Paul de Sa

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program the federal government has made a historic investment of $42.5 billion into broadband infrastructure. This is an unprecedented amount of funding to universalize broadband in the United States – but without proper guidance, it could easily be wasted. This primer provides an introduction to broadband financials and some key questions broadband officials should consider incorporating into their evaluation process.

The Biden Administration’s goals of restoring a functional federal government, driving economic recovery, and “building back better” lend themselves to a new strategy for universalizing broadband, with a three-pronged approach to directly address each of the barriers I have described that have stalled universal access. First, any significant plan for investing in infrastructure must include sufficient funding in the form of grants and loans for both initial capital investment and ongoing operations and maintenance of universal, future-proofed broadband networks. Second, the Administration s

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.

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about a national-infrastructure plan by highlighting three points relevant to communications, namely:
1. Improving the nation’s digital infrastructure should be a significant part of any national-infrastructure plan, as the economic upside for the country from accelerating investment in broadband is likely greater than from most other areas of infrastructure investment.
2.The primary goal of federal actions with respect to digital infrastructure should be to increase and accelerate profitable, incremental, private-sector investment to achieve at least 98% nationwide deployment of future-proofed, fixed broadband networks.
3.The policy measures that can be used to achieve this goal are: (i) direct funding support to reduce the cost of capital; (ii) changes to the tax code to increase the return on invested capital, and (iii) operations-related actions that enhance the productivity of capex. A national-infrastructure plan should include initiatives in some, or all, of these categories.