Legislative proposal claims goal of modernizing U.S. telecom infrastructure. But it doesn't have a plan to get there.

GOP Leaders Offer Broadband Framework - Multichannel: Senate Commerce Committee chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) describe it as a foundation for legislative action related to the COVID-19 economic recovery. In the process, they said, the proposals would "modernize the nation’s communications infrastructure, allow all Americans to participate in the digital economy, and enhance U.S. network security, reliability, and resiliency."

According to its backers framework would include 1) authorizing funding for the FCC to complete accurate broadband mapping efforts, something FCC chair Ajit Pai has been calling for; 2) making sure students have access to broadband, 3) making sure those having trouble paying for broadband can still get it, 4) promoting digital equity; and 5) helping carriers "working tirelessly to to keep Americans connected" during the pandemic.

Problem is none of these five items will meet the goal of modernizing the nation's legacy copper telephone connections that reach most every American doorstep with fiber to the prem #FTTP. This has been a fundamental problem in U.S. telecommunications policy for a generation. It is focused on treating the symptoms of its failure to modernize copper to fiber and talking all around that rather than adopting policy and plans to tackle it head on.

U.S. policymakers should expedite public option #FTTP infrastructure planning, construction

Rebuilding and modernizing America’s infrastructure has taken on greater urgency in the current sharp economic downturn. Those efforts should expedite the planning and construction of advanced telecommunications infrastructure whose role has taken on greater importance as people work, study and receive medical care at home to prevent contagion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As people are thrown out of work by public health efforts to contain the pandemic, construction of this infrastructure should create an accessible and affordable “public option” for originating and receiving high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video. Doing so will create jobs while supporting post pandemic economic recovery.

Legislation should be enacted quickly that would create a make available to state, regional and local governments and consumer electric and telecom cooperatives:

• Technical assistance grants for fiber optic to the premise (FTTP) infrastructure design and business planning;
• Guaranteed low interest loans backed by federal government for FTTP projects with engineering designs and business plans meeting specified quality and level of service standards.

U.S. needs universal FTTP telecom infrastructure as public utility standard

The Benton Foundation has pulled together policy positions of several Democratic presidential candidates in a blog post, 2020 Candidates Offer Plans to Extend the Reach of Broadband. Of these candidates, only Elizabeth Warren offers a plan for universal fiber to the premise (FTTP) advanced telecommunications infrastructure as a public utility. It’s a position recognizing:

1. It’s what’s needed to rapidly modernize the nation’s legacy metal cable built for the pre-digital era of telephone and cable TV service to provide the capacity to handle rapidly growing bandwidth demand;
2. There isn’t and will likely never be a viable business case for private sector investment alone to achieve this in the foreseeable future due to the high labor costs of building utility infrastructure, and;
3. There’s an inherent conflict of interest between private investment and public interests when it comes to modernizing the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure. The public interest is clearly for modernizing to FTTP to enable economic activity, education, medical care and civic engagement. The private investor interest priority isn’t necessarily modernization of telecommunications infrastructure and its positive effects but instead to offer premium, higher margin service offerings based on throughput speed tiers. Warren’s proposal includes throughput speed (symmetric 100Mbs) but only as basic service quality standard.

The goal of universal FTTP as a public utility properly establishes an infrastructure-based standard for the nation considering only a small portion of the country has FTTP connections. That’s far behind where the United States should be in 2019 given that it should have achieved near universal FTTP at least a decade ago.  It’s the right goal for where the nation is now. Not a geographic or bandwidth-based goal of extending “rural broadband” or “improving broadband maps.” Broadband and specifically the lack thereof isn't a solution but rather the primary symptom of the lack of FTTP infrastructure and the consequent weaknesses of existing metallic infrastructure. If it reached nearly every American doorstep, "broadband" speeds and maps wouldn't even be part of the lexicon.

A public option: U.S. Senator, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposes $85 billion grant program to bring publicly owned fiber to every American home

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes a "public option" bringing fiber connectivity to every American home if elected president. Warren's plan would create a new federal office to provide $85 billion in grants covering 90 percent of construction costs. Five billion dollars would be allocated to grants covering 100 percent of construction costs for middle and last mile fiber builds on Native American lands.
Grant applicants would be be subject to a universal service mandate and be required to offer at least one plan with symmetric 100 Mbps service and one discount plan for low-income customers with a prepaid feature or a low monthly rate. Warren, who is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination as its 2020 presidential candidate, is specifically excluding investor owned companies, making grants available only to electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profit organizations, tribes, cities, counties, and other state subdivisions. Warren is critical of existing federal infrastructure subsidy programs, complaining they have "shoveled billions of taxpayer dollars to private ISPs" while much of the nation continues to suffer with deficient advanced telecommunications infrastructure and subpar service.

"This ends when I’m President. I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford. That means publicly-owned and operated networks — and no giant ISPs running away with taxpayer dollars."

Warren's plan does resemble existing federal and state subsidy programs in that it targets grant funding to "unserved" and "underserved" areas that have historically been defined based on maps of current providers' advertised "broadband speeds" -- and not whether fiber to the premise infrastructure is in place. Warren calls for more accurate maps, voicing the concern of many public policymakers they significantly overstate what's on the ground in a given community or address.

Warren should steer clear of this "broadband speed" trap and avoid the sticky wicket of "broadband mapping" which has largely served to protect the service area "footprints" of legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies by creating controversy and delay. In order to create a true public option, all areas of the nation should be eligible for the grants. Particularly given that the vast majority of households lack fiber connections, with an only an estimated 11 million households out of 126 million having them and 75 percent of the nation's census blocks without them. A nationwide public fiber option would cost considerably more than the $85 billion Warren would ask Congress to appropriate. But it's a good start.

B.S. rationale for yet more "broadband study" instead of telecom infrastructure modernization

Klobuchar, Capito Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Measure the Economic Impact of Broadband - News Releases - U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar: WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), co-chairs of the Senate Broadband Caucus, reintroduced the Measuring the Economic Impact of Broadband Act. While the federal government measures the economic impact of many industries, it does not produce current, reliable statistics on the economic impact of broadband on the U.S. economy. Accurate, reliable data on the economic impact of broadband and the digital economy is a valuable tool for policymakers and business leaders and many research institutions, state broadband offices, and trade associations have highlighted the need for this data. The Measuring the Economic Impact of Broadband Act would require the Bureau of Economic Analysis in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Technology to conduct a study of the effects of the digital economy and the adoption of broadband deployment on the U.S. economy.

“In the 21st century economy, broadband is a critical force for creating jobs, leveling the playing field, and increasing opportunity,” Klobuchar said. “This bipartisan legislation will ensure that we have more reliable, publicly available economic data in order to make informed decisions about expanding broadband, connecting our communities, and keeping us competitive in an increasingly digital world.”

The purported rationale for this data hunt is utter bullshit. And likely proffered at the behest of big telephone and cable companies whose motive is to further delay America's badly needed modernization of its legacy metallic phone and cable TV infrastructure to fiber and allow them to continue to redline neighborhoods for advanced telecom service. Let's hold off building while we collect more data and do further study.

3 ways Trump administration telecom infrastructure proposal falls short

White House to unveil latest 5G push and rural broadband initiative - The Verge: President Trump and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai are expected to announce the administration’s latest plans to ensure US leadership in 5G and expand high-speed broadband access to rural areas across the country. On Friday morning, the FCC announced a new plan to roll out high-speed broadband to rural communities through the creation of the commission’s new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. According to the FCC, the fund will “inject” $20.4 billion into broadband networks to connect up to 4 million rural homes and businesses with high-speed broadband over the next decade. “This is a critical tool towards closing the digital divide and will provide some of the critical infrastructure to connecting rural Americans with 5G technologies,” Pai said.

This isn't going to timely solve the America's problem of an urgently needed upgrade of its legacy metallic copper and coax telephone and cable TV plant of the 20th century to fiber to the premise for the 21st. The scope of which can't be narrowly described as a "rural broadband" issue. Rather than a simple plan to construct the necessary fiber, it follows previous subsidy program flaws:

1. Inadequate funding relative to construction costs dispersed over time frames far too long to catch the nation up to where it should be on telecom infrastructure modernization. A couple of billion dollars a year won't go far in a nation as large and diverse as the United States. A Deloitte study concludes the nation needs to invest $130–150 billion in "deep fiber" between 2017 and 2023-25 to provide sufficient bandwidth for premise and mobile wireless services.
2. Additional subsidies to legacy phone and cable companies with no universal service, quality or price strings attached.
3. Continued use of a speed versus technology definition of advanced telecom infrastructure that permits subsidization of metallic plant and and substitution of wireless infrastructure including still under development 5G wireless.

Blair Levin misses key distinction on advanced telecom infrastructure

A broadband agenda for the (eventual) infrastructure bill: Governors have internal agencies and incentives for spending federal discretionary funding on traditional infrastructure sectors like water, sewer, and roads, a point missed in the White House’s argument that money would flow to rural broadband. If we want universal connectivity, the reality is that we need dedicated funds.

Blair Levin's right. But he misses a crucial distinction. Current U.S. policy regards advanced telecommunications infrastructure not as infrastructure per se but rather as a commercial enterprise of selling "broadband" bandwidth to individual customer premises. Expanding it has thus involved tossing token sums (millions for infrastructure that costs billions) to mostly incumbent legacy telephone companies with no real strings attached and no universal service mandate -- unlike subsidies for analog voice telephone service over copper in high cost areas.

And since the focus has been on bandwidth, the debate over subsidization has bogged down over what constitutes adequate bandwidth -- a debate in which Levin has found himself mired in the rest of his piece. It's absurd since bandwidth isn't static and demand continues to grow rapidly with various connected devices and high definition video. Tragically, as the years long controversy over bandwidth adequacy continues, the United States continues to fall further behind where it should be: having fiber connections to every address and not just a select few. That is a real, solid definition of universal service.

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive: “Indeed, according to new data, over half of these municipal fiber systems fail to bring in enough revenue to cover their ongoing operating costs, bleeding red ink every day they operate and falling further and further into debt,” McAuliffe, who is also federal affairs manager at the conservative Americans for Tax Reform organization, wrote. “These bad investments crowd out other needs and, in the worst case, can put a city’s financial solvency at risk.”

This warning is grounded in the paradigm of so-called "take rate risk:" that too few premises will subscribe to advanced telecom connections. It's predicated on the now two-decade-old view of advanced telecommunications over Internet protocol as a cutting edge, luxury service that would be shunned by many. That's no longer the case. The expectation now is there be landline connections as common as voice telephone connections were in most of the 20th century. Particularly now that they deliver such a wide array of voice, data and video services. And unlike private sector, investor owned providers wholly reliant on subscription revenues, governments have other forms of financing available to them to build and operate advanced telecom networks.

The more real risk public sector owned advanced telecom projects face now is faulty financial planning and poor project management that leads to cost and budget overruns -- a common problem that many public works projects encounter. These can be managed by employing best practices and fails to support the view expressed here that only private sector, investor owned entities are competent to own and operate advanced telecom networks.

Tipping point may be at hand; advantage public sector ownership of advanced telecom infrastructure

Municipal broadband internet: The next public utility? | Smart Cities Dive: Despite many cities and counties looking to put together a municipal broadband initiative of their own, there remains strong opposition from telecom companies, as well as concerns over cost. While the CTC report found that municipal internet in Seattle is feasible, it also raised concerns about the price tag of the project, which is complicated by the fact that SCL cannot assume additional financial risk and so would need guaranteed payments to cover operations and maintenance.

The legacy incumbent investor owned telephone and cable companies have been conservative in modernizing their infrastructures to fiber and building out to reach every customer premise in their nominal service territories. It goes back two decades to the late 1990s when telephone companies offered digital subscriber line (DSL) as a luxury upgrade over standard sluggish dialup service. Soon thereafter, cable companies offered IP telecom services as an extra cost add on to create more lucrative service bundles beyond their traditional TV programming.

Naturally, these companies wanted to offer a high end upgrade product only where there were a sufficient number of densely developed neighborhoods with incomes high enough they would be a good bet to sign up. Those neighborhoods deemed too risky are redlined -- where too many of them remain today with some 19 million Americans lacking access to landline connections according to current U.S. Federal Communications Commission data. 

Now a tipping point may be at hand. Instead of being regarded as a luxury service as in the past, IP telecom service delivering voice, video and data is widely becoming viewed as a basic utility like voice telephone service was before it, with nearly every home, school, business and institutional building expected to have a landline connection. That shifting expectation alters the risk picture for investing in building universal fiber to the premise #FTTP. If most everyone will take the service, the risk of not generating sufficient revenues to cover capital and operational costs of the infrastructure decreases considerably. Particularly if it's offered at single price point affordable by most rather than costly, confusing and misleading offers that plague today's IP services. Yes, potentially lower ARPU, but a lot more end users to spread out the costs. And there should be subsidies for low income households; it's better they pay something rather than nothing because they can't afford it.

The public sector is beginning to see things as this story suggests. It has a major advantage over investor-owned ISPs in having access to far more patient capital that does not demand a rapid return on investment. Public sector owners of advanced telecom infrastructure also have an advantage in having more broad-based incentives to get it built in the form of what Paul de Sa, former head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, termed "positive externalities" in a white paper since retracted by the current FCC. That's an economic term referring to the beneficial, knock on impacts on economic activity, healthcare, property values and local tax bases, education, and transportation demand reduction when most every premise can get connected to modern, advanced telecom infrastructure.

That's not to say there's no role for investor owned players. They know how to build and operate advanced telecommunications networks and should partner with public sector owners to bring the United States to where it should be amid explosive demand that shows no signs of slowing down.

U.S. losing its build big moxie: telecom infrastructure modernization case in point

Can America Still Build Big? A California Rail Project Raises Doubts - The New York Times: The need for increased infrastructure investment has been one of America’s few remaining bipartisan issues, although left and right differ over whether public money or private money would finance it. President Barack Obama made reinvesting in roads, bridges and power plants a cornerstone of the 2009 economic stimulus package, and during the 2016 presidential campaign seemingly the only disagreement Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had on infrastructure was about which of their administrations would spend more on it. The issue unites truckers and train buffs, unions and Wall Street, economists from the left and right.

And yet, when it comes to spending the money — and actually getting things built — very little progress has been made. Following a brief spike during the recession, government investment has hovered around 3.3 percent of gross domestic product for the past few years, which is the lowest since the 1940s. In the meantime, roads, bridges and train tracks have gotten steadily older while proposals for new projects are delayed by political intransigence and legal delays.

The failure of the United States to timely modernize its legacy metallic telecommunications infrastructure built for the analog age of telephone and cable TV to fiber optic technology for the digital age is a pertinent example. Federal, state and local elected representatives uniformly proclaim the need is great with many at the state and local level saying it's the number one topic of constituent contacts. It's a major disconnect between what's needed and what's actually being built, reflecting the loss of America's moxie to think big and act big.

Meanwhile as the phone and cable companies incrementally upgrade their legacy infrastructures in search of high margin luxury "broadband speed" rents instead of bringing fiber to every doorstep as was the case with phone service, the nation is already a generation late and falling further behind where it should be in 2019. Fiber connections should have reached every home, school, business and government building by 2010 at the latest. The title of author Susan Crawford's recently published book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution―and Why America Might Miss It points up the tardiness of this vital infrastructure reboot. It's not just a hypothetical. As Crawford's book notes, compared to other nations it already has.

NTIA Reauthorization Legislation Morphs Into Legacy Incumbent Protectionist Measure

NTIA Reauthorization Legislation Morphs Into Broadband Bill - Multichannel: On the broadband front, the bill establishes an Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within NTIA to do outreach to communities in need of high-speed broadband as well as hold workshops and develop training tools to help expand adoption and access.

And in a move that warms the hearts of ISPs often complaining about overbuilding and potential waste, fraud and abuse in government subsidies, the new office would create a database identifying how federal broadband money was being used, including tracking construction and access to any infrastructure build-out.

Both of these are cynical provisions that will do nothing to support America's urgent need to modernize its legacy metallic telecom infrastructure to fiber to the premise serving all homes, schools and businesses. They are essentially designed to keep the sub optimal status quo in place and protect legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies wishing to preserve control over their nominal, limited footprint service territories without disruption.

Public policy likely to shift to regard IP-based advanced telecommunications as a utility, aligning with public expectations

Internet Service Providers have historically regarded their “broadband” offerings as luxury upgrades to basic narrowband dialup service introduced in the early 1990s. Consequently, they upgraded their “last mile” delivery infrastructures to support a range of Internet protocol supported services such as high quality data, video, voice only in select areas where they believed a sufficient number of households would opt for their high end offerings. The working assumption was significantly fewer than half would do so. Hence to hedge their risk, ISPs favored areas with the highest density single family housing and multiple dwelling units (MDUs) to increase the likelihood their investment in upgraded infrastructure would produce a decent return over a relatively short duration in order to satisfy their investors.

Nearly three decades later, ISPs continue to follow this deployment strategy at the same time IP-based advanced telecommunications is increasingly seen as a basic utility service. In the United States, current regulatory policy is aligned with the ISPs “broadband” service-as-luxury business models. ISPs are free of universal service obligations like those that governed voice telephone service of the pre-Internet era, predicated on the policy principle that in a natural monopoly, market forces cannot assure all households requesting service will have their requests honored. That’s consistent with the current public policy that regards advanced telecommunications as luxury and not basic utility service. Why require ISPs to provide service to all requesting it when after all, it’s a luxury? Similarly as a luxury, regulating what ISPs can charge isn’t appropriate. Let them charge what the market will bear. (It will bear quite a lot for a service that consumers see less as a luxury than a basic service.)

The tension between the basic versus luxury service paradigm has been building in recent years and will soon reach a breaking point. As constituent complaints of infrastructure deficits grow more strident, policymakers of every stripe are increasingly describing advanced telecommunications as an essential utility like electric power and water service. Sooner rather than later, public policy will come into alignment with this view. Concurrently, expect a shift away from subsidizing investor-owned ISPs to build the necessary infrastructure to a publicly-led effort. It will be necessary in order to build rapidly enough to cover the persistent infrastructure gaps and to gain a greater degree of control and accountability than has existed in limited subsidy programs for advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

U.S."bandwidth problem" direct consequence of massive policy failure

The moving target: The amount of bandwidth required to make people happy increases each year as the benefits of broadband increase. What looked like a good technical solution a few years ago may not look like one today. That means any true solution must be future proof. Providers in the United States have made great strides toward modernizing their network infrastructure, and they continue to do so. But truly solving the bandwidth problem will require a national commitment to ensuring a world-class infrastructure. 

So writes Masha Zager, editor in chief of Broadband Communities magazine in her column appearing in the the January-February 2018 issue. Zager's column is titled The Bandwidth Problem. The origins of that problem stem from a massive policy failure dating back to the early 1990s. Public and regulatory policy regarded advanced digital telecommunications as a luxury add on to legacy telephone and cable TV services.

That perspective badly hobbled the necessary modernization of America's metallic cable infrastructure designed for 20th century analog telephone and cable TV service to fiber optic to the premise infrastructure for advanced digital telecommunications in the 21st -- the world class infrastructure referred to by Zager. It also established a mindset of bandwidth poverty instead of bandwidth abundance.

Consequently, a generation later the nation is limping along, trapped in a continuous, frustrating cycle of infrastructure failing to keep up with burgeoning bandwidth demand and the embarrassment of Americans still forced to use dialup and satellite services. Also absent is the national commitment that Zager calls for to address the problem. That commitment should be to solve it once and for all with a declaration of a war on bandwidth poverty and an aggressive national initiative to fast track construction of a fully fibered telecommunications network reaching every American doorstep.

Forecast of holographic interactive video within five years a pipe dream

Magic Leap CEO thinks volumetric video will be a part of live TV in five years - The Verge: In an interview with The Verge, Abovitz said that within “two to five years,” it will be technically possible for people wearing Magic Leap goggles to watch an NBA game (or other media) live, but in a holographic, interactive form. “You can stream over the top and to the screens, the virtual screens — you can do that now,” he said. “We’re looking at, how do you derive the information to move the volumetric stuff from that? And then, how do you do volumetric live-streaming as well ... if you time where processing power is going, particularly backends, you’re single-digit years away from that happening.”

Processing power indeed continues as it has to increase. But Abovtitz neglects to consider telecommunications infrastructure deployment advances far more slowly. According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, many millions of American homes lack telecom infrastructure capable of supporting high quality data, voice and video.

Too many remain embarrassingly served by 1990s DSL over aging copper lines, satellite Internet and even dialup. An interactive holographic experience will require enormous bandwidth only fiber optic lines can deliver. But most premises lack fiber connections and there's no coordinated national effort to modernize America's aging and outdated legacy metallic telecom infrastructure to fiber.

Modernizing exurban telecom infrastructure to cut traffic congestion, long commutes

America's Other Housing Crisis: Undercrowded Suburbs - The Atlantic: The reality is that most of the housing stock and most of the land area of America’s metro areas is made up of relatively low-density suburban homes. And a great deal of it is essentially choked off from any future growth, locked in by outmoded and exclusionary land-use regulations. The end result is that most growth today takes place through sprawl. While urban density can house some people—mainly affluent and educated ones—the bulk of population and housing growth is shifted farther and farther out to the exurban fringe. That leads to more traffic and longer commutes, and the social and environmental consequences that flow from them, as this old suburban-growth model is stretched beyond its limits.

There's a disconnect between America's telecommunications infrastructure and this residential development pattern. The exurbs frequently suffer from cable company redlining and outmoded legacy telephone company copper cable plant. In addition, homes are often served solely by substandard, costly wireless services as landline providers concentrate on building fiber connections to multi-family dwellings (known as MDUs) in densely populated urban cores.

This is a point of overlap between telecommunications policy and regional planning. Modernizing telecom infrastructure at the fringes of metro areas to fiber to the premise (FTTP) can play a big role in reducing daily commute trips to urban centers by making it easier for knowledge workers to work in their residential communities.

Both public and private sectors have role to play in U.S. telecom infrastructure modernization

State Senator hopes to spur rural broadband development in Alabama with incentive program - Yellowhammer News: Scofield notes that rural broadband is lacking because the return on investment isn’t there for providers who must build costly infrastructure to serve sparsely populated regions. While providers such as AT&T are investing in new technologies such as fixed wireless, which beam internet signals from cell towers to nearby homes, those speeds are only a slight step up from DSL.Some lawmakers are pressing for government to step into the fray, such as Sen. Tom Whatley (R-Auburn), who has introduced bills to allow the expansion of government-owned networks – such as the broadband system of Opelika Power Services located in his district. But Scofield takes a more limited government approach, noting that the private sector has both the expertise and the economies of scale to do the job more efficiently.

A more nuanced discussion is called for here. It's not an either private or public sector argument. Both the public and private sectors can play a role in the badly needed modernization and build out of America's telecommunications infrastructure. The public sector should own and fund its construction as it does roads and highways. To Scofield's point, the private sector has the expertise. It should build and maintain it just as private contractors do with roads and highways.

Show me the money: Congressman challenges argument that regulation greatest impediment to telecom infrastructure investment

Digital divide: Congress to push for better Internet access in rural areas: Yet the main obstacle to broadband expansion into rural areas is cost, said Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle, the top Democrat on the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee. "It would require tens of billions of dollars to bring broadband to unserved and underserved parts of the country,” he said. “The private sector hasn’t done it because they know they wouldn’t make a profit on it.” Any rural broadband initiative without substantial new funding “would be nothing more than window dressing,” Doyle said.

The "window dressing" to which Doyle refers are assertions by Rep. Marsha Blackburn and other lawmakers that legislative solutions are needed to reduce regulatory burdens on ISPs to speed capital investment in "technology neutral" infrastructure (code for substandard mobile wireless and satellite versus fiber) to serve customer premises. It's refreshing to hear some economic honesty when it comes to tackling America's bad and worsening telecom infrastructure deficit.

Like Obama administration,Trump administration turns to symbolic window dressing rather than modernizing U.S. telecom infrastructure

Rural Internet to Be High Priority for Trump Administration | Successful Farming: Some steps can be taken in the near term to expand broadband networks, said Grace Koh of the National Economic Council. One would be clearer and easier rules for installing antennas on federal buildings and towers. “We will seek to use ‘dark fiber’ that the agencies have deployed in order to allow rural providers to interconnect and provide service to communities that have not had access to broadband before,” said Koh. “Dark fiber” is fiber optic cable that has been installed but is not in use. The administration will also coordinate funding, scattered among agencies, for broadband deployment and adoption. “We are hoping, at this point, to have a few immediate actions to start right away,” said Koh. “Certainly, we anticipate being able to make towers and other infrastructure from the Department of Interior available for collocation. This should cut down on tower construction costs and allow for providers to get their plant and equipment out much more quickly.”

The Trump administration like the Obama administration before it is engaged in symbolic window dressing rather than champion badly needed and aggressive efforts to modernize America's legacy metallic telecommunications infrastructure to fiber optic connections for all homes and businesses. These measures are symbolic incrementalism that will not make any meaningful progress toward that end because they don't deploy fiber over the "last mile" serving these premises.

An October 2017 report by the administration's Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity noted telecom infrastructure gaps are due the inability of investor owned providers earn a return on their capital investments in areas of the nation having lower population density. But while acknowledging that structural problem, it offers no alternatives, all but guaranteeing continued infrastructure deficits. It also advocates the use of wireless technologies rather than bringing connections to customer premises including satellite, fixed wireless, and cellular networks, calling it a cheaper "technology neutral" approach. However, these wireless technologies are limited by the laws of physics and have proven inadequate to accommodate the growing need for increased bandwidth.

"Mr. President, I think a bunch of broadband talk would be seen as a pretty weak response."

To Save the Internet We Must Own the Networks | By David Morris | Common Dreams

To Save the Internet We Must Own the Networks | By David Morris | Common Dreams:

The tools to build locally owned networks may well be there as the author of this article concludes. But adequate funding is another question. Constructing telecommunications infrastructure is very costly and labor intensive. It’s far easier to do in places where local municipal and cooperatively owned electric distribution and telecommunications networks already exist and have supporting infrastructure and funding mechanisms in place. Many of these entities got their start in the early in the 20th century with robust federal funding.

Nearly a century later, there is no meaningful federal funding to support the formation of new local entities to construct and operate advanced fiber telecommunications networks. State and local budgets are strained with obligations to repair and replace other aging infrastructure and honor pension obligations to their workers. They can’t be expected to provide billions to finance locally owned telecom networks.

Without government funding in the form of technical assistance grants and loans, expecting property owners and consumers to come up with the money is highly uncertain outside of highly affluent communities. As price takers rather than the price makers they would be the owners of local infrastructure, they are accustomed to purchasing “broadband” as a commodity monthly service and grudgingly tolerating exorbitant monthly costs and annual rate increases from incumbent telephone and cable companies. They’re unlikely to be motivated to put up the money to build an alternative -- albeit better -- network infrastructure than currently available to them unless they live in a neighborhood redlined by the incumbents.

Local ownership of telecom infrastructure is in concept a meritorious idea. But without a coordinated and well-funded federal program for it that recognizes that local infrastructure is essential to a vital interstate telecommunications network and not a local amenity like a park or playground, it remains only that.

As feds reclassify Internet as information service, will state and local governments finance fiber telecom infrastructure to deliver it?

With Net Neutrality Vote Looming, Cities Look to Publicly Owned Internet Options: (TNS) — It's going to cost somewhere between $70 million and $140 million, officials estimate, to build out the underground fiber-to-the-premises network that Boulder needs to make communitywide broadband a reality. The question for the City Council has never been whether this pursuit is worthwhile, as voters and elected leaders clearly agree on the value of open-access, affordable, high-speed Internet — the introduction of which would put pressure on the incumbent Comcast-CenturyLink duopoly to lower their prices and offer higher speeds. Rather, the question is: Who is going to pay for this buildout? And, for much of the past year, based on advice of a consultant, Boulder has paid $186,000 to date, the most likely answer seemed to be that the city would partner with an outside provider willing to pay for the buildout.

The economic question here is will households and businesses be willing to pay what they now pay for landline Internet access in the form of a tax or utility fee? This question now takes on greater significance as the federal government prepares to reclassify Internet service as an information rather than telecommunications service. That would leave building the fiber telecom infrastructure to deliver those information services to states and localities.

A related question is whether this hands off federal regulatory policy will prompt states to repeal existing statutes restricting the construction of telecommunications infrastructure owned by local governments? It would be difficult for states to justify maintaining these restrictions if the federal government doesn't consider Internet service as a telecommunications utility.