The $53,000 Connection: The High Cost of High-Speed Internet for Everyone

The cost of connecting Nebraska’s Winnebago Tribe reservation with fiber-optic cable could average $53,000 for each household and workplace connected. That amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the homes getting hookups, property records show. While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school, and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy. “The problem is, money is not infinite,” said Blair Levin, a senior communications policy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations who is now an equity research analyst. “If you’re spending $50,000 to connect a very remote location, you have to ask yourself, would we be better off spending that same amount of money to connect [more] families?” Providing fiber-optic cable is the industry standard, but alternative options -- such as satellite service -- are cheaper, if less reliable. Congress has left it up to state and federal officials implementing the program to decide how much is too much in hard-to-reach areas. Defenders of the federal broadband infrastructure programs say a simple per-location cost doesn’t capture their benefits. Once built, rural fiber lines can be used to upgrade cell service or to add more connections to nearby towns. For the Winnebago Tribe, the introduction of high-speed internet is seen as a means to spur economic development and to give young people a reason to stay on the reservation, instead of leaving for a city.