RUS Doubles Down On DSL Among Other Mistakes

A few weeks ago Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) released the first batch of winners for the second round of the broadband stimulus program. While critical of how they handled the selection process and of how they chose primarily private closed networks in the first round, I had to give RUS credit for focusing most of its support on networks that will put rural Americans on a level playing field with the rest of the world. Yet their focus on full fiber networks was met by a bit of an outcry from many in the broadband industry, decrying RUS's investment in technology they claim is too expensive and not needed. Unfortunately, it appears as though those misguided, self-interested criticisms have gotten through to RUS, as evidenced by the fact that they decided to focus much more heavily on subsidizing "cheaper" and less capable networks, in particular DSL, in the second round.

In total, RUS decided to fund about 50 projects in this first batch of second round winners that will use these federal dollars to buildout DSL networks. The problem with this is that DSL is an outdated technology, and I'm not alone in saying that. If you look at market trends, cable networks are eating DSL's lunch in basically every competitive broadband market. If you look at the world's broadband leaders, most have moved past DSL entirely to focus solely on fiber and wireless buildout.