Jonathan Spalter

Broadband companies are lworking with local and state leaders to bring their resources, expertise, and connections to finish the job of connecting everyone in the US to the power and opportunity of broadband. As they forge alliances to close their digital divide, several criteria are critical:

USTelecom's third Broadband Pricing Index documents continued substantial price reductions for both the most popular and highest-speed broadband service offerings. Over the past year, as overall inflation reached deeper into consumers’ wallets, broadband prices resisted. In fact, adjusting for inflation, prices for providers’ most popular broadband service dropped by 14.7% from 2021 to 2022. Similarly, prices for the fastest-speed services dropped by 11.6%.

California should follow the lead of other well-managed states and streamline its broadband application process and focus on connecting unserved areas and promoting public-private partnerships. Streamlining California’s broadband application process will maximize the funding that needs to be allocated so unserved communities can get connected to broadband.

The Universal Service Fund (USF) is currently on an unsustainable financial path, funded by a regressive surcharge on a shrinking base of telephone customers. If it isn’t fixed, and fixed quickly, the fund won’t be able to meet its mandate and fulfill its connectivity promise – not just to the next generation, but to the current one. So how do we fix USF? 

In order to move quickly but also deliver a successful and efficient Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, the Commission should make its decisions with the following principles in mind:

The first 100 days of a new Administration and new Congress are critical to charting a clear, bipartisan course for our nation’s policy agenda. From COVID relief to budget decisions, take bold and decisive action to finish the job of connecting every American home, business and anchor institution to U.S. broadband infrastructure. Particularly amid a global pandemic, the fact that an estimated 18 million American homes do not have broadband access is unacceptable.

In order to help consumers meet their urgent communications needs during this unprecedented emergency, the Federal Communications Commission should consider the following actions during the COVID-19 pandemic and for a reasonable period thereafter as unemployed and low-income Americans get back on their feet:

In order to provide further support to healthcare providers, the Federal Communications Commission should, in addition to adopting final rules for the proposed Connected Care Pilot Program, consider the following actions during the emergency:

There is simply no business case for investment in many rural areas without more effective public-private partnerships. That is why recent efforts in Washington to target funding and bridge broadband gaps in rural America are so important.  Rather than creating new programs out of whole cloth, we encourage Congress to look to existing federal programs with proven track records, like the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, as it considers how to distribute additional direct funding resources.

USTelecom is leading the charge on a new, more precise, approach to broadband reporting and mapping. We have proposed to Congress and regulatory agencies a method to create a public-private partnership to map America's broadband infrastructure so policymakers and providers can better target scarce funding to communities with limited or no service options. Currently, the Federal Communications Commission collects some deployment data from broadband providers by census block.