Thursday, August 22, 2019
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Up to 38% of “Served” Rural Locations Actually Lack Broadband
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North Carolina Fiber Expansion Focuses on Agricultural Industry and Rural Markets
ISPs push consumers toward premium broadband tiers
Yes, Google is disrupting our democracy. But not in the way Trump thinks.
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Every facet of society depends on broadband connectivity. 2020 presidential candidate Gov Jay Inslee’s (D-WA) is committed to confronting the rural broadband challenge, by:
- Investing $80 billion in broadband deployment to make sure every community has access to broadband to support their schools, their hospitals, their farms, and their businesses.
- Doubling annual finance authority for the Rural Utility Service (RUS) to offer $8 billion in Treasury rate financing to hundreds of rural electric cooperatives owned by the 42 million rural residents they serve. RUS will support rural electric cops with technical assistance and federal financing for investments in smart grid technologies and their enabling broadband infrastructure, among other things.
- Making Big Tech pay into the Universal Service Fund (USF). The USF should be updated into a broadband rural subsidy program by broadening the base of contributors. Currently the fund is financed through interstate phone call minutes and, as a result, revenue into the fund is dwindling. This funding is essential for ongoing support of the High Cost, Lifeline, E-Rate, and Rural Healthcare facilities.
- Expanding broadband access for Tribal nations. Inslee’s Accessible Broadband plan will commit billions to guarantee that every tribal nation has access to quality internet.
- Ensuring affordable broadband, by providing $5 billion in subsidies to low-income rural Americans to make sure internet is affordable even in these hard-to-serve areas. If private companies will not provide broadband service, Inslee will work with public entities to create community broadband access.
- Restoring Net Neutrality. As Governor, Jay Inslee signed the first state law protecting net neutrality. As president, Inslee will reinstate net neutrality to protect the internet for everyone. Gov Inslee commits to only appointing FCC commissioners that support net neutrality.
- Removing barriers to locally owned and created broadband networks. Every community should have the ability to build a broadband network — and local control and ownership can deliver more local benefit. Some telecommunications giants have convinced states to bar local internet providers, and currently a number of states ban public utilities or municipalities from offering broadband services. Governor Inslee will remove those arbitrary restrictions and allow every provider willing to meet core accessibility standards the ability to provide internet.
- Supporting a nationwide public safety network, FirstNet, which has received $7 billion in federal investment, to date — a start, but not enough to complete the network. Additional funds are needed to speed up the construction of this important network. In addition, many 911 call centers cannot manage the load of text messages and often cannot support video, which can leave first responders in dangerous situations. Governor Inslee’s plan will invest in local 911 call center upgrades, especially in rural communities.
- Ensuring school broadband access, through investment in and greater accessibility to the federal E-Rate program.
- Ensuring union jobs and prevailing wages. Gov Inslee will make sure all rural broadband projects – like every federally-funded infrastructure project – pay a prevailing wage and use Project Labor Agreements and Community Benefit Agreements.
As much as 38 percent of rural locations in census blocks reported to have broadband available to them may actually lack broadband, according to USTelecom. The organization, which represents broadband providers, undertook a pilot test earlier in 2019 aimed at addressing problems with Federal Communications Commission broadband availability data as depicted on the National Broadband Map. The results of the USTelecom broadband map pilot have now been filed with the FCC.
The USTelecom pilot focused on two states – MO and VA -- where USTeelecom created a "fabric". They started with geocoded locations of homes and businesses, and onto that the company overlaid polygons -- also known as “shape files” -- showing where service providers offer broadband. Using all this information, CostQuest and USTelecom were able to create maps showing the exact location of homes and businesses in a census block, with locations color coded to indicate whether broadband is available to them. The pilot found that as much as 38% of rural locations reported to be served are instead unserved, though it may be on the high side because certain cable companies did not participate in the pilot. Other key findings from the USTelecom broadband map pilot:
- 48% of rural census block fabric location counts don’t match currently used estimates of location counts
- 23% of rural pilot locations were not geocoded to the correct census blocks
- 61% of current geocoded locations for customer addresses do not correspond with the buildings that would need to be served at those addresses
In our most recent Internet Use Survey, conducted in 2017, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration included questions about participation in the sharing economy for the first time. The results show that a third of Internet users in the US reported selling goods or requesting or offering services from others through online platforms. This compares with the significant majority of Internet users – 69 percent – who reported using the Internet for more traditional e-commerce activities such as online shopping or travel reservations. Sharing economy participants tend to be younger, have higher incomes and education levels, and live in metropolitan areas, our data reveal. Internet users were also much more likely to request sharing, or peer-to-peer, services than provide their own services or sell goods. While 26 percent reported requesting services, only 6 percent of Internet users offered their own services and 11 percent reported selling their own goods online. The median age of a sharing economy participant was 42 years old, versus 52 years for an Internet user who did not use these services. In addition, an Internet user with a yearly family income of $100,000 or more was more than twice as likely to offer or request services than someone with an income below $25,000.
The North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), a regional fiber network, is expanding, according to MCNC, the non-profit that operates it. The network operates in southeastern North Carolina. The expansion will connect communities between Sanford and Farmville in Greene, Harnett, Johnston and Wayne counties. The Golden LEAF Foundation is contributing $1,327,130 to the project, which has an estimated total cost of $2.5 million. The expansion will leverage 138 miles of newly built fiber and construct 18.5 additional miles. The emphasis will be on agriculture and rural areas. MCNC will enable residential connectivity via partnerships with wired and wireless And it will connect anchor institutions in education and healthcare.
Leaning on broadband for growth, cable and telecom companies push consumers toward premium internet tiers
Cable and telecommunication companies are leaning heavily on their broadband businesses to propel growth as demand for pay TV subscriptions declines. They are using a range of tactics to shift consumers onto faster, premium speed tiers. In some cases, that means boosting speeds free temporarily, then raising fees later. Some consumers say that when they call to complain about their bill, the provider assuages them by offering a higher speed at a promotional rate that eventually gives way to a higher price. Major internet service providers say they do offer complimentary speed upgrades to customers, and disclose that in emails or on a user’s bill. They say any fee increases down the road are unrelated to those higher-speed packages and simply reflect normal pricing changes. The companies say consumers are demanding faster speeds to stream more high-resolution video and use more devices in their home networks.
Nearly 61% of U.S. households had speed packages of at least 100 megabits per second as of December 2018, according to research firm Kagan. Providers are pushing even faster speeds like 150 or 250 Mbps, or 1 gigabit (1000 megabit per second) connections for power users.
While it’s wrong to characterize Google as part of the Democratic Party machine, there’s plenty of room to question how it’s affecting our democracy and society. The digital systems we use every day are dangerous to democracy because the voices that create and monetize them are extremely limited — paving the way for a few tech billionaires to create the empires that monitor us daily, giving them the potential to manipulate our behavior. But if we narrow the scope of tech’s influence to partisan politics, we miss the larger issue — that the influence of these systems is profoundly undemocratic. Big tech’s reach permeates every aspect of our lives, all the while remaining invisible and unaccountable. It’s time for a digital bill of rights — one that ensures that the rest of us and our interests are part of the Internet’s DNA, as well.
[Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles in the department of information studies and director of the UC Digital Cultures Lab]
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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