In his FCC blog, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is touting the June 7 open FCC meeting as his own version of “Avengers: Infinity War”. He says the FCC is taking on familiar headliners like “freeing up spectrum, removing barriers to infrastructure buildout, expanding satellite services, modernizing outdated rules, eliminating waste, improving accessibility, protecting consumers—and rolling them into one, super-sized meeting.”

I want to focus on the agenda item “removing barriers to infrastructure buildout”. The Chairman goes on in his blog to say the following about that topic:

Removing regulatory barriers to encourage the deployment of next-generation networks and close the digital divide certainly fits that bill. That’s something that consumers strongly support; as I’ve traveled from the Mountain West to the Gulf Coast, I’ve heard many of them say that they want to benefit from modern, more resilient technologies like optical fiber instead of limping along with slower services like DSL provided over old, often-degraded copper. To respond to that desire, I’ve shared an order with my colleagues that would make it easier for companies to discontinue outdated, legacy services and transition to the networks of the future. These reforms would enable the private sector to stop spending scarce dollars propping up fading technologies of the past and promote investment in technologies of the future. They will also make it easier to restore service in the aftermath of natural disasters and other catastrophic and unforeseen events. 

The Chairman’s rhetoric sounds great and anybody in rural America would love for the FCC to help them “benefit from modern, more resilient technologies like optical fiber”. However, this is another false narrative coming from the Chairman. Rather than promoting fiber or fast broadband, the FCC will be voting on the attached order which authorizes the following:

• Expedites the ability of telcos to discontinue broadband services slower than 25/3 Mbps;
• Streamlines the process for discontinuing legacy voice services.
• Eliminates the notice periods that telcos must give to customers before discontinuing legacy services or tearing down copper;
• Extends streamlined notice period during force majeure events, meaning telcos can walk away from a legacy network that gets damaged from a natural disaster, like happened a few years ago on Fire Island after hurricane Sandy.

This order makes it a lot easier for AT&T and the other giant telcos to walk away from their copper technology, their DSL networks and their legacy copper services. This comes straight from the wish list of the big telcos and is another example of how this FCC is is handing the reins to the big ISPs.

The premise behind the Chairman’s rhetoric is that we must be able to discontinue the old copper networks if we are to make the investments in newer broadband technologies. This sounds like a reasonable premise except for one thing: the big telcos are not going to be bringing fiber or technologies like 5G to rural America today, tomorrow or ever.

This docket does nothing more than make it easier for the big telcos to kill copper and DSL networks and walk away from rural America. We all know those networks are dying and eventually have to come down. What bothers me about the Chairman’s rhetoric is that he is hiding the truth about this agenda item behind a lie – that tearing down the old networks somehow makes it easier to build new networks. There will be many rural households hurt by this docket. The farm with no broadband and no cellular coverage is going to see their copper lines torn down and will lose their landlines, their last remaining connection to the outside world, and the Chairman doesn’t want to publicly say that he thinks that is okay. The big telcos would like nothing more than to completely wash their hands of rural markets and this FCC is making it easier for them to walk away.

The Chairman is painting a picture that killing copper is the first step towards getting faster broadband in rural America and that’s the big lie. The FCC has it within their authority to force the big telcos invest some of their profits back into rural America, but they are instead letting them walk away. Once the copper lines are down there will be nothing to replace them and future regulators will have zero leverage over the telcos after the copper networks are gone.

I find it disturbing that we have regulators without the courage to tell the American public the truth. If this FCC believes that it’s time to start tearing down rural copper, then they should say so. They know there is nothing to replace rural copper and so they are sugarcoating the topic to avoid the wrath of angry citizens. It’s disingenuous to paint the picture that this FCC is going to bring better broadband to rural America when we all know that’s not true.