Congress and Biden administration have historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy.

Congress and the Biden administration have an historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy and put it on a more progressive path going forward. In 1996, Congress and the Clinton administration enacted the Telecommunications Act. It’s based on the goal of attaining higher throughput – referred to as “broadband” and “high speed Internet.” The statute become law at a time when it was decidedly sluggish and most Americans were “going online” with dialup modems connected to copper telephone lines designed and built to provide voice phone service in the early to mid-20th century.

A major flaw of the law is it failed to provide a clear policy framework to guide and speed the migration of that copper to fiber to deliver Internet protocol-based voice, data and video services in the 21st. Instead, the policy underpinning the 1996 law was “technology neutrality,” grounded in the hope that market competition would somehow deliver better throughput.

Twenty-five years later in the third decade of the new century as a pandemic has made homes into offices, classrooms and clinics, Americans continue to struggle with slow and unreliable connectivity and access and affordability challenges. Elected representatives are deluged with constituent complaints as policymakers unproductively argue over “broadband” speeds, maps and subsidies. It is exceedingly clear new policy direction is needed to ensure fiber reaches every American doorstep just as copper telephone line did in the previous century and that service is affordable.

A vignette that aptly illustrates America's troubled transition from copper to fiber

Jared Mauch, a senior network architect at Akamai in his day job, moved into his house in 2002. At that point, he got a T1 line when 1.5Mbps was "a really great Internet connection," he said. As broadband technology advanced, Mauch expected that an ISP would eventually wire up his house with cable or fiber. It never happened.

He eventually switched to a wireless Internet service provider that delivered about 50Mbps. Mauch at one point contacted Comcast, which told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house. "If they had priced it at $10,000, I would have written them a check," Mauch told Ars. "It was so high at $50,000 that it made me consider if this is worthwhile. Why would I pay them to expand their network if I get nothing back out of it?"

AT&T, the incumbent phone company, finally offered DSL to Mauch about five years ago, he said. However, AT&T's advertised plans for his neighborhood topped out at a measly 1.5Mbps—a good speed in 2002, not in 2020. AT&T stopped offering basic DSL to new customers in October and hasn't upgraded many rural areas to modern replacements, leaving users like Mauch without any great options.

 

This account is not atypical and illustrates how telecom infrastructure bogged down in the transition from analog voice telephone to digital Internet protocol (IP) services, leaving consumers in the lurch. And why cable TV companies can't be expected to fill the gap because they are in the entertainment business and not telecommunications.

California panel: Filling in fiber advanced telecommunications infrastructure gaps would cost $6.8 billion

An expert panel directed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to develop a strategy to attain affordable universal access to advanced telecommunications estimates it would cost $6.8 billion to build passive optical fiber network infrastructure in support of that goal in areas of the Golden State where fiber hasn’t been deployed. The California Broadband Council’s Broadband Action Plan for 2020 – the first year of an iterative five year plan – notes America’s largest state has faced longstanding advanced telecommunications infrastructure deficits, which it terms a “complex and deep rooted” challenge.

“Providing fiber connectivity across California will take a long time, and require considerable investment from the state and the federal government,” the plan notes. It calls for Identifying alternative financing opportunities with government and philanthropic partners to maximize funding for new infrastructure. These include working with local governments to explore opportunities for public financing, including but not limited to bond instruments and alternative financial models and strategies such as making public infrastructure available for lease.