Blair Levin

The federal government is recognizing what cities and those of us here in 2013 already knew: that our policies should ensure that bandwidth never constrains economic growth or social progress. Unfortunately, one thing hasn’t changed; the federal government’s view of its own role in helping achieve that goal.  It is: 1) Make cities do all the hard work, pay all the government costs and accept all the blame for whatever happens; and 2) Let the federal government pay none of the costs, do none of the hard work, and take all the credit.

The Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) suffers from significant failures of design and execution. Due to these failures, I expect the BDAC and the FCC will adopt a framework in which industry gets all the benefits with no obligations, and municipalities will be forced to bear all the costs and receive no guaranteed benefits.

[Speech] On of the two historic accomplishments of the current Federal Communications Commission is that it is the first FCC to interpret its statutory mandate to say it doesn’t have much legal authority or policy rights to regulate broadcasters, telephone companies, cable companies, or wireless companies. Instead, its principal regulatory mandate is to regulate another set of enterprises: local governments.

[Commentary] Criticism of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau acting director Mick Mulvaney’s recent comments to a banking group has largely focused on his advocating a pay-to-play system for interest groups to access government officials. But similarly disappointing is his wanting to close the CFPB consumer complaint database, on the grounds that he shouldn’t have “to run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government.” Mulvaney has it backward. We think governments need more, not fewer, Yelp-like services in their arsenals.

[Commentary] Communities should study and emulate the number of models of community-led broadband upgrades that clearly improve the math for investment in next-generation networks, regardless of the public or private delineation. Yet choosing an upgrade model will not be simple; communities should reflect their preferences between certain trade-offs, from control and risk to scale through aggregation or local control.

[Commentary]  As communities across the United States wait to learn how high-speed mobile networks will figure in a long-promised infrastructure plan, some cities are already attracting private investment in next-generation 5G networks. They are doing so by finding new ways to collaborate with network and equipment providers, creating a set of “best practices” that other local governments can follow. Forward-thinking officials at the federal, state and local levels are hurrying to update their processes, looking for new approaches that maximize community value and minimize delay.

[Commentary] While the public still has no more than a leaked plan and vague State of the Union statements of aspirations, it appears the Trump administration's proposed approach to broadband infrastructure will end up delivering little of the abundant bandwidth the country’s rural areas need to thrive in the digital age. The original source of the rural broadband problem is how the administration apparently proposes to divide total investment. The leaked plan creates various buckets, with each getting a set allocation of the federal dollars.

By 2020, North Carolina can claim the title of the state with the most gigabit communities. Thanks to the work of the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NC NGN) project, itself an outgrowth of the Gig.U project, as well as other efforts, competitive gigabit networks are being built out by Google, AT&T, in a number of its major cities including Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, as well as a number of its smaller communities, such as Carrboro, Pembroke and Holly Springs. But such deployments are not reaching everywhere in the state.

With global displacement at record levels, policymakers and humanitarian organizations increasingly recognize the role communications technology can play in facilitating protection solutions for refugees, both in transit and at destination. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has documented how mobile and Internet connectivity, specifically, enable refugees to remain safe, access health and educational services, build livelihoods, and keep in touch with families and communities. Yet significant gaps in broadband access, adoption, and usage mean that refugees are often less connected than host populations, many of which face their own connectivity challenges. Refugees living in rural areas, for example, are twice as likely as the global rural population to have no network coverage at all. And more than one-third of all refugees live in an area without the 3G network coverage needed to browse the Internet, use most apps, and conduct video calls.

This policy brief draws on its authors’ diverse experiences—working to assure refugee protection, developing the U.S. broadband plan, and analyzing the economics of broadband networks—to propose a framework for the creation of a global broadband plan for refugees. Through careful scoping of localized challenges and alignment of refugee connectivity efforts with host-country broadband strategies and market forces, such a plan holds the promise of improving the connectivity of the world’s more than 21 million refugees and the communities that host them.

[Commentary] As the White House and Congress develop an infrastructure plan promised during the campaign, many, including senators, House members and mayors, are urging that broadband be included. Here are eight simple ground rules we hope Congress will follow in crafting broadband-related infrastructure incentives:
1. Limit and carefully control direct investment funds.
2. Don’t offer ongoing support.
3. Use market mechanisms where possible.
4. Extend “Dig Once/Climb Once” policies on government property.
5. Improve government processes that hinder private investment.
6. Embrace emerging technologies.
7. Address nonfinancial causes of the digital divide.
8. Use the bully pulpit to encourage digital want-nots.

[Blair Levin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Larry Downes is project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.]