Infrastructure

As the city of Fort Dodge (IA) makes its next move in building municipal broadband service, Frontier Communications said its recent bankruptcy filing will only position it to serve communities like Fort Dodge better. The Chapter 11 filing, announced April 14 by Frontier, will cut its bondholder-backed debt by $10 billion. The company, one of two broadband internet service providers in Fort Dodge, has said through press releases that the filing will not affect any of its customers, employees or service offerings. The company has a physical presence in Fort Dodge.

Sens Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to work with broadband service providers and Congress to increase access to mobile broadband hotspots across rural America. Specifically, the sens urged Chairman Pai to work with the companies that stepped up by taking the Keep Americans Connected Pledge to provide a comprehensive report on the current distribution of hotspots to understand where hotspots have been deployed, where they will be deployed, and where they could be deployed with help from the federal government to impro

In the wake of trillion-dollar stimulus packages, the signing of House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Bob Latta's (R-OH) Broadband DATA Act and Secure 5G and Beyond Act of 2020 on March 23 received little fanfare. But the acts are likely to spur an invisible transformation for rural communities, Rep Latta said.  “The reality is, many Americans across the country and Ohioans in the district I represent who live in rural areas don’t have reliable internet connectivity.

Benton Senior Fellow Jonathan Sallet:  To say that advanced broadband services are being deployed to all Americans on a “reasonable and timely basis” is to ignore the rapidly changing reality of how Americans work, live, learn, socialize, and receive healthcare — all through home broadband connections. The FCC’s analysis is woefully inadequate:

The Federal Communications is charged with “encourag[ing] the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans . . . by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.” Available evidence demonstrates that the digital divide continues to narrow as more Americans than ever before have access to high-speed broadband.

Companies that deploy fiber broadband networks are seeing increased demand for their services. The pandemic is highlighting the need for faster uplink speeds, according to Adtran's Gary Bolton. “Video conferences are symmetric, and on a cable network you are lucky to have a [megabit] of upstream,” he said. “The need for fiber infrastructure is greater than ever.” Bolton thinks the current situation will have a lasting impact on demand for broadband. “When we get back to 'normal' it is not going to be the world we once knew,” Bolton said. “More people realize they need broadband. ....

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on establishing the 5G Fund for Rural America. The Notice proposes to distribute up to $9 billion through the Universal Service Fund across rural America for 5G wireless broadband connectivity. The 5G Fund would help ensure that rural Americans enjoy the same benefits from our increasingly digital economy as their urban counterparts—more than 200 million of whom already have access to major providers’ 5G networks—and would include a special focus on deployments that support precision agriculture.

The Internet itself is being tested like never before. To understand how these challenges are testing, more than ever, both the Internet’s technical foundation and the society that relies on it, the Center for Data and Computing (CDAC) is launching a new initiative to deploy our expertise and collaborative relationships towards studying how this pandemic has affected the Internet network — how it is responding globally, and how well local communities are able to make use of it.

Our two most recent reports seemed to indicate that networks were slowly adjusting to the newfound demand being placed on them, but this week, these improvements have, in some cases, slowed to a crawl:

The coronavirus pandemic is boosting momentum for major broadband legislation, highlighting the widespread lack of high-speed internet in US homes at a time when it has become more essential than ever. Leading lawmakers of both parties say the long-delayed issue of closing the so-called digital divide is gaining new prominence, as Washington weighs initiatives to help speed economic recovery and improve US competitiveness. “Having affordable broadband—it’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA).