Cleveland and the Return Of Broadband Redlining.

[Commentary] I am the last person to deny anyone a good snarky gloat. So while I don’t agree entirely with AT&T’s policy blog post taking a jab at reports of Google Fiber stumbling in deployment, I don’t deny they’re entitled to a good snarky blog post. (Google, I point out, denies any disappointment or plans to slow down.) “Broadband investment is not for the feint hearted,” But the irony faeries love to make sport.

The following week National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) had a blog post of their own. Using the publicly available data from the Federal Communications Commission’s Form 477 Report, NDIA showed that in Cleveland’s (OH) poorest neighborhoods (which are also predominantly African American), AT&T does not offer wireline broadband better than 1.5 mbps DSL – about the same speed and quality since they first deployed DSL in the neighborhood. This contrasts with AT&T’s announcement in August that it will now make its gigabit broadband service available in downtown Cleveland and certain other neighborhoods. There are two important, but rather different issues here — one immediate to AT&T, one much more broadly with regard to policy. The more important issue is the return of redlining on a massive scale. Thanks to improvements the FCC has made over the years in the annual mandatory broadband provider reporting form (Form 477), we can now construct maps like this for neighborhoods all over the country, and not just from AT&T. As I argued repeatedly when telecommunication companies, cable companies and Silicon Valley joined forces to enact “franchise reform” deregulation in 2005-07 that eliminated pre-existing anti-redlining requirements – profit maximizing firms are gonna act to maximize profit. They are not going to spend money upgrading facilities if they don’t consider it a good investment.