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.