There are growing signs that the time has come for the nation to address its broadband-access crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, with the increased demands of internet use due to in-home schooling and work-at-home, has only made the situation more evident. The question is, what is the best way to make this happen?
“The Democratic approach is holistic. It gets you twenty-first century access whereas the Republican approach is all carrot with the hope that the private sector will make it happen.”
Congressional Republicans and Democrats have introduced competing bills to fix this deepening problem, and now the Biden Administration has announced a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that includes broadband upgrades.
In February, Republican members of the House proposed a package of twenty-six bills dubbed the “Boosting Broadband Connectivity Agenda.” The lawmakers claimed “this agenda will get education back on track and promote economic opportunity for all Americans across the entire country.”
As they put it, “The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the challenges faced by families and workers who still do not have reliable access to the Internet. This has prevented millions from accessing vital health care, remote work, and economic resources. Unreliable Internet and limited broadband access has also set countless children back in school because of connectivity issues while far too many schools remain closed.”
This, the GOP lawmakers stated, is “unacceptable and hurting the next generation.”
One of the Republican bills is the CONNECT Act—i.e., “Communities Overregulating Networks Need Economic Competition Today.” It was promoted by Representative Billy Long, Republican of Missouri, a militant Trump supporter who opposed the certification of the 2020 Electoral College results that awarded the presidency to Joe Biden.
Embracing a unique logic, the CONNECT Act would “promote competition by limiting government-run broadband networks throughout the country and encouraging private investment.”
It would restrict the establishment of municipal broadband systems to only cities and towns without substantial broadband competition, thus extending nationwide the bans that twenty-two states currently have that prohibit or restrict localities from establishing municipal broadband networks.
But the CONNECT Act is “a horrible idea,” insists Ernesto Falcon, senior legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital-rights group based in San Francisco. “It is impossible to have ubiquitous or near 100 percent fiber-to-the-home [known as FTTH] without the public sector being involved.”
Falcon points to North Dakota as an example of a more successful approach. “They did not have any national companies pushing services and so they took a different tack,” he tells The Progressive. “Now two-thirds of the homes in the state have FTTH, with nearly ubiquitous fiber. That happened because local and private businesses took every government dollar that came to them and invested it into fiber.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic House Majority Whip, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, and Democratic Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar, co-chairperson of the Senate Broadband Caucus, have introduced the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. It would invest $94 billion over five years to bring affordable high-speed broadband infrastructure to underserved rural, suburban, and urban communities throughout the country.
The Democratic initiative seeks to enhance distance learning for K-12 students and teachers, especially in rural localities, and for tribal governments, Alaska Native entities, and Native Hawaiian organizations.
“Our bad decisions regarding broadband have been driven by the lack of resources.”
Equally critical, it directly challenges the Republican CONNECT Act by prohibiting state governments from enforcing laws or regulations that inhibit local governments, public-private partnerships, and cooperatives from delivering broadband service.
“The Democratic approach is holistic,” Falcon argues. “It gets you twenty-first century access whereas the Republican approach is all carrot with the hope that the private sector will make it happen.”
Falcon believes the Democratic proposal “is very much on the table because President Biden ran on ‘Build Back Better’ and the Demoratic proposal is within the scope of that effort.”
The Biden Administration on March 31 introduced the “The American Jobs Plan” that invokes FDR’s Rural Electrification plan of 1936 in scope and vision. “The President,” the White House fact sheet says, “believes that we can bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American through a historic investment of $100 billion.”
The Biden plan is anchored in next-generation infrastructure—that is, a fiber network. It seeks to reach all “unserved and underserved areas” with “100 percent high-speed broadband coverage.” It sets aside funds for infrastructure on tribal lands, and requires that tribal nations be consulted in program administration. And it prioritizes support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, nonprofits, and co-operatives.
These elements, the White House argues, “will promote price transparency and competition among Internet providers, including lifting barriers that prevent municipally owned or affiliated providers and rural electric co-ops from competing on an even playing field with private providers, and requiring internet providers to clearly disclose the prices they charge.”
In many cases, Falcon warns, “our bad decisions regarding broadband have been driven by the lack of resources.” He calls broadband fiber a “future-proof infrastructure” that will dramatically increase the speed and capacity of Internet infrastructure.
“The construction work is the biggest price tag,” Falcon says. “You build it and pay off the cost over twenty, twenty-five years, and you’re still using the same wire. It will give you cheaper and faster service over time. That is the permanent solution to the digital divide. We really screwed up in the past because we spent billions updating the old copper networks and all that is outdated now.”
As Falcon sees it, the Democratic proposal and the new Biden infrastructure plan offer a chance for the United States to do something different, and an opportunity to end digital inequality. The Biden plan, Falcon says, “will not simply challenge the digital divide, but end it.”