FCC rural broadband report notes middle mile, consumer demand concerns

The Federal Communications Commission's Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy includes issues involved with the "middle mile" that connects the last mile Internet service provider with an Internet backbone service provider. "In many cases, the rural broadband provider will need to obtain backhaul transport from more than one provider, often over facilities that were designed for voice telephone or cable television services," the report states. "Some of these 'middle mile' facilities may have insufficient capacity, causing the transmission speed on otherwise adequate last-mile broadband facilities to come to a crawl or stall before the data reach the Internet backbone. Overcoming this may require the construction of a dedicated facility, which drives up costs and can deter last-mile broadband investments. Moreover, even when the last-mile provider acquires access to adequate middle-mile facilities, that access may be prohibitively expensive." The report goes on to offer several possible solutions, such as "encouraging middle-mile buildout, revising universal service funding to help cover costs of the middle-mile and using current or potential infrastructure more effectively by coordinating with other infrastructure projects to shrink deployment costs, and reforming interconnection obligations."