Subsidizing copper "broadband" instead of fiber "silly."

Rural Colorado sees more broadband options, but not quickly: For years, the federal government has offered needy areas grants and loans through the Connect America Fund, which uses Universal Service Fund money collected from consumers in their monthly phone bills.

In Colorado, the largest recipient, CenturyLink, received $107.3 million from the federal program and has helped get service of at least 10 mbps to 31,620 rural households in Colorado by the end of 2018. That’s about 90% of CAF funds distributed in Colorado since 2015. But those households are unlikely to get upgraded to faster broadband, which the FCC now defines as 25 mbps down, 3 mbps up.

“That’s a copper-based network. When you’re trying to build out a future-proof fiber network, it slams so many doors on you for funding. As a national policy, It’s embarrassing,” Smith said. “Why wouldn’t you want your citizens of the United States to have the highest, best network in the world? But you keep subsidizing this old copper infrastructure and copper, to me, is silly.”

Silly indeed. Poor public telecom infrastructure policy. It's hard to advance to the 21st century supporting 20th century technology.

U.S. doesn't have a "broadband subscription" problem. It has an infrastructure problem.

Neighborhood broadband data makes it clear: We need an agenda to fight digital poverty: How would you feel if half of the homes your neighborhood didn’t have electricity? Or if a quarter didn’t have running water? It’s hard to imagine, mostly because the United States benefits from near-universal access to electricity and water.  That’s not the story for another crucial utility: broadband, or high-speed internet service. Digital platforms have transformed most parts of daily life, from how we talk to one another, to how we consume media, to how we travel. But those platforms are only meaningful if you can access them via broadband. In 2018, more than 18 million American households lived without a broadband subscription. This means that today’s digital economy is out of reach for far too many people.

A big part of this problem is continuing to see America's advanced telecom infrastructure deficiencies not as an infrastructure issue but rather a "broadband subscription" problem. As long as that term is used, it's going to be difficult to conceive of it as a "crucial utility" as described here.

It's a critical distinction and words matter. The term "broadband subscription" derives from the legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies that sold "broadband subscriptions" as a optional add on service and NOT as a utility. Moreover, these companies fight hard against classifying Internet service as a telecommunications utility regulated under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, dubbed in the media as the battle over "net neutrality." Rather, they preferred it remain an optional subscription-based "information service" regulated under Title I of the statute and delivered through their vertically integrated proprietary premise connections and without the Title II requirement they honor all reasonable requests for service.

U.S. telecom infrastructure deficiencies inaccurately described as "rural broadband" problem

Neighborhood broadband data makes it clear: We need an agenda to fight digital poverty: The digital gap between urban and rural parts of the country tends to garner the most attention. However, our analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) data tells another story: The majority of digitally disconnected households live in metropolitan areas, and the gaps are especially large when comparing neighborhoods within the same place. Effectively, some residents live in digital poverty even as their neighbors thrive.

Poor connectivity within metro areas has not gotten the attention it deserves, particularly as their residents seek more affordable housing in more distant suburbs and exurbs that typically lack modern fiber to the premise #FTTP telecom infrastructure. Much of the media narrative instead is based on a circa 1950 version of the United States. At that time, residential settlement was much more binary, divided among urban and rural areas. This has also led to outdated and inaccurate comparisons of poor "rural broadband" to lack of electric power and telephone infrastructure in rural areas in the early part of the 20th century.