Biden administration correct in framing advanced telecom as national vs. local infrastructure issue

June 30, 2021–Congress should allow the states authority over where and how to invest broadband dollars, experts said on a panel Tuesday.  The panel discussed the problem with federal agencies restricting states to only use funds for a distinct purpose, as opposed to allowing them to decide where the money can best be spent.

Federal agencies tend to focus on accessibility, affordability, and future-proofing broadband, but states all have different immediate needs, according to the panelists hosted by America’s Communications Association (ACA) on Tuesday. The panelists were discussing the $65-billion allocated to broadband as part of the infrastructure package announced by President Joe Biden last week.

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2021/06/congress-should-give-states-more-authority-over-broadband-priorities-experts-say/

This is self serving propaganda from small investor owned advanced telecom providers seeking to influence American Jobs Plan funds so that they are more likely to flow to them. Affordable, accessible access to fiber to the home isn't a local issue. It's a broad-based national issue affecting every state, region and county of the United States. The Biden administration is correct in framing this critical national infrastructure as it has in its proposed American Jobs Plan. Telecom infrastructure like roads and highways is by definition interstate.

Legacy telephone companies’ power isn’t so much lobbying as controlling the narrative

Conventional wisdom holds the United States is unable to timely modernize its legacy copper telephone infrastructure to fiber reaching every doorstep because of the lobbying power of big legacy telephone companies. They want to protect their natural monopolies against interlopers and deploy fiber only where it produces a rapid return on investment to select neighborhoods at highly profitable, unregulated prices.

But their more formidable power isn’t so much their armies of lobbyists and campaign contributions to public policymakers. It’s that they’ve established and controlled the narrative built around a single word: broadband. They were so successful that they even managed to get public interest-oriented officials and advocates to adopt the term, creating a decades-long obsession with chasing “broadband” bandwidth instead of concentrating on advanced telecommunications infrastructure that delivers that bandwidth. It also serves as a great distraction since fiber technology has been around for decades and was being considered by telephone companies as early as the 1980s for two-way video communications.

It began with the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, at a time when Americans used screeching modems to connect to online services such as CompuServe and America Online. The statute defined progress as advancing from that narrowband dialup service to “always on” broadband. It largely left it to the private market to set the course instead of stating industrial policy establishing fiber as the universal infrastructure standard as twisted pair copper was before it. As well as establishing a timeline so that fiber reached nearly all homes by 2010. Instead, more than a decade later, only about one third of all U.S. homes can get a fiber connection. Baked into the 1996 Act is a cognitive bias known as anchoring. Dialup -- state of the art connectivity at the time it was enacted -- is the anchor. Any technology offering incrementally greater throughput came to be valued more highly than modernizing legacy copper telephone lines to fiber.

Lacking a fiber infrastructure standard, in the quarter century since the 1996 Telecommunications Act was enacted, America has found itself bogged down in incrementalism, debating the definition of broadband and even trying to map its location. Elected officials have been dogged by constituent complaints over spotty, poor and unaffordable Internet access, priced at whatever the market will bear. Those complaints grew more strident as time went on and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that turned homes into offices, classrooms and medical clinics.

With telephone companies dragging their feet on transitioning to fiber in order to accommodate their short term oriented business models, cable TV companies leveraged their coaxial cable to provide Internet access in the decade since the Act was signed into law. Since they have not been regulated as telecommunications carriers with universal service mandates and price controls, they too can -- and do -- charge whatever the market will bear. And bear it the market must since cable has taken a dominant role, putting it in a controlling position.

Seeing that fiber was being slow walked at the same time people grew more desperate for connectivity, various wireless technologies and even satellite services came about to fill the fiber voids. The sad consequence is the nation once seen as a world leader in telecommunications no longer is.

AT&T's Stankey misrepresents true high cost component of fiber to the home

AT&T CEO John Stankey yesterday called President Biden's plan to fund municipal broadband networks "misguided" and said the US shouldn't pay for any broadband deployment in areas that already have networks. But as AT&T and other ISPs lobby against public networks and government-funded competition, Stankey said he is confident that Congress will steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors.

In an interview with The Economic Club of Washington, DC, (video), Stankey was asked, "Do you support the president's proposal to have municipalities own broadband facilities?" Stankey responded, "I think actually the president's proposal is probably a bit misguided in that regard." "It would be a shame that we take taxpayer money or ask local governments to go into a business that they don't run today," Stankey said. "You know, their job is to deliver water, patch streets, things like that, not be in a capital-intensive technology business that requires constant refresh and constant management." (Emphasis added)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/att-ceo-seems-confident-industry-can-kill-bidens-municipal-broadband-plan/

Actually, the most capital intensive element is constructing fiber to homes -- largely labor costs -- not equipment refreshes and management. This is where AT&T can play a role since public sector and nonprofit entities like consumer telecom cooperatives could benefit from an operator with AT&T's experience managing fiber.

Neither AT&T nor any other legacy telephone company can afford to own, build, maintain and manage fiber on a scale America needs considering every doorstep should have had fiber connections no later than 2010. The lack of those connections with only about a third of homes having them became painfully apparent during the social distancing public health requirements in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that turned homes into offices, classrooms and clinics.

To Fix America's Infrastructure, Start Here

Such has been the state of infrastructure in the U.S. for decades — fixes get put off until they’re absolutely necessary, and U.S. airports, roads and public transportation draw frequent comparisons to those in nations with far fewer resources. Meanwhile, countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have leapt ahead with so-called smart cities, high-speed trains and eco-friendly buildings. In 2019, the U.S. ranked 13th in the world in a broad measure of infrastructure quality — down from fifth place in 2002, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.

Source: How to Fix America's Infrastructure

When it comes to advanced telecommunications, it's even worse. Progress has been impeded for decades because it hasn't even been regarded as critical infrastructure but rather a commercial service of providing "broadband" bandwidth and service bundles to qualifying households. That's changing with the Biden administration's proposed infrastructure investment plan, the American Jobs Plan, that regards telecom as critical infrastructure and as such, it cannot be left to the private market to build it.

As the administration makes a long overdue shift of the policy discussion from broadband to infrastructure, it must be careful not to allow legacy investor owned telephone and cable companies to continue to control the narrative by focusing on broadband bandwidth as they have for the past quarter century. (Or that the problem is largely confined to rural areas when only one third of U.S. homes are passed by fiber.) It's evident in their complaints that publicly or consumer cooperative owned fiber to the home would be wasteful "overbuilding" arguing their limited deployments provide sufficient bandwidth. 

Similarly, consumer advocates and public policymakers should avoid falling into the bandwidth trap by calling for more and better "broadband maps" showing what bandwidth is offered in a given neighborhood. The goal should be fiber connections to nearly every American doorstep, a goal the private sector cannot achieve quickly enough relative to the need that has been heightened during the public health restrictions accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic.

Verizon, AT&T look to wireless, C-band spectrum as cheaper alternative to building fiber to the home

That expanded opportunity is thanks to adding 4G fixed wireless access to the equation, as well as the addition of C-band spectrum to Verizon’s spectrum portfolio. C-band spectrum provides a broader reach. Initial 5G Home service was based on short range mmWave spectrum.

Verizon has suggested it will go on the offense with fixed wireless, hoping to take on cable company dominance in residential broadband access in major markets. Outside of its fiber footprint in the Northeast, Verizon has little wireline broadband assets to take on cable.

AT&T CEO John Stankey also shared some views on fixed wireless at the J.P Morgan conference yesterday. AT&T has not been a recent advocate of broad use of fixed wireless, but the company has a very limited fixed wireless offering for rural markets funded through the CAF program. It appears the company may try to build on that.

Stankey now says fixed wireless will play a larger role in the company’s future, although the strategy looks to be very different than Verizon’s take. AT&T appears to be looking to fixed wireless as a way to retire DSL in its non-fiber markets, rather than go on the offense in urban areas. The company has already stopped taking new orders for DSL.

 Verizon CEO: Verizon Fixed Wireless is Key to Monetizing 5G

 

Both big telcos are apparently hoping to utilize C-band radio spectrum -- Verizon over its mobile wireless infrastructure -- to provide advanced telecommunications services to homes as a cheaper alternative to building fiber connections to them. For AT&T, it's a replacement strategy for its obsolete DSL over copper technology being discontinued.

Memo to Biden administration on telecom infra component of infrastructure initiative

As the Biden administration negotiates with Congress on the advanced telecommunications infrastructure component of its American Jobs Plan infrastructure initiative, here are some points it should bear in mind. Some should alleviate concerns of fiscal conservatives who are leery of the amount of the funding proposed and how it will be financed.

• Don’t cut the funding below the $100 billion originally proposed. Consider that a partial amount for what will ultimately be required to provide a public option of fiber connections reaching every American doorstep. It’s likely at least twice that amount will be necessary.
• Allocate 90 percent of the funding to long term, low interest loans and 10 percent to technical assistance grants targeted to public sector and nonprofit entities as prioritized in the initiative.
• Factor in future income tax revenues from enhanced economic activity ubiquitous fiber will enable.
• Avoid framing this infrastructure component as promoting market competition. It’s a nonstarter as telecom infrastructure like other utilities is a natural monopoly where no meaningful market competition (many sellers and buyers) can exist. The goal should be to provide public option open access fiber infrastructure, not to compete with legacy telephone and cable companies.
• Similarly, avoid framing this infrastructure element as addressing “unserved” or “underserved” or “rural” households and falling into the speed trap of debating what constitutes “broadband” and where it’s offered. An estimated two thirds of U.S. homes are not passed by fiber and can be found in urban, suburban and exurban as well as rural areas. Public option open access fiber infrastructure will not only help them gain access to modern telecommunications service, but also boost affordability for those households that are passed by fiber.

U.S. at telecom infrastructure crossroads, needs a public option

Biden’s plan is one step toward imagining a new social contract that guarantees universal broadband services. Incentivizing municipal broadband to challenge corporate ISPs’ political and commercial hegemony, the plan is a strong start. But municipal broadband initiatives tend to be highly localized and fragmented, with many communities unable to build their own networks. The federal government needs to coordinate and scale these efforts to build publicly owned Internet networks to ensure that all Americans have access to a “public option” for their broadband services. 

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Today we find ourselves at a crossroads. For too long, we’ve tinkered at the margins instead of confronting the corporate capture of the pipes, wires, and other infrastructure powering the Internet. Now we must take a firm stand: We can either have a democratic Internet that includes reliable and affordable access to all or a highly commercialized Internet that delivers profits to a few enormous corporations. We cannot have both.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/broadband-infrastructure-biden/

 

Public option open access fiber provides much needed alternative to commercial “broadband.”

A major benefit of public option open access residential fiber connectivity offered by a regional or local governmental entity or consumer telecommunications cooperative is it provides an accessible and affordable alternative to commercial “broadband” service sold in multiple incrementally priced speed tiers offered in select neighborhoods.

Most residential users don’t know what their throughput level is. They are only aware of throughput when there’s a functional issue such as websites taking a long time to load, choppy video and/or audio on calls, or video streams that pixelate or buffer too much and produce the dreaded “spinner.”

Instead of a speed tiers used by commercial broadband ISPs, open access fiber service can instead offer a single national throughput service level standard. Starting out, that should be the 100 Mbps symmetrical standard proposed in the telecom infrastructure component of the Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan. Over time, the standard would be increased to accommodate continued growth in bandwidth demand generated by devices and application services. VOIP should be included for those households that want voice telephone service rather than relying on commercial mobile wireless service.

Along with a single throughput standard, there should be a flat monthly rate, similar to that offered when Google Fiber made its debut in a few U.S. metros a decade ago. Ideally, that should be around $45 a month with a $20 lifeline rate for qualifying low-income households.