Infrastructure

In late Oct 2019, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society released a report that explores how leaders at all levels of government can push toward a more connected future. One of the key findings is that state governments must play a crucial role in expanding Americans’ access to broadband services. The report, Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s, examines ways that policymakers at all levels of government can help expand reliable broadband access to every American by the end of the decade.

Hopefully, when Congress gets done allocating several trillion dollars simply to keep the economy afloat, we will be able to have another discussion: What should we invest in so we don’t just burden young Americans with a mountain of new debt, but also arm them with the tools to grow out of it and still prosper in the 21st century? These could be the most important and precious dollars we spend, so we need to invest them wisely, as President Franklin D.

The CARES Act, which addresses the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has allocated an additional $100 million towards the US Department of Agriculture ReConnect rural broadband funding program. USDA has announced that denied ReConnect grant applicants can now reapply for this new funding with priority access. The additional funding has been allocated as grants to rural broadband providers to “…prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus.” USDA is setting this $100 million aside, making it available until September 30, 2021.

The Federal Communications Commission authorized $2,642,413 in funding over ten years to expand broadband in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. With this tranche of FCC support, Armstrong Telecommunications has committed to providing broadband at speeds of at least 1 Gbps/500 Mbps to an estimated 1,949 unserved rural homes and businesses in Crawford, Erie, and Mercer counties.

The Illinois Office of Broadband filed a petition for reconsideration of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) order, asking the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its decision to forego federal-state partnership on broadband deployment, asserting a partnership would help coordinate state and federal broadband investment to maximize efficiency and minimize duplication. Illinois also asked the FCC to reconsider its decision to continue to treat broadband offering 25/3 Mbps service as a viable minimum, and make 50/5 Mbps the threshold for support in the RDOF auction.

Speedier 5G wireless technology is rekindling a long-running debate over the best way to reach America’s internet dead zones: by wire or by wave. Cellphone carriers including Verizon and T-Mobile  say new wireless technologies will let them serve more home-broadband subscribers without sending a technician to wire up a customer’s house. The companies have promised to build profitable services where other wireless broadband companies, like Clearwire, have failed to build a viable business, but they have yet to detail how many wireless homes they serve.

Infrastructure workers were essential long before COVID-19, but their economic importance has come into greater focus during the crisis and is beginning to shape the response, too. Just as our infrastructure systems require generational investment, so too do our infrastructure workers. Beyond protecting essential workers right now, there are enormous concerns over who will fill these jobs in the months and years to come. Policymakers have traditionally viewed infrastructure jobs in terms of construction projects.

A 400-mile fiber network built to provide broadband Internet access to 14 mountain communities across northwest Colorado officially went online the week of April 6. The Northwest Colorado Council of Governments has spearheaded the work, dubbed Project Thor. The loop starts in Denver and runs west, using Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) fiber along Interstate 70 and a combination of fiber services going north through Meeker, Craig, Steamboat Springs and Grand County.

According to the DC Circuit’s logic, the Federal Communications Commission’s jurisdiction over broadband Internet access services now resides in some sort of regulatory purgatory.

Even before the pandemic, rural broadband had become a simmering political issue, an acute example of being left behind which some Democrats were using to prise rural voters away from President Donald Trump. It is a subject that resonates from congressional districts in upstate New York to presidential swing states such as Iowa. With the virus spreading rapidly beyond cities into rural counties, poor access to broadband has exploded into a major Congressional row, as politicians tussle over billions of dollars’ worth of stimulus money.