"Better Than Nothing," Starlink satellite service illustrates bankrupt U.S. telecom infrastructure modernization policy

Texas Schools Partner With SpaceX on High-Speed Internet: After schools shut down in March due to COVID-19, a survey of families in ECISD found that 39 percent did not have internet access in their homes, or had limited internet access. "Right behind me, you are looking at the community of Pleasant Farms that has very limited broadband service. We have children; we have families; we have educators living in this community and having the internet in their home is extremely difficult, if not impossible. But because of Space X and their Starlink technology, they are right now circling a series of satellites above this area and they will beam a high-quality broadband signal to our families, providing high-quality, high speed broadband access so our children can continue the learning process ...," Muri said. Muri said ECISD has worked diligently with the local community and state officials to explore opportunities for students, but also looking long-term. "Short-term solutions are not the answer," Muri said. "We need solutions that provide permanent solutions, permanent opportunities for kids not only in ECISD but across our state and across our nation ..."

Scott Muri, superintendent of a Texas school district, is right. Short term gee whiz approaches like this don't provide the long term telecommunications infrastructure needed on the ground -- namely fiber to the premise (FTTP). It's a logical progression from legacy copper telephone infrastructure that has gone off the tracks, leaving Americans grasping at “Better Than Nothing” solutions as the Starlink satellite service is dubbed.

New eBook: U.S. Telecom Infrastructure Crisis: America’s botched modernization of copper to fiber -- and the path forward

 

In 2020 as public health restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic suddenly converted millions of American homes into offices, classrooms and medical clinics, the nation’s accumulated deficits in advanced telecommunications infrastructure and related challenges of access and affordability that had been in place for years reached a crisis point.

The root of the problem is a failure of planning and policy over the past quarter century to ensure decades old copper telephone lines that reach every American doorstep were modernized with fiber optic lines to support Internet delivered digital telecommunications. The nation lacks a comprehensive, coordinated transition plan and relies on various underfunded, piecemeal efforts.

The cause of the failure: public policymakers focused on the wrong thing: incremental gains in “broadband” speed instead of replacing the copper with fiber beginning a generation ago. With the enactment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, policymakers erred in assuming fiber would be just one of several technologies that would compete with copper rather than pursuing a deliberate policy to ensure the timely replacement of copper with fiber.Consequently, fiber reaches less than a third of American homes in 2020. That’s far short of the goal of the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan prepared for Congress in 2010 that called for 100 million homes to have affordable fiber-level connections a decade later.

U.S. telecommunications policy primarily serves the needs of for profit companies that lack incentive to rapidly speed construction of fiber to solve America’s advanced telecommunications infrastructure deficits. There’s an inherent conflict between their investors’ focus on short term earnings and the broader public interest of having universally accessible and affordable fiber connections.

This book describes how the crisis is affecting Americans, the factors that brought it about and prolong it, the outlook for its resolution and a framework for the path forward: publicly owned, open access fiber infrastructure passing reaching every home as telephone service did in the mid-20th century.

The audience for this book is public policymakers, telecommunications regulators and the general public. Members of these groups acknowledge the essential nature of advanced telecommunications infrastructure as a utility. That recognition has grown more urgent over time and especially so with the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and sharply increased reliance on home connectivity and working from home.

The book is currently available here on Amazon Kindle and will soon be available though all eBook retailers.

America's haphazard, fragmented approach to telecom infrastructure modernization: Filling in "broadband" potholes

SC begins small broadband internet expansion in 23 counties | The State: More than $50 million worth of broadband expansion projects will start this month in 23 counties around the state to help close the internet service gap exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shovel-ready projects are being made possible, in part, with funding from the CARES Act, federal coronavirus aid that must be spent by the end of the year. The dollars will help internet providers expand service to areas where it may take longer to turn a profit. The broadband projects are a good start, but also a drop in the bucket toward closing the state’s broadband access gap. There are 650,000 South Carolinians and 180,000 households in the state without high-speed internet access.

States have been struggling to adequately fund advanced telecommunications infrastructure needs years before the start of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic earlier this year. Public health measures put in place to slow the spread of the contagion have made widespread infrastructure deficits painfully apparent as Americans work and school at home.

States are now rushing to try to address the problem with very little time and money allocated by the federal government via COVID-19 relief funds (CARES Act) that must be expended by the end of 2020. It's emblematic of the nation's short term policy approach of treating the deficits like potholes needing to be filled in.

There's never enough policy and resource commitment to properly pave the roads. Motorists complain incessantly about bad roads and a bumpy ride on Al Gore's circa 1990s "information highway." Federal and state governments respond with a little money for a short term fix for some of the potholes. Drivers continue to complain and the cycle repeats year after year. It will continue until there's a policy commitment to replace the legacy copper telephone connections that reach every home, small business and school with fiber.