To Fix America's Infrastructure, Start Here

Such has been the state of infrastructure in the U.S. for decades — fixes get put off until they’re absolutely necessary, and U.S. airports, roads and public transportation draw frequent comparisons to those in nations with far fewer resources. Meanwhile, countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have leapt ahead with so-called smart cities, high-speed trains and eco-friendly buildings. In 2019, the U.S. ranked 13th in the world in a broad measure of infrastructure quality — down from fifth place in 2002, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.

Source: How to Fix America's Infrastructure

When it comes to advanced telecommunications, it's even worse. Progress has been impeded for decades because it hasn't even been regarded as critical infrastructure but rather a commercial service of providing "broadband" bandwidth and service bundles to qualifying households. That's changing with the Biden administration's proposed infrastructure investment plan, the American Jobs Plan, that regards telecom as critical infrastructure and as such, it cannot be left to the private market to build it.

As the administration makes a long overdue shift of the policy discussion from broadband to infrastructure, it must be careful not to allow legacy investor owned telephone and cable companies to continue to control the narrative by focusing on broadband bandwidth as they have for the past quarter century. (Or that the problem is largely confined to rural areas when only one third of U.S. homes are passed by fiber.) It's evident in their complaints that publicly or consumer cooperative owned fiber to the home would be wasteful "overbuilding" arguing their limited deployments provide sufficient bandwidth. 

Similarly, consumer advocates and public policymakers should avoid falling into the bandwidth trap by calling for more and better "broadband maps" showing what bandwidth is offered in a given neighborhood. The goal should be fiber connections to nearly every American doorstep, a goal the private sector cannot achieve quickly enough relative to the need that has been heightened during the public health restrictions accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic.