If Congress could turn back the calendar to the 1990s when then Vice President Al Gore envisioned a digital “information superhighway,” it could have adopted a different strategy than unsustainably relying on legacy voice telephone service to chip away at its construction and the unrealistic idea that investor-owned service providers would compete to build high cost, long ROI fiber telecommunications infrastructure to replace legacy metallic voice telephone and cable TV plant. Congress should have instead formed a Digital Infrastructure Authority.
The regionally administered authority would similar to the Federal Highway Fund fuel tax that operates as an excise tax on companies that originate and send traffic over this fiber optic freeway, something that has been proposed by service providers and their policy advocates.
It would provide long term, low interest loans to publicly and consumer utility cooperative owned networks so as to not favor any privately owned provider and function as an open access network – a public resource available to anyone who wants to use it. The authority would also have the ability to purchase existing networks and their rights of way in order to increase economies of scale, cost efficient construction and network reliability.
There would be plenty of economic opportunity for private sector players to design, build and operate the network. And it would reach farther than fiber networks they could afford to build, which limit them to proscribed builds that favor densely developed areas but leave other areas without service.
The Digital infrastructure Authority would also make access more affordable for end users since it would not have to generate profits for investors or pay business taxes. By charter, it would reach any doorstep on the electrical grid.
The good news is it’s not too late four decades later for Congress to choose this course. Call it a course correction.
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