Trump administration proposes federal funding for infrastructure including advanced telecommunications

The Trump administration today issued an outline of its proposed legislative initiative to fund improvements to the nation’s aging infrastructure. While the proposal does not specifically set aside funding for advanced telecommunications infrastructure, the three components below authorize its funding. President Trump talked up the funding for advanced telecommunications infrastructure in remarks today to state and local officials at the White House. Trump said “it’s been very unfair what’s happened with broadband in terms of the Midwest and in terms, really, of rural areas.” At least four officials emphasized the need to fund it including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. Northam termed it “very, very important” to his state. (Link to remarks here)

A proposed Rural Infrastructure Program would provide $50 billion for capital investment in rural infrastructure projects. Policy objectives would be to:

· Expand access to markets, customers, and employment opportunities with projects that sustain and grow business revenue and personal income for rural Americans;

· Enhance regional connectivity through public and private interregional and interstate rural projects and initiatives that reduce costs for sustaining safe, quality rural communities; and

· Increase rural economic growth and competitiveness by closing local infrastructure gaps in development-ready areas to attract manufacturing and economic growth to rural America.

Eighty percent of the funds would be distributed as state block grants to be used for rural infrastructure needs with 20 percent of the funds reserved for performance grants. A portion of the funds would be set aside for tribal and territorial infrastructure, with the remainder available to states. States would be required to delineate criteria for administering the funding for specific types of projects including telecommunications infrastructure. States would be required to publish a comprehensive plan demonstrating how the projects align with the evaluation criteria in the infrastructure incentives program, including state, local and private sector investment in eligible projects.

A Transformative Projects Program would provide $20 billion in funding for “ground-breaking project ideas that have significantly more risk than standard infrastructure projects, but offer a much larger reward profile.” The primary policy goal is to advance projects that significantly improving performance from the perspective of availability, safety, reliability, frequency, and service speed; substantially reduce end user costs for services; introduce new types of services; and improve services.

To ensure greater accountability and control over this category of projects, funding would be linked to terms and conditions of the award including achieving project milestones. Most of the funding (up to 80 percent) would be set aside for capital construction costs. Half could be used to cover project planning costs and up to 30 percent for proof of concept projects. Projects that utilize capital construction funding would be required to partner with the federal government to share the value of completed projects, based on the characteristics of project and its projected revenues. Technical assistance would be available from the federal government or funded by this program.

Expanded eligibility for Private Activity Bonds to fund public purpose infrastructure projects to include telecommunications infrastructure projects provided they are owned by state or local governments. Privately owned infrastructure may be funded, but must be available for public use and would be subject to state or local governmental regulatory or contractual control or approval.


The administration’s infrastructure proposal comes on the heels of a continuing budget resolution enacted the previous week that had reportedly appropriated $20 billion for infrastructure including telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas. The appropriation was not included in the enacted measure, H.R. 1892.

Since the administration’s infrastructure spending proposal specifically references “rural broadband” to identify eligible projects, a key question is how federal and state entities that would administer the funds define those words. The Rural Infrastructure Program defines “rural” as “areas with populations of less than 50,000.” How those areas are specifically defined takes on significance since in the United States, some exurban and even suburban areas lack advanced landline telecommunications infrastructure serving end user premises, redlined by legacy telephone and cable companies.

Ditto the term “broadband.” Legacy providers have defined the term based on the throughput of the connection serving end user premises rather than by delivery infrastructure. That in turn has led to more than a decade of disagreement among providers, consumers and regulators over what premises are deemed having adequate service to support high quality voice, data and video services. To ensure the best use of taxpayer funds, the federal government should fund only fiber optic infrastructure be connected to customer premises since only it can easily accommodate ever increasing bandwidth demand and isn’t prone to near term obsolescence.

Modernizing exurban telecom infrastructure to cut traffic congestion, long commutes

America's Other Housing Crisis: Undercrowded Suburbs - The Atlantic: The reality is that most of the housing stock and most of the land area of America’s metro areas is made up of relatively low-density suburban homes. And a great deal of it is essentially choked off from any future growth, locked in by outmoded and exclusionary land-use regulations. The end result is that most growth today takes place through sprawl. While urban density can house some people—mainly affluent and educated ones—the bulk of population and housing growth is shifted farther and farther out to the exurban fringe. That leads to more traffic and longer commutes, and the social and environmental consequences that flow from them, as this old suburban-growth model is stretched beyond its limits.

There's a disconnect between America's telecommunications infrastructure and this residential development pattern. The exurbs frequently suffer from cable company redlining and outmoded legacy telephone company copper cable plant. In addition, homes are often served solely by substandard, costly wireless services as landline providers concentrate on building fiber connections to multi-family dwellings (known as MDUs) in densely populated urban cores.

This is a point of overlap between telecommunications policy and regional planning. Modernizing telecom infrastructure at the fringes of metro areas to fiber to the premise (FTTP) can play a big role in reducing daily commute trips to urban centers by making it easier for knowledge workers to work in their residential communities.

Go suck a satellite

That's the message to adjacent landline redlined households seeing this tree placard pitching satellite Internet service. That's Comcast cable on the nearby utility pole. Dateline: El Dorado County, California.

Can The States Really Pass Their Own Net Neutrality Laws? Here’s Why I Think Yes.

Wetmachine Tales of the Sausage Factory Can The States Really Pass Their Own Net Neutrality Laws? Here’s Why I Think Yes.

This is Harold Feld's analysis of the question. Feld concludes that states can in fact regulate advanced telecom services. Feld reasons that while advanced telecommunications are clearly interstate, the scope of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's jurisdiction isn't absolute and thus may not allow it to preempt the states should they enact statutes that codify the FCC's 2015 Open Internet rulemaking. The FCC is in the process of reversing the rulemaking that placed advanced telecommunications under Title II of the federal Communications Act, designating it as a common carrier utility.

The rulemaking's so-called "net neutrality" provision barring providers from blocking or throttling traffic over their networks has drawn concern that the providers might abuse their monopoly control over networks extract revenues.

That's a prospective concern that is less relevant and pressing in many states than the lack of advanced telecommunications infrastructure that leaves many homes, schools and small businesses unable to obtain service or offered substandard service options because their areas have been redlined by legacy incumbent telephone and cable companies. The FCC's Open Internet rulemaking requires service be provided upon reasonable customer request and specifically bars discriminatory redlining.

These mandates -- and less so net neutrality -- is why the providers and their trade associations will strongly oppose any proposed state legislation based on the federal rulemaking. State lawmakers are hearing far more vocal complaints from constituents that they've been refused service or forced to use pricy, substandard wireless services that don't meet minimum FCC requirements for advanced telecommunications than concerns providers will in the future block or throttle content. The volume and urgency of those complaints have been growing over the past decade or so. In addition, during that period and increasingly in recent years, state representatives have declared advanced telecommunications infrastructure critical to support commerce, government and education.

Soros gets it wrong: Telecom infrastructure is a monopoly, not Facebook and Google

Soros slams Facebook and Google as 'menace' to society, 'obstacles to innovation' - Business Insider: Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all internet advertising revenue. To maintain their dominance, they need to expand their networks and increase their share of users' attention. Currently, they do this by providing users with a convenient platform. The more time users spend on the platform, the more valuable they become to the companies. Content providers also contribute to the profitability of social-media companies because they cannot avoid using the platforms and they have to accept whatever terms they are offered.

The exceptional profitability of these companies is largely a function of their avoiding responsibility for — and avoiding paying for — the content on their platforms. They claim they are merely distributing information. But the fact that they are near-monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject them to more stringent regulations aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access.

Soros's position here is misguided. Facebook's and Google's online platforms are not natural monopolies like landline telecommunications infrastructure that delivers them to end users in their homes, businesses and institutions. Most people can choose between one and maybe two providers: a legacy telephone or cable company. These are truly public utilities since they are hardwired infrastructure unlike online social media platforms. They require fair and open universal access called for by Soros.

Facebook's and Google's online platforms are clearly hugely successful. But there's no guarantee they'll be around for decades like the telecom infrastructure that delivers them. Consumer preferences change and innovators create new services. It's a lot easier to do that with programming code and bits and bytes compared to relatively permanent telecom infrastructure as shown by the ongoing problem of service gaps that leave many premises unserved by landline infrastructure.

Both public and private sectors have role to play in U.S. telecom infrastructure modernization

State Senator hopes to spur rural broadband development in Alabama with incentive program - Yellowhammer News: Scofield notes that rural broadband is lacking because the return on investment isn’t there for providers who must build costly infrastructure to serve sparsely populated regions. While providers such as AT&T are investing in new technologies such as fixed wireless, which beam internet signals from cell towers to nearby homes, those speeds are only a slight step up from DSL.Some lawmakers are pressing for government to step into the fray, such as Sen. Tom Whatley (R-Auburn), who has introduced bills to allow the expansion of government-owned networks – such as the broadband system of Opelika Power Services located in his district. But Scofield takes a more limited government approach, noting that the private sector has both the expertise and the economies of scale to do the job more efficiently.

A more nuanced discussion is called for here. It's not an either private or public sector argument. Both the public and private sectors can play a role in the badly needed modernization and build out of America's telecommunications infrastructure. The public sector should own and fund its construction as it does roads and highways. To Scofield's point, the private sector has the expertise. It should build and maintain it just as private contractors do with roads and highways.

Show me the money: Congressman challenges argument that regulation greatest impediment to telecom infrastructure investment

Digital divide: Congress to push for better Internet access in rural areas: Yet the main obstacle to broadband expansion into rural areas is cost, said Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle, the top Democrat on the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee. "It would require tens of billions of dollars to bring broadband to unserved and underserved parts of the country,” he said. “The private sector hasn’t done it because they know they wouldn’t make a profit on it.” Any rural broadband initiative without substantial new funding “would be nothing more than window dressing,” Doyle said.

The "window dressing" to which Doyle refers are assertions by Rep. Marsha Blackburn and other lawmakers that legislative solutions are needed to reduce regulatory burdens on ISPs to speed capital investment in "technology neutral" infrastructure (code for substandard mobile wireless and satellite versus fiber) to serve customer premises. It's refreshing to hear some economic honesty when it comes to tackling America's bad and worsening telecom infrastructure deficit.

Like Obama administration,Trump administration turns to symbolic window dressing rather than modernizing U.S. telecom infrastructure

Rural Internet to Be High Priority for Trump Administration | Successful Farming: Some steps can be taken in the near term to expand broadband networks, said Grace Koh of the National Economic Council. One would be clearer and easier rules for installing antennas on federal buildings and towers. “We will seek to use ‘dark fiber’ that the agencies have deployed in order to allow rural providers to interconnect and provide service to communities that have not had access to broadband before,” said Koh. “Dark fiber” is fiber optic cable that has been installed but is not in use. The administration will also coordinate funding, scattered among agencies, for broadband deployment and adoption. “We are hoping, at this point, to have a few immediate actions to start right away,” said Koh. “Certainly, we anticipate being able to make towers and other infrastructure from the Department of Interior available for collocation. This should cut down on tower construction costs and allow for providers to get their plant and equipment out much more quickly.”

The Trump administration like the Obama administration before it is engaged in symbolic window dressing rather than champion badly needed and aggressive efforts to modernize America's legacy metallic telecommunications infrastructure to fiber optic connections for all homes and businesses. These measures are symbolic incrementalism that will not make any meaningful progress toward that end because they don't deploy fiber over the "last mile" serving these premises.

An October 2017 report by the administration's Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity noted telecom infrastructure gaps are due the inability of investor owned providers earn a return on their capital investments in areas of the nation having lower population density. But while acknowledging that structural problem, it offers no alternatives, all but guaranteeing continued infrastructure deficits. It also advocates the use of wireless technologies rather than bringing connections to customer premises including satellite, fixed wireless, and cellular networks, calling it a cheaper "technology neutral" approach. However, these wireless technologies are limited by the laws of physics and have proven inadequate to accommodate the growing need for increased bandwidth.

"Mr. President, I think a bunch of broadband talk would be seen as a pretty weak response."