Op-Ed

A growing number of government programs support broadband deployment. Some programs allow service providers to combine, or “stack,” subsidies in a project’s funding; others have prohibitions against stacking subsidies built into the program rules. Recently this has come up in the debate on the Federal Communications Commission’s new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). This is the question: Should stacking be allowed, or should it be discouraged? Just how does a provider stack subsidies?

Expanding the ability to work remotely, learn remotely, and conduct health care appointments through telehealth will be key steps in permitting economic activity to expand in the second half of 2020, and beyond. Further, a report by the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society shows that connected students are more likely to check their grades, do research, look up class information, and collaborate with peers than unconnected students. But local responses to the pandemic have raised the stakes on differential access to the internet.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the digital “haves” and “have nots” through remote work, learning, and telehealth, yet our government’s main agency to support greater access and adoption is inadequately funded and functioned to meet this moment. AT&T recently published a blogpost lamenting the rise in contributions to the Universal Service Fund (USF) and arguing for funding reform.

Money spent getting high-speed internet into more people’s hands is money well spent. Every dollar invested in broadband returns nearly four dollars to the economy. In addition to expanding the reach of networks, we must focus on the cost issue. Broadband is surely an essential need for all Americans in the 21st century.

That’s why the next item on the Congressional agenda, and on a prospective Biden administration’s agenda, should be a thorough review of a system in which Internet service providers have no obligation to provide service to the areas most in need. Providing an essential service like high-speed Internet should be a requirement enshrined in law. The big telecom companies don’t see sufficient financial incentive to invest heavily in rural broadband, and no one can make them do it. Congress needs to step up and not rely on the Federal Communications Commission to solve this problem.

I work with communities all of the time that want to know if they are unserved or underserved by broadband. I've started to tell them to toss away those two terms, which is not a good way to think about broadband today. The main reason to scrap these terms is that they convey the idea that 25/3 Mbps broadband ought to be an acceptable target speed for building new broadband. Urban America has moved far beyond the kinds of broadband speeds that are being discussed as acceptable for rural broadband. Cable companies now have minimum speeds that vary between 100 Mbps and 200 Mbps.

With due respect to Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, conservatives interested in reform understand full well the purpose of the First Amendment (“Mike O’Rielly’s Free Speech Fall,” Review & Outlook, Aug. 5). We simply don’t believe that gigantic and massively powerful social-media platforms deserve special statutory protection, as is laid out in Section 230.

Currently there are 14 million people living in urban communities in the U.S. who cannot access telehealth service, yet the Federal Communications Commission and USDA will spend $5 billion this year to get telehealth and broadband to 4 million rural households.

About one-third of the U.S. job market is made up of middle-skill jobs, which do not require four-year college degrees. Data indicate that the number of these jobs exceeds the supply of available workers. The skills needed for these jobs include facility with the internet and computers.

The most likely scenario for success is the addition of broadband service to an existing electric or telephone cooperative’s portfolio. In this case, an entity with experience in running a customer-facing operation and network for decades simply expands its service. The cooperatives are already serving mostly rural customers and do not crowd out for-profit cable and telecom providers. The Federal Communications Commission has recognized this and has explicitly included electric cooperatives in the Connect America Fund II initiative.