Op-Ed

A growing number of local governments are coming to see fiber broadband networks as essential infrastructure for the 21^st century, infrastructure that is capable of driving and supporting simultaneous progress in just about every area of significance to their communities. This includes economic development, education, health care, environmental protection, energy, transportation, government services, digital equity, and much more.

When companies try to expand broadband into hard-to-reach and far-apart locations, they have to make huge capital expenditures in technology and infrastructure, which sometimes can run for hundreds of miles or more. While federal funding is supposed to ease this burden, a lot of the money goes toward something Congress never anticipated and taxpayers often overlook: replacing utility poles. Members of Congress may be shocked to learn that enormous chunks of private and government broadband funding are not spent on fiber optic cable, but rather on poles in rural areas.

Only six weeks after its launch, last week marked a major milestone for the Alabama Broadband Connectivity for Students Program: We have connected more than 100,000 low-income students statewide and the number grows by the thousands each day. These Alabama students now have reliable broadband service—paid for by the State of Alabama—that enables them to do homework and distance learn, with the cost of broadband removed as a barrier to learning.

Our digital public sphere has been failing for some time. Technologies designed to connect us have instead inflamed our arguments and torn our social fabric. It doesn’t have to be this way. History offers a proven template for how to build healthier public spaces. As wild as it sounds, part of the solution is no further than your nearest public park. But social media and messaging platforms weren't designed to serve as public spaces. They were designed to monetize attention.

How can America’s communities secure the benefits of fiber-optic infrastructure? Our answer is that local governments need not accept a binary option of waiting for the private sector to solve the problem—which the private sector already would have done if it made business sense—or taking on the challenge entirely as a public enterprise. Rather, public-private collaboration can disrupt this binary and give communities options.

Nearly a decade ago , the North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation that essentially blocked municipalities from acting as internet service providers, barring any new or expanded municipal-owned and operated systems. At the time, Wilson had been building its Greenlight system, with lightning-fast internet speeds, and a handful of other North Carolina cities and towns were following suit. The large telecommunications companies – Time-Warner-Cable (now Spectrum), AT&T, and CenturyLink – argued that this amounted to unfair government-subsidized competition.

The next administration should revitalize the Federal Communications Commission and use its dormant regulations to break up monopolies in the telecommunications industry. The FCC once used its mandate to regulate abusive and exclusionary behavior by fostering a fair and competitive marketplace that serves the public interest. Between 1934 to 1975, the FCC implemented some of the most progressive anti-monopoly policies in our nation’s history. Although monopolies blight the current communications landscape, the wave of litigation against them is an encouraging sign.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a bright spotlight on the fact that we still need to connect all Americans with the best possible broadband, no matter whether they live in urban or rural areas or upper or lower-income neighborhoods. The problem is that too many have a shortsighted view of what “the best broadband” means. To some, it means “just good enough” – speeds or latency that may appear okay today but will fall short tomorrow.

31% of Black households do not have high-speed home broadband, affecting Black school-aged children and their ability to complete homework assignments at a disproportionate rate.

Imagine if we could put every area of America on an even playing field when it comes to high-speed internet. How much of an investment do we need? A Democratic proposal earlier this year committed $100 billion to an investment in digital infrastructure but was part of a COVID-related bill that did not make it into law.