Infrastructure Summer: Bipartisan Bill Boosts Corporate Giants

If passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act leads to even a significant portion of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda through budget reconciliation, it will herald a new age of government investment and intervention in the economy, and a reversal of decades of pullbacks in public spending. On the surface, a $65 billion investment in broadband, with an emphasis on getting low-income and rural households connected and closing the digital divide, is an unalloyed positive. But how much of that money will actually go toward meeting these goals, and how much will funnel into the coffers of incumbent telecom companies that for decades have resisted spending much money on rural and low-income deployment? The $42.45 billion in state-level grants is prioritized to “unserved” areas, defined as areas with no access to broadband with at least 25/3 megabits per second (Mbps), which has been the standard minimum since 2015. “Underserved” areas, by contrast, are set at 100/20 Mbps, which is the level grantees are supposed to hit; the original proposal sought a higher speed. Because “unserved” areas get the money first, areas where the incumbent telecoms already operate, “even if underserved,” are unlikely to qualify for much funding. Smaller nonprofits, electrical co-ops, and muni broadband operations do not get priority; the new language pointedly states that “the program does not favor particular companies or providers.” So AT&T and Comcast can capture this pot of money, as they have in the past, without meaningful broadband adoption in unserved or underserved areas.

[David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor]