Infrastructure measure pending in Senate would allow incumbents to challenge proposed projects

Similar to the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the massive omnibus infrastructure pending in the Senate would allow incumbent providers to challenge the award of federal grant funds for advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

A provision of the bill requires states receiving the funding to establish procedures governing challenges by service providers as well as local governments and nonprofits. The challenges could be filed contending locations within a proposed project area fail to meet the project requirement of at least 80 percent of premises being “unserved” (“reliable” service with a minimum throughput of 25 Mbps/3Mbps (“unserved”) and 100 Mbps/20 Mbps (“underserved”) with latency sufficient to support real-time, interactive applications.

As a practical matter, the provision would also potentially allow wireless providers offering at least the “unserved” service level – regardless of end user cost -- to challenge a proposed project that would deliver service to prems over fiber or coaxial cable infrastructure where none presently exists.

The provision is apparently included to address concerns by incumbents that proposed projects would “overbuild” within their service areas – a key concern in heavy incumbent lobbying of the bill. The measure authorizes the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to reverse state determinations of challenges and to modify the challenge process.

A damning indictment of U.S. telecom infrastructure policy failure

Wired to fail - Tony Romm - POLITICO: A POLITICO investigation has found that roughly half of the nearly 300 projects RUS approved as part of the 2009 Recovery Act have not yet drawn down the full amounts they were awarded. All RUS-funded infrastructure projects were supposed to have completed construction by the end of June, but the agency has declined to say whether these rural networks have been completed. More than 40 of the projects RUS initially approved never got started at all, raising questions about how RUS screened its applicants and made its decisions in the first place.

But a bigger, more critical deadline looms for those broadband projects still underway: If these networks do not draw all their cash by the end of September, they will have to forfeit what remains. In other words, they may altogether squander as much as $277 million in still-untapped federal funds, which can’t be spent elsewhere in other neglected rural communities.

And either way, scores of rural residents who should have benefited from better Internet access — a utility that many consider as essential as electricity — might continue to lack access to the sort of reliable, high-speed service that is common in America’s cities. Even RUS admits it’s not going to provide better service to the 7 million residents it once touted; instead, the number is in the hundreds of thousands.

A damning indictment of the United States' policy failure to properly fund, plan and build Internet telecommunications infrastructure to serve all Americans. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's (ARRA) funding for Internet telecommunications infrastructure construction could have helped create a new generation of consumer cooperatives to build modern fiber optic telecom infrastructure just as the Rural Utilities Service did starting in the 1930s to support the deployment of electrical service.

But the ARRA allocated no technical assistance funding to help new cooperatives and local governments plan for the necessary fiber infrastructure to replace outdated copper cable, leaving the RUS and the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Agency unable to offer much in the way of real assistance. These agencies themselves erected roadblocks by adopting rules allowing legacy telephone and cable companies to block progress and veto proposed ARRA projects that could have constructed modern fiber to the premise infrastructure. Consequently, 55 million Americans (17 percent of the population) live in areas of the nation without Internet service as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission reported in early 2015.

Federal telecom infrastructure funding initiative needed

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $4.7 billion in grant and loan funding to support the construction of Internet telecommunications infrastructure. Most of it has gone toward middle mile infrastructure projects to bring fiber backhaul closer to homes and businesses. But it was only a drop in the bucket relative to the need. What’s needed now is last mile infrastructure to link the middle mile to these premises.

According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, nearly 400 communities in the United States have local telecommunications networks, many providing fiber connections to premises. That’s critical to the nation’s future given that legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies aren’t upgrading their metal wire networks to fiber notwithstanding the burgeoning growth in bandwidth demand and the availability of federal and state government subsidies.

Those 400 community networks represent a good start. But other communities won’t be able to follow them unless state laws restricting them are repealed (shown in red on the ILSR map) and there is substantial, relatively unrestricted funding to help them. A likely consequence is these 400 community networks will end up as one off builds, leaving the rest of America to the tender mercies of the incumbents who lack incentive to build out and upgrade given that costly telecom infrastructure is a natural monopoly.

In the wake of the severe recession at the end of the last decade, local governments are still struggling financially and can’t easily fund these projects on their own. A recent survey by the National Association of Counties found only one in 50 U.S. counties has fully recovered economically since the start of the recession in 2007. The federal government should step up with an expanded telecommunications funding program to build on the ARRA stimulus funding. It should include technical assistance grant funding to help communities plan fiber to the premise network infrastructure as well as grants and loans to help finance their construction. In the end, it would likely prove to be a good investment, generating taxable economic activity to defray the expenditures.

The U.S. Needs A Federal-Aid Highway Act For Affordable Broadband -- Now - Forbes

The U.S. Needs A Federal-Aid Highway Act For Affordable Broadband -- Now - Forbes

Digital media veteran Gary Myer urges a massive Internet stimulus program that goes far beyond the $4.5 billion allocated for Internet infrastructure in the American Investment and Recovery Act of 2009.  (Most of that money went toward middle mile infrastructure that typically left residences and small businesses off the net).

Myer as well as some of the commentators on his Forbes piece point out getting fiber to every U.S. doorstep not only would create a lot of jobs since a large majority of the cost is labor.  It would also make the U.S. network more valuable since more would be connected to it, replacing the current dysfunctional, hodge podge of disparate legacy cable television and telephone company networks whose high cost business models fail outside of densely populated areas.

Myer also puts to rest the fanciful, wishful thinking that cell phone networks obviate the need for premises Internet connections.  Those networks are designed for lower bandwidth mobile voice and data and lack the capacity and reliability to serve as primary premises connections. Those bandwidth caps on mobile service exist for a reason.

Connected company muscled state agency out of Internet contract - Florida - MiamiHerald.com

Connected company muscled state agency out of Internet contract - Florida - MiamiHerald.com: TALLAHASSEE -- In 2009, with more than a quarter of all Floridians without broadband access to the Internet at home, state officials lined up to get some of the $7 billion in federal stimulus money to finance state-based programs to increase access.

Enter Connected Nation, a little known but well connected Washington-based company. It won the Florida contract to use $2.5 million to map the broadband gaps for use by policy makers and telecommunications companies.

A year later, when the state won a second grant for $6.3 million to extend the broadband efforts, Connected Nation, a non-profit company, believed it had signed up to be part of a public-private partnership with the state that entitled the firm to a no-bid shot at that money too. But the Department of Management Services, the state agency that housed the project, disagreed.

DMS said the grant requires it to use some of the money to pay for three more years of broadband mapping and the rest to expand broadband access in libraries and schools.
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The real story here is the tragic policy failure of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to provide technical assistance funding to communities interested in building their own open access fiber to the premises networks instead of dubious "broadband mapping" projects.  It would have been a far more productive use of money to fill in the gaps with actual infrastructure instead of wasting it creating maps that won't connect homes in Florida and other states that remain disconnected from the Internet.

Reports of broadband stimulus awards warrant closer reading

There have been a number of stories lately reporting on awards of U.S. broadband infrastructure subsidies under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They warrant reading with a closer eye when it comes to the end users that will actually benefit from the subsidies. For example, this AP story on the award of an $80 million grant for advanced telecommunications infrastructure in Louisiana that reports 100,000 households, 15,000 businesses and 150 institutions such as schools, universities and medical centers will benefit from the award.

The last paragraph is key:

Private Internet service providers will use the cable to bring service to homes and businesses.

More accurately, IF there is sufficient last mile infrastructure over which these ISPs can provide service. Most likely, this award is for middle mile infrastructure that feeds the last mile -- the segment that is most often missing and in greatest need of subsidization. Middle mile infrastructure subsidies have been favored thus far among awards announced by the federal agencies administering the stimulus dollars. But both middle and last mile infrastructure are necessary to create a complete telecommunications infrastructure that will meet the public policy intent contained in the stimulus legislation of making advanced telecommunications services available to all Americans.

Network experts like Andrew Cohill of Design Nine understand this fundamental aspect of networking. Networks that don't adequately connect end users aren't truly networks. Cohill describes the last mile as the "first mile" in recognition of this fact.

President Obama reiterates need for broadband infrastructure in weekly radio address

President Barack Obama mentioned the expansion of broadband telecommunications infrastructure in his weekly radio address today urging swift enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The measure, which cleared Congressional committees this week on track for passage by mid-February, includes $6 billion in grants and loans to finance broadband build out.

Here's the relevant passage from the president's address:

Finally, we will rebuild and retrofit America to meet the demands of the 21st century. That means repairing and modernizing thousands of miles of America’s roadways and providing new mass transit options for millions of Americans. It means protecting America by securing 90 major ports and creating a better communications network for local law enforcement and public safety officials in the event of an emergency. And it means expanding broadband access to millions of Americans, so business can compete on a level-playing field, wherever they’re located.