House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) predicted that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will help get internet into every home in America within the next four to five years. The bill itself does not provide a concrete timeline as to when this goal would be achieved, but various government officials, including Rep Clyburn, have made promises to the American people that it could come sooner than some may expect. “In five years, I think this going to be a successful venture,” said Rep Clyburn. In addition, for this to work, he said he believes that including the private sector is what will really “allow us to build internet in every home, every business, within four to five years.”

[The remarks were delivered at the Benton Institute's 40th Anniversary Celebration]

For years the industry used the word redundancy when talking about how we protected our networks. The primary aspects of redundancy are having multiple fiber routes in place so that areas don’t become isolated if a fiber is cut or having enough spare electronics to quickly recover from problems. But in recent years, we’ve started to talk about resiliency, which encompasses redundancy but means a whole lot more. Resiliency means taking proactive steps to prepare against reasonably expected problems of all sorts. There are many examples of how network owners are thinking in terms of resiliency. For example, we’ve recently started seeing prolonged power outages or brownouts in Texas, parts of California, and elsewhere. We’ve seen fiber network owners deal with this problem in several ways. One is to design networks with fewer powered locations. Another way to increase resiliency is the increased use of solar power. I’ve also been having a lot more discussions with clients in recent years about burying networks. Most network builders have elected the lowest-cost option when building a network, and this has often meant putting fiber on poles. But when considering the total life cycle cost of operating the network, it’s becoming clear that in many cases fiber is a lower-cost option. Another aspect of resiliency that is becoming more important is to have a mutual aid plan – to be part of a group that will respond when there is a network disaster. This means providing aid to others when there are problems, but having a swarm of technicians to help fix problems in your own network can be a lifesaver.

[Doug Dawson is President of CCG Consulting.]

Gage County, Nebraska, has selected a contractor to improve high-speed broadband access in the county. The county would make use of $4.2 million in American Rescue plan Act funding toward an estimated $11 million to $12 million project. County Supervisor Emily Haxby noted that the project will complement a federally supported project to provide a licensed fixed wireless service for the southeast part of the county, where plowing fiberoptic was not feasible. County supervisors also approved a contract with Universal Broadband Consulting to negotiate an agreement with Nextlink….and approved a memorandum of understanding with Nebraska Public Power District, to share costs of a study of broadband infrastructure development. NPPD would pick up half the cost of the estimated $20,000 study. Norris Public Power District and five counties would split the remaining costs.