.

(Reporting by John Poirier; editing by Andre Grenon)

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