AT&T CEO John Stankey said the goal of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program should be universal service, leveraging $42.5 billion in tax dollar subsidies appropriated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021(IIJA) to attract private investment to attain it.
But while universal landline service was achieved for copper delivered voice telephone service in the 20th century, the program goal should not be to modernize it with fiber for the 21st as prioritized by the BEAD Notice Of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) as the best and highest use of public funds. “A project that will rely entirely on fiber-optic technology to each end-user premises will ensure that the network built by the project can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services,” a footnote in the NOFO states.
However in remarks delivered at the USTelecom’s Leadership Summit this week posted at AT&T’s policy blog, Stankey argues the program “shouldn’t devolve into building fiber to every home, which would exhaust funding before every American is connected.” Stankey also lamented the state of U.S. telecom policy. “I’ve probably been around too long, but in all my years I don’t know that I recall a time when we seemed more adrift confronting the big telecom policy issues.”
No comments:
Post a Comment