Last week the FCC published a document that is their vision of a roadmap to improve the nation’s digital infrastructure. Today’s blog is going to look at the positive aspects of that roadmap and tomorrow I will look at some of the FCC’s ideas that I find to be troublesome.

I find this to be an interesting document for several reasons. First, it was published on Ajai Pai’s first day as FCC Chairman. It’s obvious that this paper has been under development for a while, but it clearly reflects the new Chairman’s views of the industry.

This paper is not so much a complete broadband plan as it is a roadmap of principles that the FCC supports to get broadband to rural areas. The FCC recognizes that they only have the power today to institute a few of the goals of this plan and that Congress would need to act to implement most of the suggestions in the plan.

The obviously good news about this document is that it clearly lays forward the principle that rural America deserves to have real broadband that meets or exceeds the FCC’s definition of 25 Mbps. This is a clear break from the FCC’s decision just a few years ago to fund the CAF II program which is spending $19 billion to fund rural broadband that only has to meet a 10/1 Mbps standard. One of my first thoughts in reading this document is that it seems likely that if this new roadmap is implemented that the FCC would have to cancel the remainder of the CAF II deployment. It’s really too bad the that FCC didn’t support real bandwidth for rural America before tossing away money on the CAF II plan.

The FCC plan looks at bringing broadband to the 14% of the households in the country that don’t have broadband today capable of delivering 25/3 Mbps. The FCC estimates that it will cost roughly $80 billion to bring broadband to these areas. Interestingly, they estimate that it would take only $40 billion to reach 12 out of the 14%, and that the last little sliver of the country would cost the remaining $40 billion. But the FCCs goal is to find a way to get broadband to all of these places (except I’m sure for the most remote of the remote places).

The paper calls for aggressive federal assistance in funding the rural broadband. They recognize that there has not been commercial deployment in these areas because commercial providers can’t justify the investments due to the high cost of deployment. And so they suggest that the government should provide grants, loans and loan guarantees that are aggressive enough to improve the returns for private investment. They suggest that grants could be as high as 80% of the cost of deployment in the most remote places.

The paper suggests that most of the areas will have enough customer revenue to support the properties without further federal support. In looking at some of the business plans I have built for rural counties I think that they are probably right. What sinks most rural business plans is not the ongoing maintenance costs, but rather the heavy burden of debt and a return on equity during the first 10 years of deployment. Rural fiber deployment will look like better financial opportunity if the government can find a way to provide enough up-front funding support. The FCC does recognize that most rural markets in the country will require ongoing federal support to be viable. They suggest it will require about $2 billion per year in ongoing support that will probably be similar to how the Universal Service Fund works today.

The roadmap document also suggests other financial incentives to fiber builders such as faster depreciation, tax credits, and changes to the IRS rules which require today that grant funding be considered as income. That provision stopped a number of companies from accepting the stimulus funding a few years ago and is a definite roadblock to accepting grant funding.

Overall these are great goals. It’s going to require significant fiber in rural areas to meet the stated speed goals. It’s great to see the FCC change direction and suggest that rural America deserves real broadband. I just wish they had adopted this policy a few years ago rather than supporting the CAF II program that is throwing money at propping up rural DSL.