Infrastructure

Billions of people don’t have the option to turn to the web in times of need or normality. A gross digital divide holds back almost half the planet when it most needs the web. This divide is most acutely experienced in developing countries.

Efforts to connect the unconnected have fallen way short. Many billions of dollars have been thrown at this, through multiple initiatives, programs and subsidies.

Some of the current sources of funding for rural telecommunications network infrastructure:

NTCA — The Rural Broadband Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) asked the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to relax certain rules for the ReConnect rural broadband funding program. The ReConnect program covers some of the costs of deploying broadband to unserved rural areas where build-out costs are high. ReConnect 100% grant awards require matching funds, and currently, recipients must spend all matching funds before they can begin using grant funding.

Back in April, a Pew Research Center survey found that 53% of U.S. adults say the internet has been essential for them personally during the pandemic. Another 34% say it has been important. Those attitudes are reflected in increased traffic over home broadband networks.

Rep Fred Upton (R-MI) and House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) announced the introduction of the “Rural Broadband Acceleration Act,” bipartisan legislation that directs the Federal Communications Commission to fund shovel-ready, high-speed internet projects immediately, so consumers can access broadband within a year.

Communications industry financial analysts at MoffettNathanson Research expect to see continued cable broadband market share gains, which have accelerated as bandwidth demand climbs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers’ “equilibrium” forecast calls for DSL market share to drop to zero. And “mid-tier” telco broadband increasingly is becoming “just as obsolete,” the researchers said. “Broadband is increasingly a two-horse race between cable and telco FTTH, where it exists,” the analysts argue.

Frontier told the Federal Communications Commission it would “welcome the inclusion” of the census blocks where it claims to newly offer broadband service into the upcoming Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Seeking to “clarify” its position, Frontier indicated that it would not fight to exclude the 17,000 census blocks in question despite maintaining that it does offer 25/3 Mbps speeds in those areas.

We have incorporated the internet as a critical part of our personal and professional lives. This is not going to change. The COVID-19 crisis has sped us forward to a paradigm shift in which we rely on the internet to bring economic and social activity to us—rather than us going to them. Yet, tens of millions of Americans do not have access to or cannot afford quality internet service. The United States has an internet access problem, especially in rural areas. The existing program to extend broadband has become a corporate entitlement for incumbent telephone companies.

A subsidiary of Matanuska Telephone Association has finished construction of the first overland fiber-optic cable connecting Alaska to not-Alaska. Having the cable means Alaska is no longer solely dependent upon a series of subsea cables for high-speed Internet and telephone service. Alaska’s subsea cables are vulnerable to earthquakes, and an overland connection offers a “geographically divers