Tuesday, May 25, 2021
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Why Low-Cost Devices Matter for Broadband Policy
Updating broadband mapping key to expanding access in Loudoun, FCC acting chairwoman says
Congress could spend big on broadband. Tribal nations say it can't come soon enough.
Digital Inclusion
Broadband Infrastructure
Universal Service Fund
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Education
Stories From Abroad
Digital Inclusion
On May 12, the Federal Communications Commission launched its Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. The program was included as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in December 2020 to provide relief during the pandemic. The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program is significant because it seeks to address two of the many challenges facing households with limited monthly incomes: the ability to pay for broadband and connected devices. In my research published by Benton titled “Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption Initiatives,” I learned that many individuals and families with limited monthly incomes across the country have looked to local organizations in their communities to gain access to affordable broadband service and connected devices. I found that these activities were often part of a four-part strategy to promote digital equity:
- Providing low-cost broadband
- Connecting digital literacy training with relevant content and services
- Making low-cost computers available
- Operating public access computing centers
Broadband Infrastructure
Updating broadband mapping key to expanding access in Loudoun, FCC acting chairwoman says
Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said more a comprehensive map of where broadband internet service is currently available is needed before gaps in coverage can be addressed. Speaking along with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA-10th) at the Loudoun County Public Schools Administration Building in Ashburn, Chairwoman Rosenworcel said updating the map is one of several initiatives the FCC has launched to address broadband infrastructure needs across the country. “It is essential in Virginia and nationwide that we have accurate broadband maps that tell us where service is and is not so that when we have federal dollars to spend, we send them to the right places.” Chairwoman Rosenworcel said, “We're already taking in information from people across the country and we're going to work with state and local officials to make sure the information we have is accurate. That's going to help us deploy resources to the right places.”
Affordable high-speed, broadband internet is rare across Navajo Nation, the reservation that stretches across three southwestern U.S. states and is larger than state of West Virginia. And its absence for many families, especially over the past 15 months, has further exposed how critical access to it is for residents to participate in basic elements of society. It’s a problem the Biden administration is looking to tackle as part of its infrastructure push. Despite initially diverging views on how much to spend, expanding broadband access is one of the few areas on which Democrats and Republicans agree. Tribal leaders, internet access experts, and reservation residents in different parts of the US say the kind of investment Congress is eyeing is long overdue.
Maine-based fixed wireless access (FWA) provider Redzone Wireless followed Charter Communications in seeking a waiver from commitments made in the Federal Communication Commission’s recent Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction on the grounds its promised deployments would be redundant. In December 2020, Redzone won $507,752 in RDOF support to cover 755 locations in its home state with broadband service. However, the company said in a filing with the FCC it wants to relinquish the funds after discovering its service would be in competition with “an existing municipally-funded symmetric gigabit network.” Redzone said the census blocks it won at auction “never should have been” considered eligible to receive RDOF funding but were included in the proceeding due to the local provider’s failure to report its gigabit coverage. It added it discovered the areas were already covered during the auction and “immediately stopped bidding” on those blocks, but noted a bid entered before it made the finding ended up winning. It asked the FCC to release it from its RDOF coverage commitments, arguing that accepting the money would “be a waste of taxpayer contributions and contravene Commission objectives designed to steer finite support to areas that actually lack service.”
AT&T CEO John Stankey conceded the operator’s plans for fixed wireless access (FWA) technology may not be as ambitious as those of its competitors, but he noted the technology could end up being a good replacement for legacy DSL connections. He said the use of FWA could also allow it to decommission legacy infrastructure over time. “We have a voice replacement service now that can be in there, and so that allows us to look at our options around footprint that used to be in place and fixed costs that used to be there and begin the work of starting to shed some of that footprint and reduce the number of square miles that have that fixed infrastructure in place that really you’re never going to have an incentive to ultimately upgrade to fiber,” Stankey said. Recently AT&T announced it would ramp capital investments and double its fiber footprint to 30 million customer locations by end-2025. Stankey hinted the 30 million target could grow as vendor costs improve, demand for connectivity increases and the operator gets “up the learning curve further.” When an AT&T fixed wireless product would be ubiquitous across the operator’s footprint, Stankey pegged the 2023 timeframe for covering most people in the US.
The Federal Communications Commission's current model for funding internet builds is now hopelessly outdated. The dominant platform for communications has shifted from the telephone network to the internet. Indeed, the revenue base associated with the traditional telephone network has fallen sharply from a peak of around $80 billion in the 2000s to less than $30 billion today as more and more services—including those now offered by Big Tech—are delivered over the internet instead. Yet we continue to rely on that shrinking base of revenues from the telephone network to fund the broadband network. This is like taxing horseshoes to pay for highways. This antiquated system is on the verge of collapse.
We should start requiring Big Tech to pay its fair share. There are several ways to implement this proposal. For one, Congress should enact legislation that ensures Big Tech contributes an equitable amount. Doing so would be timely given ongoing congressional discussions about paying for the broadband portion of a broader infrastructure package. Legislators could consider a range of potential revenue streams that have a sufficient nexus to the internet, including video streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime; online advertising services like those offered by Google and Facebook; Apple's App Store and devices; content delivery networks and cloud services like AWS and online gaming services like Microsoft's Xbox. Meanwhile, the FCC should open a proceeding to look at ending the tax on consumers' monthly telephone bills and shifting a fair amount over to Big Tech.
[Brendan Carr is the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission]
Florida became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates for statewide office. The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories. Gov DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites.” “If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” he said. The Florida law makes it illegal to bar a candidate for state office for more than 14 days. Companies would be fined $250,000 per day for cases where they barred a candidate for statewide office. The fine is lower for candidates seeking other offices. The law says the platforms cannot take down or otherwise prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise” that reaches a certain size.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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