U.S. Senator Michael Bennet: Federal infrastructure funding shouldn't subsidize big telecoms

Previous federal efforts to expand broadband infrastructure, totaling $50 billion by Bennet’s estimation, were ”in reality subsidizing the biggest telecom companies in America not to build that broadband out,” he said. The money instead went to expansion that left out rural America.

https://www.denverpost.com/2023/07/06/federal-beads-broadband-funding-program/

The problem with modernizing telecom infrastructure to fiber to the premises is there has been no well thought out, coordinated high cost area subsidization policy. Instead, it's been a series of highly restricted one off grants, treating advanced telecom infrastructure more as a special charity case instead of essential infrastructure. 

Moreover, subsidies have come without universal service obligations or rate regulation as existed for legacy voice plain old telephone service (POTS) under Title II of the federal Communications Act. Telecom utility infrastructure functions as a natural monopoly and requires regulation to protect the public interest in access and affordability.

Comcast is correct that public-private partnerships are the way forward. The public sector should own the infrastructure and competitively contract with private entities to design, build and operate it.

Metro fiber “overbuilder” SiFi Networks announces $350 million JV debt raise

SiFi Networks, an investor owned delivery fiber infrastructure company, announced its Future Fiber Networks LLC joint-venture with European pension fund APG raised $350 million of bank financing in its debut debt raise. The company said the financing will be used alongside APG’s $500 million equity investment in Future Fiber “to deliver future-proof FTTH connectivity and smart city solutions across the U.S. via its fiber wholesale business model.”

SiFi Networks is one of several non-incumbent fiber players targeting metro markets in the U.S. including most prominently Google Fiber and Ting Internet. Sonic, currently in Northern California, is another among what incumbent telephone and cable companies describe as “overbuilders” within their nominal service territories.

Access to advanced telecom isn't a human right. But it is essential utility infrastructure.

The White House on Monday announced more than $42 billion in new federal funding to expand high-speed internet access nationwide and ensure even the most rural communities can reap the economic benefits of the digital age.

In an interview with TIME after the plan was unveiled, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, whose department will oversee the new funding, said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but a “basic human right” as modern life becomes more digitized. Her comment echoes a sentiment from President Joe Biden, who on Monday reaffirmed his pledge that every household in the nation would be connected to the internet by 2030.

https://time.com/6290366/gina-raimondo-internet-access-us-interview/ 

It's an overstatement to describe affordable access to advanced telecommunications services as a basic human right. But in any advanced nation like the United States with a well developed information socio-economy, it should be regarded as essential infrastructure and treated as basic utility. As such, it should not require any given community to advocate for it.

That requires reconnoitering telecom policy that has since the 1990s treated it as privately owned market commodity sold based on throughput measured in megabits per second and latency. The Biden administration's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 is a good first step in this redefinition. And the administration is remedying a defect in the law that retained the market commodity framework by favoring fiber to the premise (FTTP) infrastructure for some $43 billion in grants to the states authorized by the Act to subsidize its long overdue construction. 

The administration and Congress should look to regional public entities to provide FTTP as that essential utility, much like regional airports to use a metaphor offered by the president of one such entity, the Golden State (California) Connect Authority.