States and regions need to step up to ensure timely transition to fiber from metallic telecom infrastructure

Given ongoing political gridlock in Washington and the lack of comprehensive federal policy to rapidly modernize America’s legacy metallic telecom infrastructure built in the previous century to deliver analog telephone service and cable TV to fiber for the current one, it now falls to states and regions to take the lead.

States and localities have looked to multiple time-limited and heavily restricted federal grant sources over the past 15 years or so as their primary source of funding -- most recently infrastructure subsidies contained in the American Rescue Plan Act state and local government coronavirus relief legislation.

But to move the nation rapidly forward with world class fiber reaching most every American doorstep, they will have to generate their own dedicated revenue and regard federal dollars as supplemental and not primary. States should consider telecom bill surcharges to service long term bonds to finance publicly owned advanced telecommunications infrastructure construction and operations.

This has to be a state and regional effort given the necessities of scale and time. Local governments tend to look at advanced telecommunications infrastructure deficits like sections of deteriorating road needing replacement. That approach is too piecemeal and incremental and won’t bring fiber to most every address in a reasonably rapid time frame -- the urgency of which became painfully apparent when pandemic restrictions turned homes into workplaces, places of learning and extensions of medical clinics.

Local governments are reluctant to impose parcel taxes that would provide sufficient funding such that grant funding would play a minor supplemental role. This is important because even with $45 billion appropriated for advanced telecommunications infrastructure in the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted one year ago, provisions of the legislation restrict its use to the most remote and insular areas of the nation. That allocation may turn out to be spread too thinly given the nation’s large land mass and the funds being earmarked for extremely remote areas where construction and operational costs are the highest.

This shouldn’t be viewed in binary terms as an all or nothing choice between the public and private sectors. While state and regional infrastructure should be publicly built and financed as roads and highways are, private sector actors play a critical role in designing, building and operating this infrastructure in addition to offering advanced telecommunications and information services. NGOs such as consumer utility cooperatives also play an important role, particularly in rural areas where they have historically operated.