A public option: U.S. Senator, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposes $85 billion grant program to bring publicly owned fiber to every American home

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes a "public option" bringing fiber connectivity to every American home if elected president. Warren's plan would create a new federal office to provide $85 billion in grants covering 90 percent of construction costs. Five billion dollars would be allocated to grants covering 100 percent of construction costs for middle and last mile fiber builds on Native American lands.
Grant applicants would be be subject to a universal service mandate and be required to offer at least one plan with symmetric 100 Mbps service and one discount plan for low-income customers with a prepaid feature or a low monthly rate. Warren, who is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination as its 2020 presidential candidate, is specifically excluding investor owned companies, making grants available only to electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profit organizations, tribes, cities, counties, and other state subdivisions. Warren is critical of existing federal infrastructure subsidy programs, complaining they have "shoveled billions of taxpayer dollars to private ISPs" while much of the nation continues to suffer with deficient advanced telecommunications infrastructure and subpar service.

"This ends when I’m President. I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford. That means publicly-owned and operated networks — and no giant ISPs running away with taxpayer dollars."

Warren's plan does resemble existing federal and state subsidy programs in that it targets grant funding to "unserved" and "underserved" areas that have historically been defined based on maps of current providers' advertised "broadband speeds" -- and not whether fiber to the premise infrastructure is in place. Warren calls for more accurate maps, voicing the concern of many public policymakers they significantly overstate what's on the ground in a given community or address.

Warren should steer clear of this "broadband speed" trap and avoid the sticky wicket of "broadband mapping" which has largely served to protect the service area "footprints" of legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies by creating controversy and delay. In order to create a true public option, all areas of the nation should be eligible for the grants. Particularly given that the vast majority of households lack fiber connections, with an only an estimated 11 million households out of 126 million having them and 75 percent of the nation's census blocks without them. A nationwide public fiber option would cost considerably more than the $85 billion Warren would ask Congress to appropriate. But it's a good start.

Metropolitanization: Why "rural broadband" misses the mark on America's telecom infrastructure deficiencies

Metropolitan America | Newgeography.com: The rural to urban exodus is well known. It has driven the growth of the largest urban areas from one million residents as late as 1800 to nearly 40 million today. The United States has risen from less than 40 percent urban in 1900 to more than 80 percent today. Other, more affluent nations have experienced similar trends. Even more quickly, China has risen from 19 percent urban in 1980 to 56 percent in 2015 today, according to the United Nations. Even the least affluent nations are urbanizing rapidly.

But the trend reflective of urbanization is the movement of people into metropolitan areas, which include traditional (core) city, suburban and even rural areas. This might best be called “metropolitanization.” According to the US Office of Management and Budget, a metropolitan area is “a geographic entity associated with at least one core … plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties" (Note 1). The core is the largest urban area in the metropolitan area. The peripheries of metropolitan areas, outside the largest urban areas, are largely rural by the Census Bureau definition. In 2010, the majority of the nation’s rural population lived in metropolitan areas, while 90 percent of metropolitan land area was rural. Despite living areas formally designated as rural, residents in the metropolitan periphery more often live an urban, rather than rural lifestyle.

So much of the discussion of deficiencies and disparities in advanced telecommunications infrastructure (ATI) in the United States is framed as a dichotomy between urban and rural areas, invoking comparisons to electrical distribution and telephone infrastructure in the early 20th century. Time has moved on and circumstances have changed. Back then as Wendell Cox explains in his blog post, residential settlement patterns were much more sharply defined as urban or rural.

In today's America, that's no longer the case. Metropolitanization has blurred the lines between what was once considered rural and urban. Now on the peripheries of metro areas there are exurbs and quasi-rural areas, an in between type of settlement pattern that has developed in recent decades. They aren't as densely populated as the suburbs and their sprawling housing tracts. But they're more densely populated than traditional rural areas where there may only be 50 to 100 people per square mile. These outlying areas are appealing to homebuyers because they can be seen as within commuting distance of a job center while offering affordable housing at lower prices than in closer in, more densely populated areas.

Metropolitanization has implications for ATI since these exurban areas are often poorly served because they are not seen by dominant investor-owned ATI providers as having high profit potential. However, with metro area traffic congestion increasing making already long commutes longer, ATI can provide the critical infrastructure to enable exurban and residents of other less densely developed areas at the edges of metro areas to work in their communities rather than commute daily to a distant office. That comes with an environmental impact bonus by reducing transportation demand.

5G: Don’t Count on Smartphones to Drive Early Success (Or fixed premise service)

5G: Don’t Count on Smartphones to Drive Early Success - TvTechnology: According to the report, a quarter of households (one-third in the U.S.) have become “hyperconnected” with more than 10 connected devices, covering smartphones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs, voice controlled devices and VR headsets. Households worldwide average six connected screens and one third expect to add at least one more screen within the next year.

Consumer dissatisfaction over slower than advertised broadband speeds and inadequate TV bundles is prompting one-third of fixed home broadband users to look for alternate providers, Ericsson says. When offered the prospect of 5G home wireless broadband, 8 of 10 who say they want to switch would consider supplementing or outright replacing their service.

This problem won't be solved by 5G wireless technology. Only fiber to the premise #FTTP can offer the stability and bandwidth needed going forward. The underlying issue is the failure to plan and invest in a timely transition from legacy metallic distribution infrastructure built for the days of phone and cable TV service to fiber. True, many billions will have to be invested. But it's irresponsible to kick the can down the road based on unrealistic hopes that a yet to be introduced spectrum technology will obsolete fiber.