Argument that public option open access fiber is unnecessary "overbuilding" misses the point

Cable companies' argument against municipal broadband is not new. Cable, they say, already blankets the country. Why build more capacity where it already exists when there are still parts of the country with no capacity at all? Besides, they argue, it's not the government's place to interfere with private competition. "The belief that municipalities deserve some type of preference in the distribution of funds and that that somehow is going to lead to some greater consumer benefit? We don't think that's true or that there's any real evidence," said James Assey, executive vice president of NCTA. That argument has gotten cable companies their way in state after state, including in Tennessee, where AT&T fought efforts by Chattanooga's successful municipal network to expand in 2016. And it's gaining ground among lawmakers in Congress too. "The proposal today would prioritize, unfortunately, inefficient government-run networks, at the expense of private networks, and create arbitrary speed thresholds that favor fiber-only projects with no restrictions to prevent overbuilding in areas where broadband already exists," Republican congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers said during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week.

https://www.protocol.com/policy/biden-broadband-plan

The "overbuilding" argument misses the point. Building open access fiber to the home infrastructure provides a badly needed public option (and NOT market competition given telecom infra is a natural monopoly) to ensure access to and affordability of advanced telecommunications. Investor owned companies answer first to their shareholders and have no public obligation to ensure those exist. By contrast, the Biden administration's telecom infrastructure plan proposed as part of the American Jobs Plan serves the American people whose interests undoubtedly outweigh those of shareholders.

The timing of the proposed public option is propitious. Legacy telephone and cable companies lack the financial capacity to take on the job and can only invest where they can be assured of a rapid return on investment. Private capital investment is too risk averse, like the legacy providers favoring dense residential "communities" such as planned unit and multi-family development.

Public option open access fiber holds promise of ending unproductive "broadband mapping"

First and foremost, the FCC, Congress, local government, community groups, and existing service providers need to work together to create accurate broadband maps. Without an understanding of where broadband infrastructure actually exists, we won’t know which communities lack access to the Internet and which are served.

Risks and Rewards of the U.S. Broadband Funding Boom | Internet Society

While on the surface, this appears to be a rational starting point, in reality it's retrogressive and not a step forward. "Broadband mapping" originates from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that gave the U.S. Federal Commission authority to define advanced telecommunications based on throughput. The FCC determines what constitutes "broadband" level throughput. Providers are required to report annually to the FCC where they are selling it. Efforts to map this data have resulted in decades of unproductive gaming and wasteful controversy among regulators, policymakers, service providers and public interest advocates over the accuracy and utility of the reports.

The Biden administration's proposed American Jobs Plan properly regards advanced telecommunications as critical infrastructure rather than "broadband" as a service. It defines a level of throughput that makes it a de facto fiber to the home infrastructure standard. It would also create a public option by prioritizing networks owned by public sector and nonprofit entities such as consumer cooperatives.

Instead of mapping "broadband speed," what policymakers should do first is identify existing public sector and nonprofit entities that currently operate fiber networks. The American Jobs Plan and other potential sources of federal funding should be directed to them to expand and strengthen their networks. Where these networks are absent, funding should be allocated to enable regional public sector and nonprofit operators to design and build open access fiber as a much needed public option to remedy widespread gaps in access and affordability.

Cable Firms Fear Being Left in Dust in Biden Broadband Quest

(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration’s multitrillion-dollar infrastructure proposal includes $100 billion to bring high-speed broadband to every American, an idea that might be expected to win applause from those who provide the service.

But cable companies such as Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications Inc. that connect about two-thirds of U.S. homes that have broadband service fear the plan’s specific call for “future-proof” technology could leave them facing subsidized competitors.

That’s because the traditional coaxial lines that cable companies still use to serve most of their subscribers don’t handle the upload speeds that consumer advocates say should be required to receive federal infrastructure aid. Many say subsidies should go only to systems that can download and upload traffic at speeds of at least 100 megabits per second.

Cable Firms Fear Being Left in Dust in Biden Broadband Quest

A few observations here:

• Cable isn’t in the residential telecommunications business. It’s in the video entertainment and live spectator sports business, selling various video and sports packages.
• Cable companies only got into the IP-delivered services such as data and VOIP because of an accident of history when telephone companies didn’t upgrade their copper to fiber and instead opted for DSL. Cable offered better throughput than DSL.
• As they were getting into IP services in mid 2000s, cable companies lobbied successfully to create new state laws establishing “video franchises” regulated by state public utility commissions to neuter the power of local governments -- the traditional issuer of cable franchises -- to require service be made available to all addresses. For those households not passed by their cable, they demand thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in connection fees to extend their cable down the road or cul de sac to establish service.
• Cable service is pricey (consistent with its positioning as a discretionary consumer service rather than a utility) and poor customer service is legendary.
• All that being said, there is a future for this industry: as a video content provider in a public option open access fiber ecosystem.