Conference Call: Universal and Affordable Broadband in the States

On Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 4pm EST, Progressive States Network will be sponsoring a nationwide conference call to discuss further how to promote Universal and Affordable Broadband in the States. We will discuss details and strategies on legislation to map existing access in your state, requirements in video franchising laws to promote build-out and more comprehensive programs being promoted by state leaders.

For those who can't join our call, please sign up to receive further updates from Progressive States.

Joining us will be representatives from FreePress, the Communication Workers of America, and state legislative leaders sponsoring key legislation.

Details:
Thursday, March 1st 2007
4pm EST/1pm PST
1-800-391-1709 (Conference ID# 709424)
Please RSVP at http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/progressivestates/event/index.jsp?event_KEY=24384

Valuing Families

Universal and Affordable Broadband in the States

The United States, having largely invented the Internet, is becoming a global also-ran in deploying high-speed Internet broadband for its citizens.  The dirty secret is that US federal policy is a debacle, a massive failure that has left most American families with access to relatively slow, expensive broadband services and left many other families with no high-speed Internet available at all. 

This is an economic and social tragedy, since, as we discussed last Fall, high-speed broadband promises both new economic growth for communities and potentially massive savings on medical and energy costs.  

Luckily, state governments are no longer waiting for the federal government to act, and many are working to make universal and affordable broadband a reality for their citizens.  At the same time, there is some danger that states could make the situation worse by increasing the digital divide if they don't establish strong broadband build-out requirements as part of video franchising and other regulatory rules in their states.  This Stateside Dispatch will highlight new state initiatives that are addressing these challenges of broadband deployment in the states.

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Valuing Families

Failure of Federal Policy

Multiple reports have documented how the United States has lost its global edge in the race to bring high-speed Internet to its citizens.  Just a few measures of this failure include: 

To get some sense of what we are missing out on in the United States, you can compare your personal broadband speed to what's available in the rest the world using the SpeedMatters Speedtest.

While some blame the challenge of reaching rural populations as the reason the US lags behind other countries, an analysis by FreePress and Consumers Union emphasizes that many countries with a higher non-urban population than the United States still have higher broadband deployment than the US. They make clear that it's been the lack of political will in the United States that has been the cause of our plummet in the international technology deployment rankings.

In fact, criticism of the failure of US policy comes not just from outside advocacy groups but from top regulatory officials.  In a Washington Post op-ed last fall, Federal Communications Commissioner Michael J. Copps blasted federal failures:

"America's record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country. Too few of us have broadband connections, and those who do pay too much for service that is too slow. It's hurting our economy, and things are only going to get worse if we don't do something about it."

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Valuing Families

Mapping Broadband Access

Here's the most absurd measure of federal failure: federal regulators don't even know who has high-speed access and who doesn't --or how fast their access really is.

Incomplete Federal Data: Using July 2005 data, the Federal Communications Commission declared that 99 percent of the population lived in areas with high-speed Internet access, but this was based on industry data that assumed broadband access even if just one person in the zip code had access. And the FCC defines "high-speed" access as anything more than 200 kbps (just a couple of times faster than dial-up access) compared to other countries which define "high-speed" as five times the US standard-- and where speeds in Japan can reach 2000 times faster the FCC standard.   So the feds have little idea which neighborhoods really have access to broadband and no idea what speeds they have available.

The Government Accounting Office in a May 2006 report argued that this poor data collection made the FCC information "[not as] useful for understanding the status of broadband deployment across the country."(p. 10)  The GAO cited the example of Kentucky, where the FCC claimed in 2005 that 96% of communities had broadband access, yet more detailed state-specific mapping found that only 77% of Kentucky households had access to any form of broadband service at the time.(p. 17)

Independent State Broadband Mapping: The reason the GAO had independent Kentucky data to measure against the pathetic FCC data is that a state-level organization, ConnectKentucky, had established a mapping project in 2004 to measure who actually had broadband access in the state.  Mapping access was the first step by the state in increasing access by 45 percent in two years, on track to meeting the state's goal of full broadband deployment by the end of 2007.

Other states are now taking Kentucky's lead in working to map exactly who has broadband access in their states and how fast that access really is:

• Maryland Delegate Herman Taylor, who represents a county just outside of Washington D.C., introduced House Bill 1069 to require any company offering high-speed broadband (defined at a more realistic level of at least 768kbps) to report down to the zip code-plus 4 level who has access, the speed of access, and the price charged for those services.  Delegate Taylor worked with the organization Public Knowledge in developing the bill.  

• In Indiana, Rep. Scott Reske (D-Pendleton), who chairs the state Technology, Research & Development Committee, and Rep. Terri Austin have proposed HB 1662.  The bill would require Indiana's Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) "to prepare certain maps depicting the availability of broadband service in Indiana," including the availability and cost of broadband services in each census block, along with costs to extending service to areas not currently served by broadband.   The goal is to create a visual map of gaps in access that can guide further policy in the state.

Whatever states do on broadband policy in 2007, requiring state regulatory authorities to collect data on broadband access, speeds, and prices of service for all state residents should be a top priority for state legislatures.

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Valuing Families

Build-Out Requirements in Video Franchising Laws

Many states are rushing forward with "Video Franchising Laws" on the promise that these will speed high-speed video and broadband services in their states, but the cost of carelessly designed rules could be an increased digital divide, especially if strong universal service requirements at the local level are preempted by weak or non-existent build-out rules at the state level.

The Danger of Cherry-Picking Customers: For example, an industry report on the Texas Video Franchising Bill, SB 5, has touted the argument that there was a small increase in high-speed video options. Unfortunately, even the fine print of the report admits this slight improvement came at the expense of community benefits previously provided and were partially due to "Elimination of Build-Out Requirements." As the report detailed, "Larger providers said they occasionally had requests to serve entire communities with voice, video, and data service [in the past]...These providers felt the statewide law had helped avoid this potential problem," ie. companies were now able to cherry-pick more profitable customers rather than covering a whole service area. (see p. 11)   Industry celebrating the gutting of local build-out requirements emphasizes why state franchising laws need to step in with their own rules to avoid reinforcing the digital divide.

Including Build-Out Requirements: On the plus size, a number of states are demanding stronger build-out requirements in their video franchising laws:

Valuing Families

Expanding Broadband Access Statewide

Beyond video franchising legislation, states are stepping up with comprehensive plans to promote broadband deployment -- a key to overcoming the underinvestment in telecommunications infrastructure in the US highlighted above. 

Along with ConnectKentucky discussed above, another example is the Southside Virginia Regional Backbone Initiative, funded partially by Virginia's Tobacco Commission, to use high-speed broadband to revitalize the economy of Southern Virginia.  One byproduct was the creation of the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative, a non-profit public-private partnership dedicated to building new fiber optic infrastructure in the region as the backbone for broadband expansion and encouraging technology-based business expansion in the region.

Valuing Families

Conclusion

After years of neglect by federal leaders, states are taking action on broadband policy, but they need to leverage opportunities for success: mandatory mapping of what broadband services are really available to their citizens, requiring real build-out requirements in any video franchising laws, and creating comprehensive state plans for broadband expansion. 

A 2001 Brookings Institution study estimated the widespread adoption of broadband could add $500 billion to the U.S. economy and create 1.2 million new jobs per year, but that growth will go overwhelmingly to communities that fully deploy the technology-- meaning that any digital divide we allow to remain in place will translate into an increasing economic divide between prosperity and economic stagnation. Hopefully, we will see the political will in the states to avoid that result and make universal and affordable high-speed broadband a reality for all Americans.

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