USDA ReConnect Rural Broadband Pilot Rules Released, Allocates $600M in Loans and Grants - Telecompetitor

USDA ReConnect Rural Broadband Pilot Rules Released, Allocates $600M in Loans and Grants - Telecompetitor: To be eligible for a 100% loan or 50% loan / 50% grant, the service area must be in a rural area where 90% of the households do not have sufficient broadband access. To be eligible for a 100% grant, the service area must be rural and 100% of the households must lack sufficient broadband access.

These funds are apparently targeted to truly rural America where they'll make only a slight dent in advanced telecom infrastructure deficits. They won't help in much of the United States and particularly exurban and metro edge communities where redlining by investor owned ISPs is commonplace.

California policymakers should consider creating public utility to serve Northern California delivering electric power -- and advanced telecommunications.

Northern California’s electric utility Pacific Gas & Electric’s future as a going concern is in doubt in the aftermath of enormous wildfires in the region the past several years, most recently the disastrous Camp Fire that incinerated the town of Paradise. The investor-owned utility is potentially facing liability claims running into the many billions of dollars from deaths, injuries, property damage and fire suppression costs that it will be hard pressed to pay. This circumstance is raising the question of whether the public interest of reliable and safe electric power would be better served by a publicly owned utility.

The question presents at a pivotal time as regulators prepare to reassess PG&E’s organizational structure going forward, the Legislature begins a new biennial session and new administration is about to take office. Veteran Sacramento columnist Dan Walters suggests they explore whether California’s electric utilities should become governmental entities – regional versions of municipally owned utilities already operating in the state. “All of them have markedly lower rates than the three big private utilities, and have governing structures that are much more transparent and accountable, not only to ratepayers but to voters.”

Policymakers would be wise and forward looking to also consider expanding the scope of a publicly owned regional utility to include advanced telecommunications. Consumers would likely get a better deal there as well. Much of PG&E’s service area lacks adequate landline telecommunications infrastructure, nominally served by investor owned corporations like PG&E. A publicly owned utility would operate without the need to generate profits and could concentrate on providing the highest possible level of service and value to all – and not just some premises. Particularly when advanced telecommunications service is increasingly seen as essential as electricity.

New methods of installing fiber optic cable on poles owned by PG&E show promise to lower construction costs compared to the traditional strand and lash method of utilizing a separate metal suspension cable hung in the middle part of the pole leased by telephone and cable companies. These include lighter weight all-dielectric self-supporting cable and aerial conduit used in conjunction with smart grid technology. Smart grid technology could also improve safety management of the electric infrastructure, reducing wildfire risk.

Cooperatives served early 20th century exurban America's electricity and telephone needs, but face far more challenging situation for today's advanced telecom

Matheson: ‘We Want the Consumer to Have Real Broadband’ - America's Electric Cooperatives: NRECA CEO Jim Matheson, speaking before a Washington audience of business strategists, outlined how federal policymakers can help close the digital divide and what innovative electric cooperatives are doing to meet rural America’s broadband needs in the meantime.High-speed internet service “is important to us as electric cooperatives because we are owned by the communities we serve, communities that won’t have much of a future without broadband,” Matheson said at the Next.2018 conference held Nov. 13-15 by Bloomberg BNA, a news and analysis company.

Matheson underscored how electric co-ops are leaders in smart technology, yet Federal Communications Commission policies fail to make the most of co-op investments for broadband development. “The FCC has spent $114 billion, and there are still 23 million people without access to broadband,” he said. This gap in service is due in part to the commission’s reliance on self-reported and unverified data about internet service from incumbent providers.

Electric power was first deployed in urban areas of the United States at the start of the 20th century. That's what led to the formation of electric cooperatives in the 1930s to provide electricity outside of urban areas.

Today's advanced telecom infrastructure deficiencies are a different story. Unlike early electric power service, advanced telecom infrastructure does exist outside of urban and suburban areas. But it's generally only deployed to discrete areas where legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies believe they can earn a relatively rapid return on their capital expenditures and maintenance costs. As per the previous post on this blog, that can mean service for one house while another just down the road, around the bend or outside town limits is deemed unservicable.

Incumbents aren't keen on federal subsidies for providers desiring to serve those they do not since they potentially infringe on their territorial monopolies. Consequently, federal subsidy program rules hamstring potential alternative providers, impractically targeted at filling the only the unserved redlined holes in the incumbents' swiss cheese distribution networks. The incumbents lobby for those rules. They naturally want to maximize the size of the cheese and minimize the size of the holes in the data on infrastructure availability they are required to report to regulators under the 1996 revision of the Communications Act. The incumbent rigging of the rules leaves cooperative leaders like Matheson understandably frustrated.