Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

We saw giant steps backward on communications, media, health, education, environment, voting rights, court appointments, money in politics, equal opportunity, women’s rights, labor rights… the list goes on and on.

There was no "Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you" moment; instead, 50 years ago in 1969, there was an attempt to login on ARPANET that ended after "lo" because of a system crash. That inauspicious moment led to our connected world of 2019, a time when more than 4 billion people have internet access, and the number of devices connected to internet networks is more than double the global population. But for all the internet's impact, for all those devices, and even though so many have access, too many people remain unconnected.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF, a ten-year, $20.4 billion program designed to support broadband deployment in those rural-remote areas left behind by the private market. RDOF will go a long way in bridging the digital divide if it is spent correctly. But there are major issues with RDOF that require attention. My concern is that companies that win this public support will build networks using antiquated or untrusted tech that are only capable of 25/3 service.

On December 10, 2019, Senate Democrats once again demanded, via a call for unanimous consent, an immediate vote on the Save the Internet Act, legislation that reverses the repeal of net neutrality protections.

Libraries Without Borders sought to replicate its digital inclusion strategy in underserved rural and suburban manufactured-housing communities. The project began in Minnesota, with a town hall-style meeting where residents of the Park Plaza Cooperative Community in Fridley shared their vision for a future partnership between the local library and the community. The need for such a partnership is high.

What's happening with rural broadband? Hundreds of thousands of Georgians have been asking this question for several years now. These voices are being heard, as lawmakers in Atlanta and Washington have launched several rural broadband initiatives. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) signed Senate Bill 2 (SB 2) on April 26, 2019, authorizing electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) to provide broadband services.

In November 2019, the Internet Society (ISOC) sold the .ORG registry (Public Interest Registry) to private-equity company Ethos Capital for $1.135 billion.

Home broadband subscription rates continue to lag in rural areas, holding back local economies and access to telemedicine. The deployment of broadband networks to rural areas echoes the challenges earlier generations had ensuring that electrical networks and telephone service reached everyone. The solutions those earlier generations employed provide us lessons for today’s broadband challenges. Through the 1930s, many power companies ignored rural areas of the nation even when the federal government offered loans to serve these sparsely populated areas.

The Federal Communications Commission, in December 2018, launched an investigation into whether one or more major mobile providers violated the requirements to submit coverage maps to the FCC. FCC staff discovered that the coverage maps submitted by Verizon, U.S. Cellular, and T-Mobile likely overstated each provider’s actual coverage and did not reflect on-the-ground performance in many instances. Only 62.3% of staff drive tests achieved at least the minimum download speed predicted by the coverage maps—with U.S.

My theme today – what is going unnoticed. Simply put, we should pay more attention to the lack of competition in the provision of fixed broadband to homes and small businesses. As a general matter, we can expect people with only one choice to pay monopoly prices, and people with only two to pay the higher prices typically charged by duopolies. People with three or more choices typically pay less. Clearly, people who can barely afford to pay a competitive price, say, low-income Americans, are particularly vulnerable to artificially high prices.