How streaming entertainment makes rural broadband unsustainable

If the five companies using the most broadband bandwidth contribute more to the costs of providing it, they could help address the digital divide. Roslyn Layton, a vice president at Strand Consult, researched four rural broadband providers and found that 75 percent of downstream network traffic comes from five companies: Amazon Prime, Disney+/Hulu, Microsoft Xbox, Netflix and YouTube. According to her report “Middle Mile Economics: How streaming video entertainment undermines the business model for broadband,” the traffic from those companies drives about 90 percent of the net new network costs for rural providers. Now is the time to reexamine the broadband setup, Layton said, particularly as it pertains to the middle mile, which is most impacted. That is the part that enables the transport and transmission of data from the central office, cable headend or wireless switching station to an internet point of presence, the local access point that lets users connect to the internet through their provider.  She also cited the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill that includes $65 billion to improve broadband access – another use of public funds she said should be unnecessary if the biggest internet users paid their share.But whatever solution comes to be, the current pricing model will become unsustainable, the report states. “We have to get more money into the system or we’ll just never close the digital divide,” Layton said.