The U.S. federal government has whiffed multiple times over the past three decades when it comes to mandating universal service for advanced telecommunications as it did for analog voice telephone service before it. A universal service mandate recognizes that telecommunications infrastructure like other utility infrastructure functions as a natural monopoly because of high cost barriers to competitor entry and first mover advantage accorded incumbents limit choice among multiple sellers.
It first did so in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The statute includes language stating legislative intent that access to advanced telecommunications and information services should be provided in all regions of the Nation including rural and high cost areas -- but no means to ensure that it would.
The closest federal policy came to mandating universal access to advanced telecommunications was in 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) placed Internet protocol telecommunications under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, classifying it as a common carrier utility requiring reasonable requests for service be honored and barring neighborhood redlining. The FCC declined to enforce a regulation adopting the reclassification and reversed course in 2018, repealing it.
Instead, the FCC and state public utility commissions must merely “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans … in a manner consistent with the public interest, convenience, and necessity” per 47 U.S. Code § 1302(a). The statute also turns economic logic on its head by mandating these regulatory bodies promulgate “measures that promote competition in the (aforementioned natural monopoly) local telecommunications market.”
In 2021, the feds punted the universal service issue to the states with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that appropriates $42.5 billion in grants to the states to subsidize advanced telecommunications infrastructure and prioritizing funding of fiber to the premise (FTTP) delivery infrastructure. The funding is administered under the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
The BEAD program requires states to develop “Five-Year Action Plans” including “a comprehensive, high-level plan for providing reliable, affordable, high-speed internet service throughout the (state) including the estimated timeline and cost for universal service.” It also frames universal access as a matter of digital inclusion and equity, noting that it's necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services.
For the states, that will mean developing their own concrete universal service policies and funding strategies given that federal policy remains aspirational. A U.S. General Accountability Office report issued in May 2022 concluded there is no national strategy to guide the deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure. Instead, the report found, there are numerous, uncoordinated subsidy programs administered by multiple federal agencies.
No comments:
Post a Comment