U.S. Senator Michael Bennet: Federal infrastructure funding shouldn't subsidize big telecoms

Previous federal efforts to expand broadband infrastructure, totaling $50 billion by Bennet’s estimation, were ”in reality subsidizing the biggest telecom companies in America not to build that broadband out,” he said. The money instead went to expansion that left out rural America.

https://www.denverpost.com/2023/07/06/federal-beads-broadband-funding-program/

The problem with modernizing telecom infrastructure to fiber to the premises is there has been no well thought out, coordinated high cost area subsidization policy. Instead, it's been a series of highly restricted one off grants, treating advanced telecom infrastructure more as a special charity case instead of essential infrastructure. 

Moreover, subsidies have come without universal service obligations or rate regulation as existed for legacy voice plain old telephone service (POTS) under Title II of the federal Communications Act. Telecom utility infrastructure functions as a natural monopoly and requires regulation to protect the public interest in access and affordability.

Comcast is correct that public-private partnerships are the way forward. The public sector should own the infrastructure and competitively contract with private entities to design, build and operate it.

Legacy incumbent telcos, cablecos not entitled to state sanctioned monopoly without FCC enforcement of Title II universal service requirement

Colorado Localities Vote for Broadband, but Must Get Creative to Actually Deploy It: “Cities don’t do this because they want to compete with the incumbent — they do it because the incumbent refuses to,” said Tom Roiniotis, general manager of Longmont Power & Communications, which runs the network.

Why the refusal? One big incumbent legacy telco explains: 

Mark Soltes, CenturyLink’s assistant vice president in Colorado for public policy and government affairs, said the gaps in service across the state are due to rugged landscapes and far-flung population centers. “You’re looking at deployment in some places where there’s no payback,” he said.

That's the economic reality and there's nothing unreasonable in CenturyLink's justification. It owes its investors a profitable return. But if a public sector entity steps into the gap where the numbers don't pencil for CenturyLink or other legacy incumbent, that's hardly market competition. In an open market, competitors compete for market share and profitable business. That's not the case when a public sector entity provides an essential telecommunications utility that's not being provided a private sector player because there's not a sufficient business case to do so. It's simply serving the need where the private sector cannot.

Nor do incumbent telcos and cablecos have a right to a state sanctioned monopoly. Particularly when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is not enforcing the universal service and anti-redlining requirements of its current Open Internet regulations based on Title II of the Communications Act and is poised to repeal those rules later this month. If the FCC did enforce the rule, then the incumbents would have a far stronger and reasonable position. At present, they do not.

Homeowners near Palmer Divide stuck with slow Internet or no Int - KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and Pueblo

Homeowners near Palmer Divide stuck with slow Internet or no Int - KOAA.com | Continuous News | Colorado Springs and Pueblo: Imagine moving into your dream home, only to find out no company will provide you with Internet access.

We're not talking about living 60 miles away in the country, but near the Palmer Divide in northern El Paso County.

Five homeowners associations have joined together to create the Palmer Divide Broadband Coalition, a team hoping to grab the attention of state leaders and local officials to help bring broadband into their neighborhoods.

“Homeowners have been trying for about 8 or 9 years to get broadband service,” Palmer Divide Broadband Coalition Chris Davis said. "We've had home sales that were lost and properties that were under contract where they buyers backed out when they found out that broadband service was not going to be available to that home."

Keep an eye on this growing pain point with America's inadequate telecommunications infrastructure. The problem is creating direct adverse economic impact on communities redlined by legacy telephone and cable companies and otherwise left off the Internet grid.

Why U.S. state, local governments are exploring alternative business models for fiber to the premise telecom infrastructure

Larry Irving, who served as assistant secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), writes in The Hill that he is having a difficult time understanding why state and local governments are interested in building their own telecommunications networks.

The answer is self evident. Mr. Irving need only look at the situation in Montrose, Colorado, described in this Daily Yonder article -- which is emblematic of much of the United States. Investor-owned providers can't provide all premises reliable wireline Internet service and do so at a cost that affords good value for the consumer:

Montrose, a city of 19,000 about 65 miles from the Utah border, is a typically conservative rural area, overwhelmingly Republican but with a populist bent. Like all of the Western Slope of the state, it is not participating in the robust economic recovery seen in the Front Slope cities of Denver, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs.

Internet service here is currently a hodgepodge. Some of us depend on broadcast towers, some on DSL from CenturyLink and some on cable service from Charter. Service is generally at less than 10MB. It’s expensive, and customer service is erratic.

It became clear to the city leadership that none of the large corporate providers were ever going to invest in high-speed broadband for the area. And while some enterprising local startups have moved to provide high-speed fiber and tower broadcast, they are capital-limited and have to charge high fees to get even a modest return on investment.

That's why the citizens of Montrose gave their municipal leaders the green light to explore alternative business models that can bring fiber to the premises of Montrose residents. City leaders recognize that technologically, fiber is the future. But that future and its many benefits will be deferred -- perhaps permanently -- unless new business models are found to make it a reality.

Hats off to Montrose, Colorado. It is taking on one of the nation's toughest and most important problems. Former U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski called it the "critical infrastructure challenge of our generation."

Colorado measure would bar Internet infrastructure subsidies to small towns served by satellite ISPs

Broadband act could expand service in Chaffee County - TheMountainMail.com: Free Content: As introduced, the bill’s language would define unserved areas as: areas outside a municipality or a city with less than 5,000 people in which a majority of households do not have access to at least one satellite and one non-satellite broadband provider.

Summed up in two words: Useless and laughable. It basically tells Coloradans with no other premise Internet options to go suck a satellite and be happy with the crappy customer experience, bandwidth "fair access" caps and poor value. A bill only the incumbent preservatives could love. Indeed, they probably drafted it.

Colorado legislation would redirect high cost telephone subsidies to Internet infrastructure

Two Colorado legislators are developing legislation to repurpose surcharges on voice landline and cell phone service to subsidize landline telephone service in high cost, less densely populated areas of the state to instead defray the cost of building out Internet infrastructure. "By funding land lines and copper-line phones, we're funding buggy whips,” Senator Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, told the Denver Post.

Rocky Mountain State lawmakers will however face resistance from incumbent telcos who want to preserve the status quo and continue to provide Internet service over their existing copper cable plants to a subset of wireline customers while deeming the rest unprofitable to serve. Throughout much of the United States, the latter cohort are in innumerable small pockets beyond the short range of DSL signals and/or where the existing copper cable is too old and deteriorated to deliver Internet service. First formed around 2000 and still around more than a decade later, they are like thousands of little holes in a big Swiss cheese, comprised of discrete premises, roads, streets and neighborhoods. Rather than “unserved areas,” they are more accurately described as redlined addresses and neighborhoods, typically avoided by both telcos and cable companies. The unfortunate residents are forced to rely on obsolete dialup offered by telcos or satellite Internet more properly suited to remote areas of the planet while the more fortunate may have access to fixed terrestrial wireless service from a local provider.

Incumbent telcos insist rules for government subsidy programs direct funds only to “unserved areas.” But building new wireline premises infrastructure is a costly, large scale endeavor that can make filling in these numerous voids one at a time impractical even with subsidies. In California, for example, incumbent telcos have largely shunned subsidies for premises Internet infrastructure offered through a six-year-old subsidy fund, the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), similar to that being contemplated for Colorado. They have also challenged proposed CASF wireline projects by arguing the projects would serve premises adequately served by mobile broadband services.

Only a large scale overbuild of the outmoded copper cable plant with fiber to the premise infrastructure makes sense over the long term from both a technological and economic standpoint. State and federal Internet infrastructure subsidy funds should be structured accordingly.

Colorado bill first step in state investment in Internet infrastructure

Government Technology has an article today on legislation introduced in the Colorado Legislature that the author, Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, describes as a first step toward the state investment in Internet telecom infrastructure shunned by private sector providers:

Schwartz said the intent of the Rural Broadband Jobs Act is to help Colorado improve access to broadband so that businesses throughout the state have opportunities to be competitive and successful.

“I am looking for a definitive assessment of underserved and unserved areas in our state that lack broadband access,” Schwartz said in an interview with Government Technology. After those areas are defined and as funding becomes available, she’d like the state to invest in the infrastructure needed to bring broadband to those underserved locations.

Click here to read Colorado Senate Bill 12-129, CONCERNING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE BROADBAND INTERNET CONNECTIVITY IN NONCOMPETITIVE RURAL AREAS.

Qwest abandons IPTV in Colorado

Qwest, the former Baby Bell US West spun off from AT&T two decades ago, has abandoned plans to deploy Internet Protocol TV in Colorado next year. At the same time, the Denver Post reports, Qwest has shelved lobbying efforts like those pursued by AT&T in its 22-state operating territory to get a statewide video franchise bill enacted preempting local governments and their irksome demands that telcos deploying advanced telecommunications services including video service to compete with cable be available to everyone and not just selected neighborhoods.

The build out issue apparently figured into Qwest's decision:

Ken Fellman, former mayor of Arvada and a local communications lawyer, said he respects the company's decision to back off of its video plans. Fellman has asked that Qwest be required to offer video services to all members of a city or town, not certain select neighborhoods.

"It was a concern that Qwest didn't have the financial resources to widely deploy service," said Fellman, who also represents the Greater Metro Telecommunications Consortium. "We would have ended up with pockets of competition. Perhaps in some ways, (Qwest CEO Ed) Mueller came to a similar conclusion."

More telco baloney courtesy of Qwest

Telco Qwest is having a fit over local Colorado governments that want it to tell them where and when it plans to build upgraded broadband infrastructure to enable it to offer Internet Protocol TV.

The Denver-based telco complains that doing so is divulging trade secrets and would tip off competing cable companies of its plans.

Baloney! Markets are made by what is actually offered, not what is planned. The real issue is all about buildout. All too often, the telco/cable duopoly wants to put in place incomplete systems that leave entire neighborhoods without access to advanced broadband services. Local governments are right to demand providers serve all of their residents and not leave gaping broadband black holes.

Colorado video franchise fight reveals true goal of provider "competition," Comcast's hypocrisy

Here's an interesting story from the Rocky Mountain News that illustrates what the real competition between cable companies and telcos is all about. It's not about which can capture the most customers in a given market -- the traditional measure of market competition -- but rather who can force the other guy to provide service to everyone in a given local government jurisdiction.

Cable provider Comcast insists Denver-based telco Qwest be required to provide broadband video service to everyone in the Colorado municipalities it wants to serve, charging Qwest will leave some neighborhoods unserved if local governments don't require it to do so in exchange for granting Qwest a video franchise. (Note however, hypocritical Comcast does exactly what it accuses Qwest of doing, including in my own El Dorado County, California ZIP code where Comcast serves some neighborhoods but refuses to serve others).

If Colorado local governments force Qwest to serve their entire jurisdictions, the Rocky Mountain News reports Qwest may counter by invoking a recently promulgated Federal Communications Commission rule that Qwest sought prohibiting local governments from imposing "unreasonable" build out requirements on telephone companies seeking franchises to offer enhanced broadband-based video services. The rule also requires local governments to make a decision on a video franchise application within 90 days.

If Qwest presses ahead with this reported effort to accelerate local government video franchise applications, it will set the stage for litigation over the meaning of what constitutes an "unreasonable" build out requirement under the FCC rule. Local governments have already gone to federal court to challenge the rule, contending the FCC overstepped its authority.

Qwest's initiative also marks a quick reversal of a strategy announced earlier this month by CEO Richard Notebaert, who told Bloomberg Qwest planned to hold off offering video over phone lines, concentrating instead on accelerating residential broadband Internet access.