Improving the Nation's Digital Infrastructure

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about a national-infrastructure plan by highlighting three points relevant to communications, namely:
1. Improving the nation’s digital infrastructure should be a significant part of any national-infrastructure plan, as the economic upside for the country from accelerating investment in broadband is likely greater than from most other areas of infrastructure investment.
2.The primary goal of federal actions with respect to digital infrastructure should be to increase and accelerate profitable, incremental, private-sector investment to achieve at least 98% nationwide deployment of future-proofed, fixed broadband networks.
3.The policy measures that can be used to achieve this goal are: (i) direct funding support to reduce the cost of capital; (ii) changes to the tax code to increase the return on invested capital, and (iii) operations-related actions that enhance the productivity of capex. A national-infrastructure plan should include initiatives in some, or all, of these categories.