Housing development -- not geographical region -- key determinant of fiber deployment

One of the biggest challenges America has faced over the past two decades resolving its entrenched advanced telecommunications infrastructure deficiencies -- and specifically homes and small businesses where copper telephone lines have not been upgraded to fiber -- is how this nationwide challenge is defined.

The problem tends to be delineated in geographic terms as a modifier to throughput (versus infrastructure), e.g., “urban broadband” and “rural broadband.” This bifurcated geographic focus also drives misguided, ill-fated efforts to “broadband map” regions by census tract based on throughput providers report to the Federal Communications Commission.

It’s often inaccurately compared to electrical power infrastructure in early 20th century America. Electrical power distribution infrastructure fell rather neatly along urban and rural lines in a far less populated nation, with the former electrified while the latter went unwired until the federal government stepped in with loans for consumer utility cooperatives.

Disparate deployment of fiber is far more granular than these regional distinctions. The key determinant isn’t so much whether a region is urban, suburban or exurban. Rather, it’s the type of neighborhood development that exists or is planned over the next five years. New and dense development is favored for fiber builds. Older and less dense is not, even in relatively affluent neighborhoods.

Large ISPs have specialized units dedicated to bringing fiber to multi-family housing and planned unit development neighborhoods. They advertise in a trade journal aptly titled Broadband Communities. Investor-owned providers aren’t likely to build fiber outside of these preferred forms of residential development since they are believed to represent greater assurance of faster returns on investment their shareholders expect. In an article appearing in the January-February 2021 issue of the publication, Jeff Storey, CEO of Lumen, was quoted as telling industry analysts in late 2020 the telephone company will be "micro-targeting in selecting the areas we serve.” 

While that's a prudent strategy to satisfy investors, it clashes with public expectations of access to robust home connectivity regardless of their home address, which by definition isn't likely to be part of a "micro-targeted" fiber deployment.

That’s where the Biden administration’s infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan, comes in to address public expectations that have been conveyed to elected representatives. It would appropriate $100 billion for fiber infrastructure to be deployed by local governments, nonprofits and consumer cooperatives. Notably, the administration’s proposal explicitly recognizes these entities are not expected to generate rapid returns for investors and offer a much needed alternative business structure to ensure fiber is deployed to homes not preferred by investor-owned providers.