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.