Tuesday, August 3, 2021
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Senate finishing crafting $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure proposal, including $65 billion for broadband
Senate Democrats and Republicans unveiled a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, setting in motion a long-awaited debate in the chamber to enact one of President Biden’s economic policy priorities. The roughly 2,700-page piece of legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes $65 billion to expand broadband Internet access nationwide and ensure those who do have connectivity can afford their monthly payments. Casey Lide of Keller & Heckman offers greater detail:
- “Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program” ($42 billion): The centerpiece of the overall broadband investment, this massive program contemplates grants being made to States. Significant local coordination would be required. States would use grant funds to competitively award subgrants for qualifying broadband infrastructure, mapping, and adoption projects. It would be administered by NTIA.
- “Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure” ($1 billion): Directs NTIA to make available grants for “construction, improvement or acquisition of middle mile infrastructure.”
- “Digital Equity Act of 2021” ($1.3 billion): Funds State-level digital equity planning and establishes a competitive digital equity grant program available to a wide range of public-sector and not-for-profit entities.
- “Broadband Affordability”: The bill includes several initiatives relating to affordable broadband:
- Extension and modification of the existing Emergency Broadband Benefit program, (including renaming it as the “Affordable Connectivity Program”);
- Adoption of a “consumer broadband label” requirement, originally put forth by the FCC in 2016;
- Digital discrimination. The bill would require the FCC to adopt rules within two years to address digital discrimination (i.e., redlining).
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill moving through the Senate this week stands to be a windfall for cable and fiber-optic internet companies, with $65 billion allocated to improve internet access for poor and isolated communities. The plan would help home internet providers by providing $40 billion in grants that states can dole out to operators that expand their networks to households that lack high-speed service. AT&T plans to self-fund its fiber-optic network expansion to cover millions of new locations in the coming years. Its chief executive, John Stankey, has said government support in other areas would be “icing on the cake.” Charter Chief Executive Tom Rutledge has said the cable company can expand its network efficiently with help from government subsidies. There are still some provisions that broadband providers will likely chafe at, including proposed rules that force them to plainly disclose the service levels and prices they offer. Another provision withholds funding from carriers that suffer long network outages. But reporting and reliability requirements aren’t likely to dent the bottom lines of broadband companies that already deal with armies of regulators.
The US Senate is on the cusp of approving an infrastructure package, which passed a critical first vote last night by 67-32. There is a lot to like in it, some of which will depend on decisions by the state governments and the Federal Communications Commission. Negotiations on the final bill are ongoing, but the draft broadband provisions have been released. Assuming that what was released makes it into the final bill, here is what to expect:
- Not enough money to close the digital divide in the US: Most estimates put the price tag of universal fiber at $80 to $100 billion, but this bipartisan package proposes only $40 billion in total for construction. It’s pretty obvious that this shortfall will prevent many areas from the funding they need to deliver fiber--or really any broadband access—to the millions of Americans in need of access.
- Protecting cable monopolies instead of giving us what we need: By defining internet access as the ability to get 100/20 Mbps service, the draft language allows cable monopolies to argue that anyone with access to ancient, insufficient internet access does not need federal money to build new infrastructure. This will lead to an absurd result: people on inferior, too-expensive cable services will be seen as equally served as their neighbors who will get federally funded fiber.
- Future-proofing criteria is essential to help avoid wasting these investments: The proposal establishes a priority (not a mandate) for future-proof infrastructure, which is essential to avoid the 100/20 Mbps speed from becoming standard. This provision helps avoid subsidies being provided for obsolete connections by legacy providers, by establishing federal priorities of the broadband projects being funded.
- Digital discrimination rules: The bill requires the FCC to establish what it means to have equal access to broadband and, more importantly, what a carrier would have to do to violate such a requirement. This provision carries major possibilities but is dependent on who the president nominates to run the FCC, as it will be their responsibility for setting the rules. If done right, it can set the stage for addressing digital redlining in certain urban communities, and push fiber on equitable terms.
[Ernesto Falcon is Senior Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.]
Lumen Technologies is worsening the digital divide and failing its customers and workers by not investing adequately in the essential fiber-optic buildout that is the standard for broadband networks worldwide. An analysis of Lumen’s network in states where the company has more than 100,000 households in its service area, interviews with Lumen technicians, and reports by customers in Lumen’s service area show that its service in large parts of its footprint is below the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband definition of 25/3 Mbps and demonstrates Lumen’s failure to build fiber to much of its service area. This analysis also found that:
- Thirty-nine percent of households in Lumen’s footprint do not have access to speeds that meet the FCC’s definition of broadband.
- This underinvestment is especially devastating for rural communities, which make up more than half (57 percent) of the counties in the Lumen footprint and struggle with access to essential broadband services.
- The median income for households with fiber available is 12 percent higher than in areas with DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service only. The median income of households with access to fiber is $62,649, while the median income of households with only access to DSL is $56,123.
- The company targets wealthy areas--42 percent of households with access to fiber are in census blocks with median incomes above $75,000--while leaving behind lower income areas, with only 7 percent of Lumen’s fiber network in census blocks with median incomes below $35,000.
- In counties with higher populations of Native Americans (more than 25 percent of households) only about 5.2 percent have access to fiber-to-the-home service and 50 percent only have DSL access.
While the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill could provide as much as $65 billion for new broadband infrastructure in the US to close the digital divide, incumbent telecommunication providers are wary of what they call 'overbuilding.' Roger Timmerman, the executive director of Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) Fiber, said service providers and their lobbyists created the term overbuilding to make new competition sound like a bad thing. “You could describe the same thing as a new competitive offering in the area,” Timmerman said. “Nobody complains about competition. Everybody would celebrate that. But the industry has deemed that as an overbuild.” Yet new entrants don’t literally build their infrastructure on top of existing infrastructure; it’s done in parallel. To a certain extent, Timmerman understands where the incumbents are coming from. They’ve made private investments in infrastructure, and they feel it’s unfair for new competitors to be subsidized with taxpayer monies. The problem is that the incumbents are determined to squeeze every last dollar out of their old and outdated technologies—such as DSL and hybrid fiber coax—leaving a lot of people in the US without high-speed broadband.
A study conducted by the Reviews.com Broadband Research Team about municipal broadband found a growing number of US residents are excited about the prospect of internet service as a utility. As interest in public broadband increases, it will be interesting to follow along with potential increases in pressure placed on local politicians to push for public internet. The study found:
- 40.2 percent of consumers said they would consider immediately switching to municipal broadband if it was made available in their city.
- 10.9 percent of consumers said they would definitely make the switch, 29.3 percent said they would at least try it out.
- 59.8 percent said they prefer their current provider.
Anytime a major city attempts to push municipal broadband, there is pushback from major internet service providers (ISPs) who view the expansion of the internet as a utility as a threat to their businesses. However, these are the highest numbersseen surrounding a willingness to switch to municipal service. It seems likely that over time as connection to the internet becomes as valuable as water or electrical service that more local municipalities will make sure their residents have such access. A common solution as of now is a hybrid version of municipal broadband through cooperatives.
As the conditions of students without home broadband access or a device mirror the broad systemic inequalities of the US, Congress must do more than offer piecemeal funding to connect K-12 students to the internet. The current times necessitate the need for a comprehensive policy initiative, or perhaps an addendum to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), that guarantees institution-wide broadband access for improved educational outcomes and preparedness for the future demands of the 21st century workforce. A proposed No Child Left Offline (NCLO) initiative would be driven by Congress and rely upon coordinated federal and state resources that help K-12 school districts accomplish the following:
- Collect local and national school data on broadband connectivity
- Provide internet-enabled hardware and options for home broadband service for disadvantaged K-12 public school students to close the digital divide and motivate 21st century educational readiness.
- Support local institutions that can be leveraged to aid students during remote learning, including federally assisted housing, park districts, and faith and community-based organizations.
- Create an Office of Innovation in every school district to promote digital inclusion and equity.
[Dr. Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation, and serves as Co-Editor-In-Chief of TechTank.]
A new policy paper from the German Marshall Fund proposes a full revamp of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to fund not just broadcast stations, but a wide range of digital platforms and potential content producers, including independent journalists, local governments, nonprofits and educational institutions. The concept of a new media ecosystem that's non-profit, publicly funded and tech-infused is drawing interest in policy circles as a way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars. Revamping the structure and role of public media could be part of the solution to shoring up local media, decentralizing the distribution of quality news, and constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information. The idea is to increase the diversity of local civic information, leaning on anchor institutions like libraries and colleges that communities trust, and include open protocol standards as well as strong data ethics requirements. While allowing people to "tune" their own content preference dials could exacerbate filter bubbles, the authors of the German Marshall Fund report argue that the the involvement of local trusted institutions in the creation and amplification of civic information — from public health updates to local election news — could improve people's overall media diet and exposure.
Carl Shapiro, the lead economics expert in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust suit against Facebook, has parted ways with the agency—adding yet another impediment to the regulator’s largest court fight. The University of California-Berkeley economist has criticized new FTC Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement, and she in turn has faulted the agency’s traditional reliance on economists’ analyses in its fights against alleged monopolists. The FTC is now looking for a new expert just three weeks before the agency must decide whether to file the new version of the Facebook lawsuit after a DC-based judge threw it out in July 2021. The agency has pleaded with Congress for more money, arguing that its $331 million budget isn’t sufficient for its burgeoning workload of policing mergers, business conduct, consumer privacy and data security. In a 2019 audit, the FTC’s inspector general found the agency pays about $750 per hour for experts and that cases involving company business conduct — like the antitrust suit against Facebook — are among the most expensive.
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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