To get more people the broadband they need sooner, the best job we can do now is rally behind getting it done.
Broadband, like electricity in its time, is becoming an increasingly essential driver and enabler of progress: economic growth, education, career opportunities, public safety and services, health care, energy management, environmental protection, transportation, and more. The pandemic sped up the digital transformation, and all at once, more Americans than ever came to realize how critical it was to have affordable access to high-speed broadband in every home.
In response, the federal government is dispatching more than $42 billion to the states for universal access and affordability while consumer demand drives investment and opportunity. Momentum is building, but for this to work, we all must be swinging in the right direction.
We’ve spent billions on broadband before, but as Kate O’Connor, Chief Counsel for the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said, red tape kills projects. For this universal broadband deployment to prevent the deepening of the digital divide, it must be as rapid as possible and take advantage of all feasible options. We need processes to facilitate spending that $42 billion on optimal investments and reduced risk, or it could once again be wasted.
No matter the organization — big or small, public or private — everyone has a critical role to play in the rollout of universal broadband. We can get that done by working together in partnership, not in competition.
The benefits of a partnership approach
The concept of universal broadband can seem daunting. In June 2022, in collaboration with CostQuest, the FCC identified 25 million homes and small businesses without access or with old technology that fails to meet minimum broadband speeds. Where no service provider exists, new buildouts will be expensive and, with lower population densities, offer less of a potential return on investment. In underserved areas, old infrastructure must be torn up and replaced with newer technology that supports faster speeds.
Federal, state, and local leaders have attempted to define accurate coverage maps and identify these regions. However, knocking on every front door to ask about the internet would take too long. Our world is becoming increasingly dependent on the internet and digital technology faster than any industrial revolution. The longer these Americans wait to fully participate in modern life, the longer they get set behind as the rest of the country speeds ahead, and the deeper and harder to close the digital divide.
Think about the most efficient way of filling a large glass beaker with a given quantity of rocks and sand to occupy the most space possible. The sand alone is not enough to fill the beaker, so we first start with the big rocks, covering larger expanses of space and nearly filling it to the top. Then, we pour the sand in to fill the few remaining pockets of space left over that the larger rocks were unable to cover.
This is also how we most efficiently approach universal broadband. We make the best maps we can for now, and the telecommunications giants do most of the heavy lifting. Already, companies like Google, AT&T, Charter, Verizon, and Comcast have mobilized to expand their networks and fortify them with more fiber to cover larger swaths of the country and serve the biggest chunk of the market. Smaller internet service providers (ISPs), with their ears closer to the ground, will be better equipped to fill in the pockets that these larger companies miss. Like our beaker filled with rocks and sand, facilitating partnerships that accomplish this process is how we cover the country with high-speed broadband.
What we still need
For universal broadband deployment to work without deepening the digital divide, it must be as rapid as possible, but meeting current requirements is not easy. Communication has transformed radically in the last 30 years, but communications laws have remained largely unchanged, and internet access services are largely unregulated. As a result, federal and state requirements are often counterintuitive “creatures of history rather than of logic.”
Several states still have legal barriers limiting local government access to public funds or lack the authority to provide or facilitate the provision of communications activities. There are funding, structural, governance, and regulatory issues, including rights-of-way, pole attachments, easements, and procurement requirements. Funding sources overlap, and rules come into conflict with one another. Multiple federal agencies claim broadband-permitting authority and redundancies, like environmental and historical reviews in sites where already-approved infrastructure exists, cause costly delays. These barriers make it harder for smaller ISPs to fill in the hard-to-reach pockets that larger telecom giants will not be able to cover immediately, if ever.
What happens when everyone is aligned?
With 20 broadband-permitting reform bills pending Congressional approval, the federal government has recognized this need to streamline permitting requirements at all levels for the success of universal broadband. They also encourage similar reforms at the state and local levels to allow all critical players access to all possible options, including community initiatives and public-private partnerships. When state and local leaders and lawmakers work together with telecom giants and small broadband enterprises to keep anything from slowing down these necessary partnerships, nothing gets in the way of their universal broadband deployments.
Even with outdated regulatory obstacles, successful universal broadband deployment is possible if everyone aligns around the need to facilitate it. In Colorado, Fort Collins determined to launch their own municipal fiber for their city, but state laws prevented communities from offering telecom services. With public-owned electricity and water utilities, trust for municipal projects was high, as well as community involvement, so the city leaned into that public interest for support. Community groups and individual residents got involved, and when the city voted on their exemption from state law and a bond of $150 million for the project, both received majority approval.
With every new endeavor, especially one so time-critical, we are bound to make mistakes. To get affordable access to broadband for as many people as possible as soon as possible, we may have to make decisions faster than we would normally like. Still, we can learn with every success and failure and improve our decision-making. To get more people the broadband they need sooner, the best job we can do now is rally behind getting that done.
