5 key indications of America's telecommunications infrastructure crisis

The crisis confronting the United States relative to modernizing its telecommunications infrastructure to support fiber connections for all occupied premises manifests in five key areas:

1. Ongoing access disparities with 34 million Americans unable to obtain telecommunications service capable of delivering high-quality voice, data, graphics and video.
2. Excessive reliance on the constrained, subscription-based business models of legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies to undertake needed infrastructure modernization and expansion.
3. Underfunded state and local government efforts to build and subsidize telecommunications infrastructure modernization projects.
4. Underfunded, restrictive federal government programs to subsidize telecom infrastructure serving rural regions based on obsolete technical standards.
5. Tightly restrained private sector construction of fiber to the premise infrastructure, limited to selected major metropolitan area neighborhoods.