Lacking public policy establishing universal service, U.S. will continue to struggle and spin its wheels to achieve it.

As the U.S. General Accountability Office report noted in a report issued in May 2022, the United States lacks a 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.

The Biden administration has stated a policy principle of universal service: “Internet for All.” That was emphasized in March by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo at an interview with Yahoo Finance. "The reality is, if we're going to connect every American, including the tens of millions of Americans who now don't have the internet, we're going to have to lay fiber all across this country,” Raimondo said.

But the administration’s context here is yet another subsidy program – the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program authorized by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) – and not affirmative public policy ensuring fiber reaches most every American doorstep as Raimondo described the mission.

Like the 1996 Telecom Act that “encourage(s) 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” the IIJA does not create universal access as public policy. It merely states that it’s “essential to full participation in modern life in the United States.”

Nor has public policy that has primarily relied on investor-owned companies to deploy fiber to the premise (FTTP) infrastructure been “consistent with the public interest” since investor-owned providers must naturally place the interests of their owners ahead of the public interest of ubiquitous, affordable connectivity. That’s arguably inconsistent with the public interest. (Emphasis added)

Until affirmative public policy that actually has the means to expeditiously attain universal, affordable access is put into federal statute or administrative law based on a unifying and action-based policy principle, the nation that invented the internet will continue to struggle and spin its wheels to achieve this goal.