The Infrastructure Bill is About More than Money | Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

The Infrastructure Bill is About More than Money | Benton Institute for Broadband & Society: it is now the policy of the United States that: Subscribers should benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service within the service area of a provider of such service; "Equal access" means the equal opportunity to subscribe to a service that provides comparable speeds, capacities, latency, and other quality of service metrics in a given area, for comparable terms and conditions; and The FCC should take steps to ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service.

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The Benton Institute is right. While the billions appropriated to the states in the advanced telecommunications infrastructure component of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act headed to President Biden's desk gets most media attention, the measure contains important expressions of telecommunications policy. How they ultimately end up being implemented will be crucial headed into 2022 and beyond.

The Benton Institute's call that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission act to ensure the "equal access" provision sounds in the Title II universal service and anti-redlining requirements enacted in the FCC's 2015 Open Internet rulemaking reclassifying Internet Protocol delivered services as a common carrier telecommunications utility.

In an executive order issued in July, President Biden called on the FCC to reinstate that rulemaking that was repealed in 2018 during the Trump administration that deemed IP services as optional information services under Title I of the Communications Act of 1934. The order also calls on the FCC to initiate a rulemaking to require service providers to regularly report price and subscription rates to the public in a useful manner to improve price transparency and market functioning. The infrastructure bill mandates the FCC convene a proceeding to determine how to achieve universal service and to recommend to Congress expand it “if the Commission believes such an expansion is in the public interest.”

Another key policy issue that will be addressed in the infrastructure bill's implementation is the role of public sector and nonprofit entities like consumer utility cooperatives. When the Biden administration issued its foundation for the infrastructure bill -- the American Jobs Plan -- it clearly favored them as more nimble and complete builders and operators of much needed infrastructure as shown in this paragraph from the plan:

Build high-speed broadband infrastructure to reach 100 percent coverage. The President’s plan prioritizes building “future proof” broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas so that we finally reach 100 percent high-speed broadband coverage. It also prioritizes support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and co-operatives—providers with less pressure to turn profits and with a commitment to serving entire communities.

The pressure private investor owned vertically integrated telephone and cable companies face to generate profits works against full deployment in their putative service territories. That has brought about longstanding, widespread gaps in landline connectivity to homes and small businesses, creating a pattern of Swiss cheese holes in delivery infrastructure in urban, suburban, exurban and rural areas with the latter two categories most severely affected.