We have several sets of broadband priorities at odds with each other in the country. The federal government is on a big push to move all transactions with the government to digital. The example that got a lot of press was when FEMA said it would only communicate with disaster victims through emails and its online portal. But government agencies across the board are pushing folks online to communicate.
The government is also clearly supporting an AI revolution where AI is supposed to revolutionize the way we work and live. According to federal government rhetoric, we are a little bit ahead of the Chinese in terms of AI development, and politicians seem to support the idea of doing whatever is needed to make sure that the U.S. wins the AI race.
At the same time that we are prioritizing AI and moving everything online, we seem to be deprioritizing broadband. NTIA cut the BEAD program funding in half to save money, at the expense of building new networks that would provide solid infrastructure for the next fifty years. The Administration outright killed the Digital Equity Act, which had the goal of getting computers into people’s hands and training them how to use them.
These goals are clearly at odds with each other. Consider the Digital Equity funding. There is a huge lost opportunity cost for not giving people the tools to enter the digital world that the government wants. What is the cost to society for people who aren’t given the tools to enter the digital world? Digital equity folks can rattle off tons of stories of folks who were given help with broadband who then went on to work in a tech field, start a business, become teachers, or otherwise thrive and contribute to society.
The disparity between these policies makes no sense to me. It looks to me like the Digital Equity Act was killed for the simple reason that it had the name ‘equity’ in its title. But digital equity never had any of the connotations that politicians classify as DEI. Digital Equity has always been an effort to help people learn more about and master computer technology and broadband. It makes no sense not to have digital equity as a goal if we want everybody to be able to use AI or communicate with the government online.
The BEAD grants were trimmed back for one reason only – to save money. The new Administration sent folks into every nook and cranny of the government to find ways to save money. On the surface, this isn’t a bad thing, and I have to think that many of the cuts to government expenses are good in the long run. But BEAD was never about spending money. BEAD is an infrastructure bill. There are reams of economic studies that show that spending money on infrastructure always returns more to the economy than the cost.
Just in my part of North Carolina, there are a bunch of counties where all of the BEAD awards went to satellite broadband. Set aside that Western North Carolina is mountainous and heavily wooded, and there will be homes that won’t be able to get adequate broadband from the satellites. Set aside that many of these counties have low overall incomes and many folks won’t be able to afford the satellite broadband.
The bigger issue is that building fiber is about a lot more than just bringing broadband to homes. When counties get a fiber network, they can start to get creative to find ways to leverage a new network to improve the local economy. Satellite broadband is finally starting to deliver the broadband that the average home needs to join the modern world. But satellite broadband isn’t going to support schools. It’s not going to enable a county to attract a new factory. Satellite is not going to enable a county to seek ways to improve cellular coverage. Fiber is the infrastructure needed to help the overall community, while satellite broadband just helps customers who can afford it.
I know this is probably coming across as another rant, but I know I’m right. BEAD and the Digital Equity Act were tools that could have made a big difference in rural communities. I’m pretty sure that by killing broadband programs that AI will not be coming to the rural counties in Western North Carolina. Folks here are going to fall through the cracks because they will be unable to communicate with FEMA and other government agencies. It feels like the government is making a conscious decision to exclude Western North Carolina. I don’t think this is deliberate, but unfortunately, by pursuing misaligned priorities, that’s exactly what is happening. The current government is making far too many decisions in a vacuum without considering the bigger picture.
Thank you for all your very informative posts! I read them all !!
Hi Doug, You are right!! One of the best summaries of where we are right now. I too live in the Asheville area and was frustrated to see the satellite wins in the latest announcements. It seems even our state-level officials fell victim. I had hopes at least a couple of them had visited the WNC mountains before. I am curious if you agree that it will end up being a coop type business model that ends up filling the gaps left when the current round of funding is over and they have declared victory. Seems we have seen this story before.
“who aren’t given the tools”
100% of people in the US have access to broadband, suitable for work. Any argument to this can simply be met by me saying ‘starlink’. The entire argument that people don’t have to tools to get connected is moot by whispering ‘starlink’. And it costs less that their cigarette habit. It costs so little that companies will pay for starlink for remote workers. ie, they have been offered the tools. ‘given’ is a dangerous word to use because a free hammer never pounds a nail.
The digital equity act was a social outreach program, not an infrastructure plan. It deserved to die.
BEAD is also mostly this. It has gone out of it’s way to disallow building of actual infrastructure, only ‘last-mile’. It deserves to be gutted or killed also.
These plans should be scrapped in their entirety and a new plan to build REAL infrastructure, carrier open access fiber on every US highway with access available for every community at essentially the ‘offramp’ to that community. Something that will outlast short-term funding, and outlast a bankruptcy from a failed last-mile ISP etc.
GPON to the home is not infrastructure. Long haul fiber to a community is infrastructure.
I have Starlink and disagree on the 100%. Particularly on wooded slopes in the eastern mountains from Maine to Georgia, Starlink has regular short (seconds) gaps and frequent long (minutes) gaps. BEAD wasn’t about fixing problems in compact, coherent towns and cities on an off ramp on I-90, I-80, I-60, I-40 banging across the midwest. It was about putting fiber on the sides of houses in irregular and sparsely populated areas a long way (20+) miles from an interstate, or even a US Route. I am the chair of ECFiber in Vermont and I’m glad we figured out how to do what BEAD was supposed to do ten years ago and don’t have to worry about it — in fact we didn’t apply for a dime. I just read your comment Dan and think you simply haven’t seen enough of the lower 48 to appreciate how problematic your simple solution proves to be in a sizable fraction of the country.
you’ve isolated a tiny corner case. I’ve been.. everywhere. Worked in literally every state. Purchased consumer broadband in every state, and purchased ‘carrier’ products in most states.
You saying you guys did this without BEAD only proves all my points. If we’re spending billions of dollars to get your cabin 20 miles from anything then we must be so flush with extra money to handle these luxuries yeah?
It’s not a corner case, there are plenty of places in the eastern part of the country where cable companies have not built out and phone companies have not replaced copper — these tend to be rural, mountainous areas with an average of ~12 serviceable locations per mile, if you include the denser village areas, 6 if you don’t. There’s no case for making the investment and so far there has been exactly one area like this which has self-organized to deal with this ‘market failure’ — ours. Go to EMMA and look for East Central Vermont Telecommunications District and read our limited offering memorandum for the 2023 Series A bonds.