Enabling legislation of Biden administration’s infrastructure plan should ensure fiber built to nearly every American home

The advanced telecommunications infrastructure component of the Biden administration’s proposed American Jobs Plan (AJP) will be more clearly fleshed out when it is drafted into legislation. For now, it’s fine for the AJP to broadly outline a goal of building “future proof” infrastructure. But this is a subjective term, leaving it open to debate and the introduction of present bias as the language is negotiated. The draft legislation should instead definitively establish a fiber to the home infrastructure standard.

The AJP proposes to build infrastructure to “unserved and underserved areas so that we finally reach 100 percent high-speed broadband coverage.” The enabling legislation should avoid the use of “unserved and underserved areas” as well as “broadband” – terms that have sparked years of protracted debate over how they are defined as infrastructure deficits grew. Instead, it should ensure fiber is built to 100 percent of American homes over the near term to replace outdated copper telephone lines, with the exception of homes located in extremely remote areas of the nation.

Biden administration's telecom infrastructure plan effectively says, "Time's up. We have to turn a new page. History demands it."

Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday that the allocation of $100 billion to expand broadband networks in the U.S. under the Biden administration will only serve to hurt consumers and stifle innovation. 

AJIT PAI: The FCC alone already has in the pipeline almost $40 billion to help close that digital divide and ensure that Americans have access to the internet that serves their needs. That’s before any of this $100 billion plan that the President proposed even comes to the table and so that’s part of the concern that many have is that there are already plans to attack this problem.

Moreover, the plan itself seems to suggest that they want to overbuild private networks with public funds and have governments own or operate or even micromanage how those networks are going to be constructed and operated.

Biden's $100B internet overhaul will hurt consumers, stifle innovation: Former FCC chairman | Fox News: 

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Pai's right in that there will be some overlap of public option fiber infrastructure in neighborhoods where investor owned providers have deployed fiber to homes, comprising about a third of all U.S. homes. Implicit in the telecom component of the Biden administration's American Jobs Plan is these providers have gone as far as they can over the past three decades modernizing legacy copper telephone lines built for analog voice communications in the 20th century to fiber for the 21st century's digital services. 

They've harvested the low hanging fruit and will struggle to build out to the remaining two thirds of American homes in a timely manner given their lack of patient investment capital relative to the need and their debt burdened balance sheets. The experience of the current pandemic has demonstrated modernization to fiber is far behind where it should be at the start of the new century's third decade. The Biden administration's plan effectively says, "Time's up. We have to turn a new page. History demands it."

Housing development -- not geographical region -- key determinant of fiber deployment

One of the biggest challenges America has faced over the past two decades resolving its entrenched advanced telecommunications infrastructure deficiencies -- and specifically homes and small businesses where copper telephone lines have not been upgraded to fiber -- is how this nationwide challenge is defined.

The problem tends to be delineated in geographic terms as a modifier to throughput (versus infrastructure), e.g., “urban broadband” and “rural broadband.” This bifurcated geographic focus also drives misguided, ill-fated efforts to “broadband map” regions by census tract based on throughput providers report to the Federal Communications Commission.

It’s often inaccurately compared to electrical power infrastructure in early 20th century America. Electrical power distribution infrastructure fell rather neatly along urban and rural lines in a far less populated nation, with the former electrified while the latter went unwired until the federal government stepped in with loans for consumer utility cooperatives.

Disparate deployment of fiber is far more granular than these regional distinctions. The key determinant isn’t so much whether a region is urban, suburban or exurban. Rather, it’s the type of neighborhood development that exists or is planned over the next five years. New and dense development is favored for fiber builds. Older and less dense is not, even in relatively affluent neighborhoods.

Large ISPs have specialized units dedicated to bringing fiber to multi-family housing and planned unit development neighborhoods. They advertise in a trade journal aptly titled Broadband Communities. Investor-owned providers aren’t likely to build fiber outside of these preferred forms of residential development since they are believed to represent greater assurance of faster returns on investment their shareholders expect. In an article appearing in the January-February 2021 issue of the publication, Jeff Storey, CEO of Lumen, was quoted as telling industry analysts in late 2020 the telephone company will be "micro-targeting in selecting the areas we serve.” 

While that's a prudent strategy to satisfy investors, it clashes with public expectations of access to robust home connectivity regardless of their home address, which by definition isn't likely to be part of a "micro-targeted" fiber deployment.

That’s where the Biden administration’s infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan, comes in to address public expectations that have been conveyed to elected representatives. It would appropriate $100 billion for fiber infrastructure to be deployed by local governments, nonprofits and consumer cooperatives. Notably, the administration’s proposal explicitly recognizes these entities are not expected to generate rapid returns for investors and offer a much needed alternative business structure to ensure fiber is deployed to homes not preferred by investor-owned providers.