Fiber exec says 'army of lobbying' is keeping broadband standards low

Roger Timmerman, CEO of Utopia Fiber, called out the "army" of lobbyists that are keeping broadband speed standards down in the US. "The problem is we've got an $8 million a week lobbying effort from big telecom, and so anytime the federal government – or even now at the state level – when any of them try to raise that bar for the standard of what consumers need for broadband, there's an army of lobbying that goes up and opposes that. And they're very effective," said Timmerman. Timmerman's argument is the opposite of one routinely made by cable and wireless industry representatives who warn of "overbuilders" receiving federal dollars to bring broadband to "underserved" areas, or areas without access to speeds of 100/20. He said that not only are our current standards below consumer expectations for broadband, but they may leave us with "a lot of money with not anywhere to spend it." "Even 100-meg, you know, we're still redlining off enormous populations that have lousy broadband and are making them ineligible for funding," he said. "What that does is it pushes the programs where the money is going to be spent into those $50,000 per household capacities, into the really rural areas. So $42 billion is a lot of money, and it'll be a lot of fiber," Timmerman added, referring to the BEAD program. "But the problem is it won't be nearly enough money because of how it's being administered, because the standards are too low."