Lacking a global policy to support the modernization of legacy copper analog telephone infrastructure to fiber to support modern Internet protocol-based voice, video and data services, the United States has defaulted to multiple, one off piecemeal subsidy programs. Determining how these programs operate has resulted in further fragmentation into two camps. They are the broadbanders and the infrastructuralists.
The broadbanders have held sway since the 1996 Telecom Act. It directed the Federal Communications (FCC) to annually survey the deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure and identify and correct impediments.
The FCC chose broadband speed – how fast bytes travel to and from end user premises – as the metric by which to gauge deployment. As long as the numbers were increasing over the past three decades, the FCC declared sufficient progress.
Various subsidy programs also adopted this metric as an eligibility factor. Only premises offered specified broadband speeds falling below an arbitrary cutoff were deemed eligible. That in turn led to the creation of “broadband maps” to determine which addresses were considered served and thus ineligible and which were “unserved” or “underserved” and thus eligible.
The infrastructuralists argue this is inherently wasteful and short lived since what is deemed adequate “broadband speed” is dynamic and growing rapidly such that by the time subsidies are awarded, projects face imminent obsolescence. They favor subsidizing fiber to the premise delivery infrastructure because of its long-term life, relatively low upgrade costs and its capacity to easily accommodate the longstanding trend of increased device and data use.
The infrastructuralists’ influence peaked in 2021 when the Biden administration’s infrastructure legislation proposed appropriating $90 billion to subsidize public and utility cooperative owned fiber that the president noted have a lower cost structure since they don’t have to produce profit for investors.
Naturally, investor owned providers that dominate America’s market-based telecommunications were opposed. The bill was quickly scaled down and amended to favor the broadbander camp, using the broadband speed metric and related broadband mapping to determine subsidy eligibility.
The Biden administration proposed guidance for the amended measure’s Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program that allowed states to prioritize fiber projects in parceling out grants awarded to the states under the legislation. That gave the infrastructuralists leverage.
But the broadbanders -- particularly wireless and low earth orbit satellite services – claimed that was unfair. Americans in areas with obsolete legacy metallic infrastructure needed better service decades ago and suffered long enough. We can provide it much faster than building out fiber to them, they claimed, urging the feds to liberalize BEAD so some of the subsidies flow our way.
The broadbanders gained influence in the waning months of the Biden administration and now hold sway in the current Trump administration. In the BEAD battle, some states are claiming they know what’s best to meet the needs of their residents and businesses and insist fiber is the best use of taxpayer dollars. But the billions needed to build it largely come from Washington, giving federal policymakers the ultimate say.
As they have for decades, the broadbanders remain dominant over the infrastructuralists.
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