Evaluating claims about unlicensed fixed wireless

The wireless industry is out with a new paper that claims, “The bias [towards fiber to the home] ‘could increase costs by upwards of $30 to $60 billion depending on the distribution of fiber deployment costs for the unserved locations.’” It also says “[excluding unlicensed fixed wireless] ‘unambiguously adds’ at least 1.9 million new locations calling for government-funded overbuilding with [Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment] BEAD funds”. As both my analysis, and a separate analysis from ACA, have shown, there is enough money to fund fiber to the home (FTTH) in the vast majority of cases and in all but a few of the most expensive states. At this one moment in time, there’s enough money. We shouldn’t be looking for shortcuts. As for the number of locations that are excluded by not including unlicensed fixed wireless, my numbers say 1.79 million fewer locations would be deemed unserved. Current maps show 7.8 million unserved locations. Including unlicensed fixed wireless — 6 million. Yes, including unlicensed fixed wireless would result in fewer unserved, but more than half of the locations would be underserved. Of the 1.79 fewer unserved, 975,000 became underserved. A better metric would be how many unserved and underserved would be deemed served. By that metric, unlicensed fixed wireless reduces the Digital Divide by 1.4 million. I think the distinction between fixed wireless using unlicensed spectrum and licensed spectrum is silly because, if we’re thinking about what’s best for families, the best path forward, in my view, is clear: make the fiber go as far as possible.