Cable broadband providers told the Federal Communications Commission this week that preventing digital discrimination in the provision of broadband services is a laudable goal but that they already offer equal access to high-speed service, and the proof is in the data.

In December 2022, the FCC began seeking input on how it should implement the digital discrimination provisions in the Biden administration's Infrastructure Act. The statute ties its billions of additional dollars in broadband buildout subsidy money to equal access to deployment.

In seeking that comment, the FCC asked how it could “prevent internet providers from engaging in digital discrimination,” which, at least linguistically, suggests there is a problem that needs fixing.

NCTA-the Internet & Television Association, in comments filed this week, said that both FCC and census data make it clear that “cable broadband networks are available across providers’ service areas to homes and businesses, regardless of income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion or national origin.”

The association cited FCC and U.S. Census data showing 99.8% of homes with median incomes above $100,000 have access to cable broadband at 1 Gigabit per second, but so do virtually the same percentage (98.2%) for those with incomes below $35,000 per year.

Data also shows that in areas where 80% or more of residents are African-American, 99.5% have access to 1 gig service, NCTA said. That’s a tick higher than the 98.1% of homes in ares where less than 5% of the residents have 1 gig available, the group said.

The NCTA signaled the problem would be if the FCC were to overregulate in an effort to achieve broadband adoption or affordability goals addressed elsewhere in the Infrastructure Act that aren’t germane to the broadband deployment portion that should be the inquiry’s focus. 

The things NCTA wants the FCC to steer clear of include conflating adoption with deployment. NCTA said the FCC’s definition of availability should rely only on studies that “distinguish availability from adoption and do not rely on third-party speed tests.”

The Biden administration has signaled it thinks those quality and adoption goals — and competition benchmarks — should all be factored into the deployment equation.

If the FCC does find evidence of discriminatory deployment, it should base any action on a proof of intent to discriminate rather than inadvertent discrimination. NCTA argues that distinction can be shown via evidence of “a pattern of discriminatory intent, the sequence of events leading to the decision, departures from normal procedures and a consistent pattern of actions imposing much greater harm on the protected class.”

The FCC has proposed sanctioning unintentional as well as intentional discrimination, which would obviously raise the stakes for internet-service providers on just how the FCC defines discrimination.

Intent or not, though, NCTA said the FCC should not give complainants the power to file class-action suits or any private right of action.

The FCC notice NCTA was commenting on proposes adding digital discrimination to the agency’s informal consumer complaint process, coming up with model policies and best practices for states and localities and next steps and potential rules for combating discrimination in broadband access.

One policy it thinks it would be best for the FCC to adopt is expressly preempting laws in those states and localities that differ from the agency’s digital discrimination rules. ■

The Federal Communications Commission is launching an inquiry into how it can “prevent internet providers from engaging in digital discrimination.”

The agency was under a directive from Congress related to the tens of billions of dollars being handed out for broadband deployment and adoption in the Biden administration‘s infrastructure package.

“Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine your access to broadband,“ FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in outlining the agenda for the agency‘s March meeting, when there will be a vote on launching the notice of inquiry. Rosenworcel has already launched a cross-agency task force to work on the discrimination issue.

Also on the March agenda is a proposed rulemaking looking at how the FCC can speed broadband deployment and lower buildout costs by expediting pole-attachment disputes, with clear rules for when and how utility companies that are broadband “attachers” share the cost of pole replacement if that is needed to accommodate attachment requests.

Charter Communications, for one, was pleased the FCC was weighing into the pole-attachment issue. “Pole attachment regulation significantly impacts the length of time it takes to connect families and small businesses to high-speed internet service, especially in rural areas that require access to multiple poles for every home served,” the company said in a statement. “The FCC initiating this proceeding will be a critical step to achieving 100% connectivity in the U.S., because when poles can be accessed in a timely, fair and cost-effective way, more people get connected faster.” ■

The pandemic has created a new sense of urgency about closing America’s digital divide, elevating it from something that is desirable to something deemed essential. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen an outpouring of proposals for ways the government should assist, which vary greatly in the levels of recommended funding and the methods for allocating government dollars.

President Joe Biden recently agreed to a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that includes $65 billion for building out broadband across the nation (a substantial reduction from his $100 billion proposal for broadband). Now, the package needs Republican support to pass the Senate.

Achieving universal broadband by equipping every American with the transformative power of digital tools, social networks and online platforms would be a milestone accomplishment, but simply appropriating funding does not guarantee success, and with a decreased amount of funding, expenditures must be judiciously planned. As lawmakers sift through a myriad of ideas on how the funds should be spent, ensuring the best use of taxpayer funds and carving the most efficient path toward universal connectivity should be top priorities.

Here are three guiding principles for allocation of federal dollars to close the digital divide.

Don’t miss the forest for the fiber: America’s broadband infrastructure investment should be based on techn­ology-neutral criteria, allowing for a combination of solutions that are adapted to local needs and can be rapidly and cost-effectively deployed. With limited funds to tackle all three parts of the digital divide  —  deployment, affordability and adoption  —  ensuring the most efficient use of funds is critical. For deployment, while policymakers may reasonably favor the use of fiber optics where feasible, they should resist the urge to foreclose other next best solutions, especially in those hardest-to-serve areas where, even with government subsidies, it may be uneconomical to lay miles and miles of fiber to serve a single household.

To get infrastructure legislation passed, now’s the time to make practical funding allocation decisions to ensure that the gap between digital haves and have-nots can be closed with the federal dollars made available. Fiber costs $20,000 per mile, by some estimates, and connecting every home with fiber in rural, mountainous and sparsely populated locations would prove prohibitively expensive.

In short, fiber should be deployed when reasonable, based on geography and population density. It may not make sense, for example, to bring fiber to Supai, Arizona, which can only be reached by foot, pack animal or helicopter. In some cases, subsidizing satellite internet services could prove more cost effective than reaching every end point with fiber.  

Use market mechanisms to maximize broadband deployment: Federally funded broadband deployment should be structured in a market-sensitive way. Over the past decade, the Federal Communications Commission has developed a competitive funding allocation process, via reverse auctions, to ensure broadband projects produce the greatest benefit for the dollars expended. The auctions maximize efficiency as bidders compete against one another to offer the lowest price at which they are willing to provide their services.

It would make sense to hold a series of auctions, rather than a single auction, to benefit from lessons learned from previous bidding rounds. Additionally, holding multiple auctions would help ensure that unserved communities don’t fall through the cracks, in the event that there is no round-one bidder for certain areas. 

The more bidders the merrier: In order to encourage a highly competitive market, all qualified, proven and capable bidders should be welcomed into the process. Strong guardrails should be put in place to ensure entities seeking to bid have the resources required to deliver on their promises. Once these standards are met, the more bidders the better.

No priority or favoritism should be given to any category of bidder based on for-profit or not-for-profit status. The goal is to get the job done, and it’s in Americans’ interest that the entities best suited to build and operate broadband networks be trusted with taxpayer dollars.

The digital divide has been a problem for the past quarter-century. Closing the gap is now a national priority, and bipartisan support for a solution has never been stronger. With the appropriation of federal dollars for broadband now likely, a well-considered allocation plan along these lines is the next essential step.

Rick Boucher was a Democratic member of the U.S. House from Virginia for 28 years and chaired the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet. He is honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).

The White House led off an infrastructure promotion fact sheet distributed to the media Thursday (July 8) with the impact of a bipartisan framework on high-speed internet, particularly in rural and tribal areas, and President Joe Biden’s pledge to get broadband into every home.

The Biden administration also doubled down on its definition of availability as including speed and price.

“More than 35% of rural Americans and Tribal communities lack wired access to broadband at acceptable speeds,” the White House said as it tried to drum up support for a new version of Biden’s massive infrastructure spending bill.

It did not say what it considered acceptable.

The sheet pointed out that the compromise plan would invest $65 billion on broadband deployment, which would include money to the Agriculture Department’s rural broadband programs. That $65 billion was the Republican counteroffer to Biden's proposed $100 billion-plus in broadband funding.

The GOP’s $65 billion comes from the $81 billion in revenue from the FCC's C-band auction — minus the $16 billion it will cost for the repacking and reallocation of that spectrum.

The fact sheet said the broadband infrastructure investment goal was “to make high-speed internet available to all Americans, bring down high-speed internet prices across the board, and provide technical assistance to communities seeking to expand broadband.”

That would include money for municipal buildouts of broadband, potentially in competition to existing service that didn't meet the White House definition of sufficiently high speed at sufficiently now prices.

The White House also echoed former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, who long argued that the country needed a rural broadband program similar to rural electrification during the Roosevelt Administration.

“With the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, the Federal government made a historic investment in bringing electricity to nearly every home and farm in America, and millions of families and our economy reaped the benefits,” the White House said. “Broadband internet is the new electricity. It is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to accelerate precision agriculture, to participate equally in school learning and health care, and to stay connected.”

According to a Data for Progress survey of 1,137 likely voters conducted June 30-July 1--and also being promoted by the White House--78% "support expanding internet access to rural communities." That includes 44% who strongly support it and 34% who said they "somewhat" support it.

Nathan Simington got the unexpected nod from President Donald Trump last fall to join the Federal Communications Commission, a nomination he said he was surprised to receive but is clearly determined to make the most of. 

In this exclusive interview, his first as FCC commissioner, the former National Telecommunications & Information Administration official talks about his road from rural (and urban) Saskatchewan to a seat on the FCC, outlines his regulatory philosophy, pushes back on criticism from Hill Democrats and explains his take on the hot-button debate over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the legal provision that protects social media platforms from liability for what their users post. Here’s an edited transcript of the conversation. 

B+C: Briefly tell us how you got from a rural community in Saskatchewan, Canada, to the Federal Communications Commission.

Nathan Simington: My family has always split its time — six months in each place — between my family farm in Kincaid, Saskatchewan, which you will have trouble finding on a map because it only has two or three hundred people, and Saskatoon, which is one of the principal cities.

On one hand, I certainly spent a lot of my life living in the country. But I was also fortunate to have access to great schools and opportunities in my urban home town and therefore to experience a variety of things.

I originally moved to the United States in 1999 when I was offered a scholarship to a college in Wisconsin. I went back to Canada for a couple of years for grad school, but returned to the United States in 2003, and I guess this time it stuck.

My background was originally in academia. I was planning to become a professor. But along with a lot of people between 2006 and 2008 [in the economic meltdown] when there were a lot of changes in society generally, I decided to try something else. I received my green card in 2007 and after working for a year in the market research industry, I decided to go to law school, which eventually led me here today.

B+C: You were at NTIA for only five or six months before being tapped for this post. What was your role there?

NS: I was the senior adviser in the front office, which means I was working daily with the deputy assistant secretary and assistant secretary to formulate policy and responses on a wide variety of issues. But my primary focuses were wireline issues, spectrum issues and internet governance issues.

B+C: How did you find out you had been nominated to the FCC?

NS: I must say I was surprised. I understand that the White House spoke to a number of people trying to determine who they wanted to nominate. I got a call that they had decided to offer me the candidacy. I think they had been interested in a number of the reforms and interagency cooperation initiatives that I had discussed. Even so, there was a lot to learn and a lot of people to meet with and convince. Somehow that wound up with me being here today.

B+C: Let’s talk about internet governance and Section 230. The Democrats have said that it was your work on that issue [Simington worked on a petition to the FCC mandated by the president] that got you the FCC job. You say the nomination surprised you. Why do you think the president picked you? Was your Section 230 expertise part of the reason?

NS: I would not claim to have been a Section 230 expert when I was hired by NTIA. I developed a certain amount of experience with 230 and knowledge of the related legal and regulatory issues during the course of my appointment there. But, frankly, you could find any number of people in August or September of 2020 who would have been much more prominent in the Section 230 world than I was. I had never published on it and never participated in a single conference on it. 

Until as recently as October, I don’t think the position had even emerged that Section 230 was within the FCC’s regulatory competence. Obviously I have become identified by both parties with the Section 230 controversies. To the extent there is any basis for that identification, I want to point out that it is now moot. 

Whoever is the new chair or acting chair will be the person with the agenda-setting ability and Chairman [Ajit] Pai has said no 230 item is going to come up during his tenure.

B+C: Do you anticipate it coming up during the tenure of his successor?

NS: That remains to be seen. Of course, President Trump has been closely identified with Section 230 and advocated on that, but let’s not forget President-elect [Joe] Biden has also called for repeal of 230. And beyond calls for repeal, I think there are significant 230 reform processes on both sides of the aisle.

So, what the future holds for Section 230 remains extremely unclear. That ties into the larger question of how, if at all, the U.S. government is going to choose to regulate social media. I suspect this is going to be the focus of legislation for some time to come as Congress hashes out how, if at all, it wants to address the question.

B+C: You told the senators at your confirmation hearing that you would check with the FCC ethics office about whether you should recuse yourself from any FCC item related to Section 230, as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) argued you should. Did you, and what did they say?

NS: Yes, the ethics office at the FCC is not generally in the business of offering advisory opinions without a particular controversy in front of them, so they didn’t want to give me blanket advice. But they did say that on the basis of what they had seen and on the basis of any proposed actions they did not see any basis for recusal and, in the event that an item were to come up for voting, they would revisit that and issue a definitive decision.

B+C: So, do you think social media needs regulating?

NS: On the larger question of a social media regulatory regime, I don’t think the FCC has any broad power in that area. As far as whether I would like the FCC to take up a Section 230 rulemaking, I think we would need a very detailed consultative process to determine whether, in the end, that was wise. 

The arguments for and against are both significant. The argument ‘for; is essentially that the case law has gotten ahead of the statute and has caused unintended consequences that go beyond whatever the intent of the statute was and are now posing problems for the public good.

The argument ‘against’ — actually, there are many, but any kind of speech-regulation regime would be facially contrary to the First Amendment. Then, beyond that, there is also the question of how wise it would be to touch 230. Because the FCC may have the power to issue rules on that subject doesn’t mean that it should.

So, I think it would be a long, complicated and bipartisan process to determine the right action at the FCC.

B+C: What is your regulatory philosophy?

NS: Coming from private industry rather than the D.C. telecom bar, I put a lot of emphasis on the effect of capital management on business and the difficulties of doing so in an uncertain regulatory environment.

On my regulatory philosophy generally, obviously the FCC has a mandate from Congress to act in the public interest and the FCC has an obligation to do so and not to allow its judgment to be clouded by other considerations.

As against that, how you implement regulation and how you develop and communicate regulation also matters a great deal. Typically, any kind of corporate initiative will have months or years of lead time, associated capital raises and associated investments, some of which may be non-recuperable, for example, if ground has been broken on a project. Disrupting those unnecessarily is something to be deplored because it is a pure loss to all parties.

In my view, companies can thrive under a variety of regulatory regimes, but the commission has an obligation not to put its thumb on the scale and always to act in the public interest.

As against that, communication with the industrial players and with trade groups is very important, including timely and constant engagement so that they don’t get a misperception of what is coming regulatorily and don’t wind up making investments that are unproductive or, on the other hand, canceling investments that will be productive. 

B+C: Are there particular issues you want to focus on at the commission? 

NS: Absolutely. I am interested in certain public safety questions that I think could be addressed by regulatory reform in the spectrum arena. I’m not ready to talk in any more detail about that, but that is something I plan to work on during my tenure.

In addition, I am interested in the larger question of the relationship between the commission and executive branch agencies. As everyone knows there has been significant conflict between various executive agencies and the FCC. I think this is a completely nonpartisan issue and speaks instead to quality of governance. I am excited to engage with the executive branch agencies on this question and, again, watch this space for more detail.

Finally, I am interested in helping put the pieces together for a successful transition to a 5G economy. The focus here can’t just be on spectrum and it can’t just be on wireless regulation. It has to include a national policy that supports all of the necessary infrastructure, whether that is wired infrastructure or whether that is legal infrastructure in facilitating commercialization and exploitation of spectrum, whether that is integration of other technologies — unlicensed spectrum, or microwave transmission with low-earth-orbit satellites. My point is there are a wide variety of technological and infrastructure integration that’s needed to make the 5G transition happen. 

One last thing that I think needs to be emphasized more in public is that in addition to the consumer benefits of 5G, it is showing much more promise than 4G in industrial and agricultural applications, as well as public-safety applications.

B+C: And no nationalized 5G network?

NS: People talk about national 5G and nationalized 5G quite a bit. I think the suffix makes a big difference. 

Nationalized 5G sounds like moving away from the commercial model. I would strongly, strongly push against that. The commercial model served America very well in the 4G transition and I never hesitate to point out how well our networks have handled the strain of 2020 or how American’s appetite has just grown radically.  So, national 5G is a different question. When you take the suffix off it is not clear that anyone knows 100% what that means. If it means a transition to having a high quality 5G service nationwide supporting both consumer and other applications, then by all means let’s talk about how to do that. If it means a radical change in our model of allocating and licensing spectrum or some other strategy that is going to fix what isn’t broken, then I would have to say that I am against it.  

B+C: What is the best way for the government to promote broadband adoption and should broadband speeds or affordability — including price regulation — be part of that conversation?

NS: That is a great question, which I say because it is a question that is simple to ask but just meditating on it can lead you down a number of paths. 

As far as price regulation for broadband, I think that is a little bit of a dangerous route to go down. Price regulation can be seen as a way of immediately capturing benefits for the consumer because they are able to get more of the upsides of a given infrastructure investment than they would have been able to otherwise. But if it has chilling effects on further infrastructure investment then you can wind up capping the structural ability of that sector to absorb capital and, if that is the case, then that one-time bonus is never going to be repeated.

I think allowing the price to float is only a concern if we think we are getting to a regime of price-gouging. I would have to be persuaded of that pretty vigorously before I believed that was where we are, though, again, I am always open to being shown the argument, and the figures.

As far as other aspects of how to roll out broadband better, I think that it is clear that more Americans have more and better broadband than has ever been the case, and this is true year after year. So, again, this becomes a question of progressing to the end of that and identifying the remaining obstacles.

I am very excited about the proliferation of broadband technologies in just the past few years. LEO (Low earth orbit) satellites were the number two winner in RDOF [the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund subsidy auction] and you have heard great things from very remote and underserved communities that suddenly find themselves with broadband where they had nothing prior.

So that is an example no one would have predicted a few years ago. But keeping our thumbs off the scale has allowed investors to find enough confidence in this to make the billions of dollars in investment up front to make it happen.

On the other hand, RDOF has also enabled many small and local companies to engage in buildouts that they otherwise would have been too undercapitalized to take a risk on. 

As far as broadband speeds, it is definitely important to nudge those upwards in terms of what the federal government will support or pay for. The 10/1 that we all accepted as good broadband performance sometime in the past is totally unacceptable.  Well, “totally unacceptable” is a strong phrase. They are not acceptable for funding purposes for many federal programs. I think I can say that without prejudging anything.

So I think the sliding-scale approach in RDOF [higher-speed buildouts have an edge over lower-speed applicants] is a good sign of how to address it. It is better to have something than nothing. I think it strikes a good balance between getting connectivity where it needs to be and avoiding gold-plating and excess capacity construction.

B+C: You have said the public interest must be placed first. How do you determine what that interest is?

NS: Our first obligation is to the well-being of American users and consumers of telecommunications services. As to determining what concrete actions will best carry that out, that is always a tough question and it is always heavily implicated by the facts on the ground.

Ultimately, it is difficult to tie it to a single principle because of the diversity of interests that are likely to be concerned. So, the best thing to do is to have the fullest information possible, always keep an open mind, and always communicate early and effectively.

In some cases, there will be an established base for a technology that the commission is not internally wild about, but those people have a legitimate interest in the technology that they are familiar with and in the regulatory standards around which they build their lives. 

They say that business is war and there are aspects of that where industry is constantly competing for access to spectrum or for access to favorable regulatory treatment. So, you have to respect the first, but also the second and third, order impacts of the decisions you make.

B+C: You talked at your nomination hearing about balancing the rights of television companies as part of the public interest. What did you mean?

NS: Let’s talk about television specifically. You have a hugely dependent base that varies widely in its ability to access other forms of information and entertainment. For example, there are some communities that consider themselves well-served by a well-functioning and secure local broadcaster and where there are very few cord-cutters. In other communities, you have widespread cord-cutting and browsing among a wide diversity of media. So, a regulatory approach that is only based on one is likely to leave the other out in the cold. Or, if we look and the provision of entertainment generally, prejudging the method by which people are likely to consume media is likely to leave you several steps behind the curve. 

B+C: Sen. Blumenthal also said at the vote on your nomination that you lacked the candor and independence required for your position. You were not there to respond, would you like to now?

NS: Yes, certainly. I fully respect Senator Blumenthal and appreciate that he made his concerns known to the public, but I don’t happen to agree. I believe any comments about lack of candor may refer to his question about whether I had participated in a forum sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform. I was struggling to remember whether I had and answered in the negative. I got a call afterwards from someone saying, ‘Don’t you remember that one group where you talked for a couple of minutes, they were an ATR-affiliated group?’

I thought, ‘Goodness, that’s no good at all,’ and sent a correction on the record to Senator Blumenthal within a day or two. So, I don’t believe that there was any other basis for a statement about lack of candor. I don’t believe that was a lack of candor on my part and I don’t believe that anyone was materially misled and that it would have affected the nomination or the substance of the hearing in any way.

As for lack of independence, to the extent that was ever a concern, that was certainly vitiated by the transition of power.

B+C: You have been in the majority for a few weeks, but you will be in the minority soon. How do you view that role: kibitzer, persuader, loyal opposition?

NS: I think there will always be elements of all of those. The job of the commissioner is to be independent. Obviously nominees have to come from one party or the other, and the president is going to exercise his nominating power in a way that is congenial to his party, but I am looking forward to working with Democrats. 

I have been building bridges to Democrats and look forward to continuing to do so. In some cases we’re not going to agree. In some cases I may agree with the Democrats and not the Republicans. In some cases I may chart my own course. All I can promise is to make the best decisions I can possibly make based on the best evidence I can possibly put together and to extend the hand of friendship to anyone and try to persuade and where we can’t persuade one another, we agree to disagree.

B+C: Is that basically an argument for regulatory humility?

NS: I think regulatory humility is very important. So, yes, ‘regulatory humility’ is another way of saying that no regulator can possibly stand in a position of information where they are able to truly make choices for other people except when there is the necessity, just as a court would, of balancing competing interests as best you can discern them.

Generally, in my experience, when regulators have gotten too much in front of the public or have gotten too confident about their ability to know how things will develop, it often ended in tears.

So, the commission has specific mandates in each of these areas and of course has to abide by the will of Congress. But when it starts getting in front of the will of Congress or in front of the consumer market and starts making decisions for the public, I guess that is when I would invoke regulatory humility.

B+C: I believe you were the first one on the commission to weigh in on the siege at the Capitol. What is your take on it and who should be held responsible?

NS: Information is still coming out as to what the violence at the Capitol really was and who the parties were and what their motivations were. I will admit that at first it didn’t seem as serious to me as it did a day later. Of course, now we know the scope and focus and deliberateness of some of the violence and some of the plans that at least some of the protestors had, and it is very chilling. 

As to the motivation, I don’t think I have any special insight, but as a country we have to ensure that we never become subject to mob rule and that we always have peaceful transitions of power.

B+C: Did your status as an immigrant in part compel you to weigh in on the country you chose to immigrate to?

NS: I actually had a number of people ask me, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go home after all?’ and I would like to push back on that rather hard.\ The United States has obviously had challenges recently and this one is without recent precedent. I think it is worth remembering that in the vigorous democracy of the 19th century in the United States, it was, in fact, common for political disputes to end in violence and you saw the same thing in France and the United Kingdom. I am not referring, or course, to violent revolutions but customary rough conflicts. 

Although it is horrible to see something like this happen in the United States, no country is immune to political violence and it does not vitiate any of the great accomplishments in the United States and it doesn’t make me question my decision to come here at all. It just makes me wish that I could remind all Americans what a great country this is.

B+C: In terms of interagency cooperation, you have talked about getting FCC access to some NTIA data as a way to improve broadband mapping. Are you pursuing that yet?

NS: I haven’t had a chance yet to have those conversations. So far I have focused on getting my staff up and running and ready to handle matters addressed at the first meeting. Once that is over and I am ready to breathe a little bit, I absolutely will be looking to coordinate with NTIA in more detail on a wide variety of things. I have started introductory meetings with NTIA people. Not that the FCC and NTIA don’t already communicate, but I think there is a certain amount that I can do to improve the process, whether that is on mapping or discussion of legal standards in particular issues where the two agencies don’t see eye to eye, I think there are a variety of places where that relationship could improve.

B+C: Should the FCC start taking down some of the sector-specific silos and look at the marketplace more holistically?

NS: Well, it is easy to understand why the silos exist. 

The Telecom Act put up some silos by virtue of treating different technologies differently. But now we are in a period of convergence. If you look at new broadcast [transmission] standards, for example, they are increasingly resembling interactive video-on-demand. On the other hand, if you look at what their competition is, sometimes it is delivered by very unconventional means that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. So, as far as bringing down the silos, that’s challenging because the statute and therefore the regulations are not technology-agnostic.

On the other hand, I think being able to see across the silos can sometimes expose some of their absurdities and help the commission prepare for the future.

B+C: My last question is always, what should I have asked you that you particularly wanted to talk about?

NS: One thing I would love to talk about, and maybe this is also material for future conversations, is the potential for synergies across a wide variety of technologies. I really want to emphasize that when it comes to improving broadband and wireless access, there is not really a clear split technologically the way there used to be in the past. Much of the conversation around broadband assumes wired broadband and it assumes that every wired provider is going to be a monopoly and, increasingly what we are seeing is diversity.

If you look at the convergence of technologies right now, it is, I think, it is a greater spur in the broadband era to thinking creatively about breaking down the silos and looking at the overall impact on the public of a wide variety of technologies and looking at the way that we can look at the public interest across all of those topics without getting bogged down in questions that are increasingly in the rear-view mirror. 

Communications workers and their employers apparently have a difference of opinion over the alleged shortage of skilled workers to handle the nation's burgeoning broadband buildouts.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Council (BDAC) working group on Broadband Infrastructure Deployment Job Skills and Training Opportunities plans to offer up a report at the council’s meeting Oct. 29, saying there needs to be more federal funding for broadband job training, according to the Communications Workers of America.

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According to CWA, that working group is being steered by infrastructure companies and contractors who are arguing, without evidence, that there is a shortage of skilled workers that impedes needed buildouts, while at the same time those same companies are undervaluing or getting rid of the skilled workers they have.

CWA points to an Economic Policy Institute report published this month that shows no evidence of either a labor or skills shortage. Instead, says CWA, what has been lacking is decent wages, while major telecoms lay off workers.

“The BDAC working group’s recommendations are based on the assumption that there is a lack of workers available, leading the working group to boost technical training programs rather than wage increases for workers,” a CWA spokesperson said. “This orientation could point to telecom giants’ desire to continue outsourcing jobs and skirting union membership for the workforce — under the guise of a ‘skill gap.’ ”

The Communications Workers of America is teaming up with some other groups to take aim at ISPs over broadband deployment.

They plan a virtual briefing Monday (Oct. 5) on "how millions of Americans have been left without access to broadband by profit-driven corporations."

They said they also plan to release three studies--from CWA as well as the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the Economic Policy Institute that they say provide a "detailed analysis of broadband connectivity data and labor trends that impact deployment."

The briefing comes as the FCC is in the midst of trying to come up with better broadband deployment data on its own initiative and also in response to a congressional mandate.

The FCC has concluded in recent years that broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans, though chairman Ajit Pai has conceded there is still work to be done to close that digital divide, a divide under the spotlight due to the pandemic and the resulting move of work and play, school and healthcare, online.

In response to criticisms of the continuing divide, Pai has pointed out that in addition to the billions of dollars the government already collects and hands out in broadband subsidies, there are billions of dollars more in COVID-19 aid money from Congress to the states that can be used to help connect more people, particularly students, during the pandemic.

The FCC is seeking comment on the methodology for its 2021 survey of whether advanced telecommunications is being deployed to "all Americans" in a "reasonable and timely fashion, with the COVID-19 pandemic putting new urgency into the answer.

Related: Broadband Data Mapping Rules go Into Effect Sept. 17

The report is mandated by Sec. 707 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The vote was 3-2, with both Democratic commissioners strongly dissenting, having signaled that the FCC should improve its data collection process before collecting new data.

The notice of inquiry explains that "because our next Report is due 180 days from release of this Inquiry, we will not have information from the Digital Opportunity Data Collection [the FCC's proposed new and improved data collection regime] in time for use in the next Report."

For the past three years--under Republican chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC has concluded that that deployment is reasonable and timely because steady progress was being made toward closing the digital divide. Had it not concluded that was the case, the FCC would be empowered to regulate to make it so. Previous FCC's under Democratic chairs had concluded deployment was not reasonable and timely, chiefly because broadband was not available to all.

Democrats look at "all" in the Congressional mandate and find deployment wanting. Republicans look at the pace of increase and conclude it is reasonable and timely.

But the newly issued request for input from deployers acknowledges that there is still work to be done.

"Closing the digital divide—and bringing to every American the economic, education, health, civic, and social benefits that a broadband connection provides—continues to be the Commission’s top priority," the Broadband Deployment notice of inquiry said. "As the ongoing the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed more Americans to work, study, see their doctors, and stay connected to friends and loved ones through broadband connections, it serves to underscore the importance of closing this divide and ensuring that people throughout the country have access to digital opportunity."

Stakeholders have until Oct. 5 to comment on how the FCC is structuring the latest survey.

The FCC is proposing to count a range of speeds, what it calls a "holistic view," provided over both fixed and mobile wireless, rather than counting only broadband offered above a benchmark speed "to best capture the ways Americans are using advanced telecommunications capabilities."

The notice of inquiry concedes the issues the problems the FCC recognizes with previous deployment data collections (via its form 477) that have led to congressional mandates to do better and the FCC's own proceeding to that point and seeks comment on to what extent possible overstatement of fixed and mobile deployment may still occur.

Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who supported Democratic commission conclusions that deployment was not reasonable and timely, said the FCC was setting itself up for again neglecting to meaningfully discuss obstacles like affordability and digital literacy. "We have not updated our methodology. We have not modernized our thinking about what is truly broadband. We have not suggested that we will give serious thought to real impediments like cost. At a time that we desperately need a candid accounting from the FCC about the state of broadband in this country, the agency is stubbornly oblivious to how its reporting is at odds with the lived experience of so many people in this country," she said.

"[T]he ugly truth is that when the agency released its last Broadband Deployment Report earlier this year it concluded that broadband deployment was “reasonable and timely” nationwide," she said. "In other words, it found all was well. It clapped its hands and said job done. That’s just not right."

Commissioner Geoffrey Starks seconded that assessment in his dissent.

"[T]he Commission continues to repeat its mistakes. As I noted in my dissent from last year’s Notice of Inquiry, I fundamentally disagree with the approach of comparing broadband providers’ deployment in one year against their deployments in prior years to measure 'progress,'” he said. "I continue to believe this approach gives us little understanding of internet inequality and the ways to combat it. We also continue to rely on the Commission’s misleading Form 477 data. I am disappointed that, despite broad recognition that Form 477 has distorted our view of the digital divide, the Commission did not develop alternatives in time for this year’s Notice of Inquiry."

The Republican commissioners issued no statements.

Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and David McKinley (R-Was.) have rebooted their "dig once" broadband deployment effort as the Nationwide Dig Once Act of 2020.

The pair introduced H.R. 2692, the Broadband Deployment Act last May but it never got past the introduction phase.

The 2.0 version of that bill, which was unveiled this week, "mandates the inclusion of broadband conduit – plastic pipes which house fiber-optic communications cable – during the construction of any road receiving federal funding in areas that lack access to broadband internet service."

Related: Reps Eshoo, McKinley Introduce "Dig Once" Broadband Bill

It is just the latest in a series of attempts to kill two birds--new broadband and road infrastructure--with one shovel, as it were. Eshoo has been pushing for dig once legislation for more than a decade, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has pushed just as hard from that side of the Hill.

The new bill:

"Establishes a process for states to notify broadband providers of federally-funded highway construction that may present opportunities for coordinating installation of broadband infrastructure;

"Requires the installation of broadband conduit if a provider has not committed to deploy conduit as part of a federally-funded construction project; and

"Establishes a task force co-chaired by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation and the National Telecommunications and Information Administrator to consider and propose methods to fund the nationwide dig once policy."

The bill has been added as a section of the INVEST in America Act (H.R. 2) transportation infrastructure bill.

Broadband deployment is still a work in progress, but it’s progressing at a pace that does not require regulatory intervention to speed it up.

That is what the Federal Communications Commission is signaling, but not without some caveats from the Republican majority, amplified by the COVID-19 spotlight on the need for universal broadband ASAP.

It is a conclusion being challenged by critics of the pace of broadband deployment, who argue that old definitions of reasonable deployment should not hold in the new normal of a pandemic.

As has been the case with such reports under chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC’s just-
released report on whether or not broadband is being deployed to all Americans on a reasonable and timely basis concluded that is indeed still the case.

That determination comes as Congress is pumping money into telehealth and the FCC is temporarily deregulating broadband subsidy programs to get and keep as many people online during the COVID-19 outbreak as possible.

Pandemic as Prism

As with everything else in the country and the world, deployment is now seen through the lens of a pandemic, which magnifies the longstanding issues with the quality, or lack thereof, of FCC data collection on broadband availability, a lens with a view that depends on who is looking through it. Activist groups find virtually anything short of universal service a failure, while the FCC’s Republican majority and industry see the glass as mostly full, thanks to billions of dollars in investment from both the private sector and government money.

Congressional Democrats, who tend to look at the empty part of the glass, are calling for billions of dollars in the next COVID-19 stimulus package to make sure that everyone gets connected to broadband. One thing the pandemic has done is show that Congress is willing to put large amounts of money into coronavirus aid.

Even on the Republican side, though, the pandemic appears to have added a note of urgency to getting the rest of the glass filled.

Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said
the pandemic brings heightened attention to the issue, though he said that, even in a crisis, the FCC can only do what is within its congressional authority. The goal of getting broadband to every American is the FCC’s highest priority, he said on a podcast last week.

O’Rielly conceded too many people still don’t have broadband at sufficient speeds and that the numbers were greater than the FCC was reporting due to problems with its data collection. He called that data “debatable” and “problematic.”

O’Rielly said even those numbers show that 8.3 million Americans don’t even have speeds of 10 Megabits per second and 1 Mbps upstream today, which is the FCC’s former high-speed definition, now effectively raised to 25/3. At that speed, he said, “we’re talking 18 million,” calling it a “really huge population.”

Then, he said, they have to acknowledge that those numbers “are actually higher than that.”

In his statement for the Section 706 report, O’Rielly said the “reasonable and timely” finding “does not suggest that we have succeeded in our mission to bring broadband access to all Americans.”

But under Pai, the FCC’s focus has been on the process, not a destination, at least when it comes to the report. That is important because if the report concludes broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion, the FCC is empowered to regulate to make sure that happens, including potentially rate regulation, the third rail for internet access providers.

The FCC under recent Democratic chairs had consistently concluded that, without universal access, the deployment was not reasonable and timely, which Pai, when he was in a minority, pushed back on strongly and changed when he got the chairmanship.

Dem Pushback

Current FCC Democrats continue that tradition, again with the COVID-19 pandemic for an exclamation point. “This report is baffling,” Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said. “We are in the middle of a pandemic. So much of modern life has migrated online. As a result, it has become painfully clear there are too many people in the United States who lack access to broadband. In fact, if this crisis has revealed anything, it is the hard truth that the digital divide is very real and very big. But you’ll find no evidence acknowledging that in today’s [report].”

The FCC again said it would not factor in price and affordability in the equation of deployment, an omission Rosenworcel said makes the entire report “suspect.” (The other Democrat on the five-member panel is Geoffrey Starks.)

The Open Technology Institute, whose backers include technology companies, hammered the report as “out of touch” with the COVID-19 reality.

It said that the FCC’s idea of what reasonable deployment needs to change given how crucial that deployment now is.

Joshua Stager, senior counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, said in the time of the novel coronavirus, continuing to maintain that the current pace of deployment is reasonable and timely “strains credulity,” particularly given that it is based on faulty data. But he goes even farther, saying the conclusions undermine the fight against the virus. The stay-at-home defense strategy presumes people can bridge the social distancing via broadband connections.

The FCC has failed to understand that the pandemic “has understandably raised the bar for what reasonable broadband looks like,” Stager said. 

A trio of Democratic senators is calling on the FCC to make sure that students have internet access as home schooling becomes the norm in the time of coronavirus. 

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) have have called on FCC chairman Ajit Pai to create a "consumer-friendly" Web portal with educational resources given that 41 states have so far closed schools due to the virus. 

Related: FCC, Congress Working on Freeing Up Dollars for Devices 

But they also called for action on connecting more students to such a portal given that almost 12 million students don't have access to high-speed internet at home. 

Related: Rosenworcel Says FCC Needs to Do More 

"As states temporarily close their schools and move to online instruction to protect the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff, the FCC must take action to expand internet availability and keep Americans informed," they wrote. "Without swift action from the FCC, students from households without access to high-speed internet face challenges in learning from home while their schools are closed." 

Pai and ISPs have already come to a meeting of the minds that they will work to make it easier for the public to get and maintain their broadband connections, including offering free service to low-income households and opening their hundreds of thousands of WiFi hot spots to anyone who needs them. 

The debate over what constitutes high-speed broadband has heated up as the FCC collects comments for its next report to Congress on the state of broadband availability.

The devil is in the details, which in this case means the definitions.

At stake is whether the Federal Communications Commission gets to regulate broadband to ensure it meets Congress’s goal of universal service.

In Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress required the FCC to “encourage” the deployment of advanced telecommunications capability “on a reasonable and timely basis” to “all Americans.” The language is particularly important.

The FCC has to report annually to Congress on the state of that deployment. Under the previous Democratic FCC chair, the emphasis was on “all Americans.”

Reports under then-chairman Tom Wheeler concluded that because broadband was not available to all Americans, it was not being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis. That opens the door, at least potentially, to rate regulation or other rules meant to remove the obstacles to deployment.

RELATED: Next TV: The Speed Lowdown on Downloads

But the FCC under its current Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, reversed that, concluding the share of Americans without access to high-speed broadband, defined as speeds of 25 Megabits per second for downloads and 3 Mpbs for uploads, had decreased. Though the decrease was less than originally thought, due to at least one carrier’s overreporting, deployment was deemed reasonable and timely according to that progress-based metric.

And while the FCC was pushed by some activist groups and others to boost the speed benchmark, the 2019 Section 706 report stuck with the current benchmark of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream.

That has only fueled pushback from groups arguing that 25/3 is not fast enough; that the FCC’s deployment numbers are skewed because of bad data; and that the FCC should be looking beyond availability to how many people actually access broadband, rather than simply where they could access it. Price could also be an obstacle to broadband getting to all Americans, as well as a failure on the government’s part to sufficiently educate them on why it is so important to be connected.

Meanwhile, cable broadband operators argue that 25/3 is a sufficient benchmark, and perhaps even too high.

Here is a look at who is making which arguments, and why, as the FCC prepares to collect string on the 2020 report.

Fast Enough. Broadband providers represented by NCTA-The Internet & Television Association told the FCC it should definitely not increase the 25/3 speed threshold, and even suggested that might be too high of a metric for availability.

NCTA, which represents the larger incumbent cable operators, conceded there are still deployment gaps. It suggested, though, that the best way to fill them would be to target funds where there is no broadband at all, the so-called “unserved” rather than “underserved” population. Arguably, some available service may have to be overbuilt so that there is an ongoing business case for service that is harder or more expensive to serve. But NCTA makes it clear job one should be serving the unserved.

NCTA argues that the current 25/3 standard is sufficient to provide “high-quality voice, data, graphics and video telecommunications.” It also said the commission could look at speeds below that.

Need for Speed. In a joint filing, advocacy groups Public Knowledge, Next Century Cities and Common Cause, whose common cause is higher speed threshholds, told the FCC it should raise the high speed broadband definition to 100 Mbps. They argue the agency should skate to where the puck is going to be.

They concede that 100 Mbps is a “bold” approach, but say it is warranted. They interpret the mandate as requiring the FCC to “continuously improve” its speed standard, and point out it has remained the same for the past four years while innovation and consumer demand have not.

“The [FCC] proposal to maintain the current benchmark broadband speed without even inquiring what future benchmarks may be necessary runs contrary to the Commission’s congressional mandate,” the groups have argued.

Need for Blazing Speed. INCOMPAS, with members that include Amazon, Google, Microsoft [Editor's note: Microsoft says the association’s specific position on broadband "is not one we share"], Netflix and Twitter, are going the activist groups one better. Make that 10 times better.

They say the FCC’s new high speed benchmark should be speeds of 1 Gigabit per second and that it should be “future-proofing” the definition of broadband. They argue that 1 Gig isn’t an aspirational target for the future, but “rather a sensible standard” that consumers are buying now.

“The U.S. should be adopting benchmarks that reflect truly ‘advanced’ telecommunications capability, not settling for baseline speeds that major BIAS providers have surpassed in their initial offerings to consumers,” INCOMPAS told the FCC.

Been there, doing that. Certainly ISPs have made big strides in providing 1 Gbps, and talking it up as important for the future of things like AI, VR and 4K, though NCTA also says not everyone may have the need for that speed.

NCTA in January said that 80% of the nation can now receive those speeds, so even by that metric ISPs have been taking big steps. NCTA said more than 40 states have 1 Gbps offerings in both rural and urban areas, up from just 5% in 2016. “And while every consumer may not need Gigabit speeds today,” NCTA blogged, “it's imperative that networks stay ahead of innovation to enable next generation technologies and applications to emerge.”

So, by the FCC’s progress definition, a 1 Gbps speed benchmark could still pass Section 706 muster, though broadband providers clearly don’t want the FCC to hold them to that standard just yet.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Communications continues to consider progress towards universal high-speed broadband service as sufficient to declare that advanced telecommunications is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.

For the second year in a row, the agency’s Republican majority has voted to reach that conclusion following several years when a Democratic- controlled FCC declared that not to be the case. That Democratic view was considered overly pessimistic — and calculatedly so — by Republicans and internet-service providers.

In making the reasonable and timely declaration, the FCC is instead giving a passing grade to both private and government deployment efforts.

The FCC’s Obama-era Democratic majority under Tom Wheeler had focused on the “all” in that congressional (Section 706) mandate, signaling that until high speed broadband was available to every last American, deployment wasn’t reasonable or timely.

Pai is Reluctant to Regulate

But Pai, as the minority commissioner, always bristled at the “all or not good enough” calls, particularly since Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act includes a mandate for the FCC to regulate broadband to get that answer to “yes.”

A new wrinkle in the report is that the carrier data it is based on (the so-called Form 477) has come under increasing scrutiny and even pretty general agreement that, overall, the FCC data and the maps it uses to identify where high-speed broadband is and isn’t has itself been found wanting.

Microsoft, which wants to use TV spectrum to fill in the gaps, pointedly made that point following the report’s release. “There is strong evidence, including the FCC’s own subscription data and Microsoft data, that broadband is not available to millions of people in America even though the FCC’s data says it is,” John Kahan, the tech company’s chief data analytics officer, said.

It did not help that the first draft of the FCC’s Section 706 broadband deployment report was based on inflated numbers due to an overestimate by one carrier. That slip-up not only led to a report do-over, but to questions about whether there were other mistakes that had not been uncovered. Also unhelpful was that the error was discovered by activist group Free Press, not by the FCC itself.

The reissued report, which not surprisingly was approved on a party line vote with two strong Democratic dissents, still found that progress was being made, just not quite as much as originally billed.

As John Horrigan, senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, pointed out, the 2012 report, under Democrat Julius Genachowski, found that 19 million Americans lacking high-speed internet access was not reasonable and timely deployment, while the 2019 report found that 21.3 million lacking access was.

Horrigan was not suggesting there had not been improvement since then: it is actually an apples-to-faster-apples comparison, as the 2012 definition of high-speed was 3 Megabits per second downstream while 2019’s is 25 Mbps. Horrigan made the point that how those who lack access are treated is in part a political calculation, with Democrats wanting freer rein to regulate. Horrigan also suggested, and likely correctly, that a Republican FCC would take a more liberal view of what constituted progress toward universal service.

Providers Stress Investment, Challenges

ISPs have always argued that they were making good progress — progress the Section 706 report should recognize — with hundreds of billions of dollars invested over the past two decades and high-speed available in 90% of a large country with a variegated population, with areas where there are many more cows passed than homes.

Certainly that was the Republicans’ view in suggesting that the digital divide was narrowing substantially, while conceding there was still a gap to be bridged. Democrats pointed to the issues with the FCC data and suggested the GOP’s thumbs-up was akin to the George W. Bush Administration’s premature “Mission Accomplished” call on the second Iraq war.

The Republican FCC was not overtly declaring victory but was declaring reasonable progress toward closing the digital divide, one of Pai’s prime directives.

Republicans have long argued that the “reasonable and timely” test is about such progress toward a universal service horizon — the Rome-wasn’t-built-in-a-day view — not about declaring failure, and thus justifying regulation, until every last American has high-speed broadband.

The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau has released a revised draft of the 2019 Broadband Deployment Report and maintains it still shows significant closing of the digital divide.

The original draft of the report was first released Feb. 19 accompanied by fanfare from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the figures showing that divide closing. But those numbers were based on drastically overstated deployment data by one company.

Barrier Communications had said that it reached almost 1.5 million census blocks with fiber-to-the-home and fixed wireless service when it appeared the company had simply submitted as its coverage area every census blocks in the eight states where it offered service to any census block, and at speeds of 940 Mbps.

The original draft showed that "the number of Americans lacking access to a fixed broadband connection meeting the FCC’s benchmark speed of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps has dropped by over 25%, from 26.1 million Americans at the end of 2016 to 19.4 million at the end of 2017." Free Press, which identified the Barrier error, said with the numbers un-inflated by Barrier, there is still a decline, but to 21.3 million, not the claimed 19.4 million.

Related: Free Press Says FCC Broadband Deployment Gains Overstated

The bureau said that triggered a thorough review and the new draft, which the bureau sounded confident had the correct numbers, which it said "continues to support the conclusion that significant progress has been made in closing the digital divide in America."

The new draft does indeed identify that 21.3 million figure as the correct one, adding that: "Moreover, the majority of those gaining access to high-speed connections, approximately 4.3 million, live in rural America, where broadband deployment has traditionally lagged."

“We’re pleased that the FCC’s policy of making deployment data open and transparent to the public resulted in this error being discovered," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. "Fortunately, the new data doesn’t change the report’s fundamental conclusion: We are closing the digital divide, which means we’re delivering on the FCC’s top priority. We’re achieving this result by removing barriers to infrastructure investment, promoting competition, and providing efficient, effective support for rural broadband expansion through our Universal Service Fund programs.”

American Cable Association president Matt Polka has good news and bad news for Congress.

That is according to his testimony for a hearing on infrastructure Wednesday (Feb. 13) in the Senate Commerce Committee.

The hearing ranges over a number of transportation sectors--railroads, airports, trucking--with Polka the only witness on the transport of bits and bytes over broadband.

The good news is that broadband providers are investing $75 billion annually in infrastructure, fixed and mobile, with no end in sight to that investment. Suggesting a sort of Hippocratic Oath for broadband deployment, Polka said government first and foremost should do nothing to harm that investment. 

The bad news is that 1) unnecessary barriers still exist that hinders deployment and more needs to be done to remove those and 2) the digital divide still needs closing.

But even the bad news wasn't that bad. He said that Congress, the FCC and Rural Utilities Service have all made headway on closing the divide. 

But in the "more can be done," Polka offered up ACA's four principles for a broadband future:

"(1) respect private investment; (2) remove barriers to deployment; (3) before adopting additional programs to close the digital divide, account for additional deployments in unserved areas resulting from the removal of barriers, the recently enacted tax law, and existing federal and state support programs; and (4) provide broadband subsidies efficiently," which it says means in "unserved," "high-cost" areas.

Although the U.S. ranks No. 1 in 10 of the 38 categories in a new global "Net Vitality" study, American broadband systems often fall into the middle range in many factors when compared with those in other countries, according to the report, which the Telecommunications Research and Policy Institute unveiled on Wednesday (March 7).

Nonetheless, the "Net Vitality 2.0" report puts the U.S. among the five top-tier countries for global broadband internet ecosystem leaders; but that ranking is based on factors beyond actual Internet operations.

The new study updates a 2015 report. Both reports were intended to help policymakers develop appropriate rules to encourage broadband expansion, according to the reports' author, Stuart Brotman, a University of Tennessee professor and long-time policy official.

The U.S. and United Kingdom made the Top Five in both the 2015 and the new Net Vitality reports, but this year China, Germany and Canada have replaced South Korea, Japan and France as leading broadband Internet ecosystem countries. Brotman said he believes that Australia and Singapore are candidates for a future Top Five list, "thanks to their innovation and competitiveness."

The five leading countries for Broadband Communications Infrastructure are South Korea, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. The U.S. is #18, according to the new study. As for Broadband Access and Affordability, the top five are South Korea, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and Norway; again the U.S. is #18. In Average Fixed Broadband Connection Speed, the top five are South Korea, Norway, Sweden, China and Switzerland, with the U.S. coming in at #13.

U.S. systems rank highly in Internet "market attractiveness," "technology efficiency" and IPv6 adoption, according to the report (see chart). In key categories such as Fixed Broadband Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, the U.S. ranks 24th, well behind relatively small countries such as Monaco, Switzerland and Denmark (ranked 1-2-3) , but also below France, South Korea, Germany, U.K., Canada and China.

The U.S. also scores poorly in categories such as "inherent cyber risk" (#41) and "information and communications technology development" (#27).

The study found that all of the most widely used personal computer operating systems and the top web browsers (Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer) originated in the U.S.

Policymaking Tool
As a former National Telecommunications and Information Administration official, a telecom policy advisor to the U.S. State Department and veteran academic (with relationships at Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford), Brotman insists that one value of the comparative analysis is to put broadband and Internet policies into a global matrix.

He contends that the widespread reliance on using service and operations data to compare broadband deployment in different countries "has become too narrowly focused on raising these metrics nationally." Calling such comparative analytic approaches "flawed," he said mixing and matching data that measure different things, such as advertised versus actual broadband network speeds, leads to faulty conclusions.

Against that problematic background, Brotman said he believes that the Net Vitality analysis is a more pertinent document because it uses "more timely, reliable, and comprehensive data reflecting the broadband Internet ecosystem, along with relevant macroeconomic forces that help shape it," such as eCommerce and eGovernment utilization.

In many countries, the regulatory structure provides "too narrow a foundation for Net Vitality," Brotman said. "Rather, the Wide Open Internet is what the United States and other countries around the world should be trying to achieve." He characterized "the Wide Open Internet" as one that "encompasses the broader goal of an efficient ubiquitous broadband Internet ecosystem with virtually unlimited applications and content available on multiple devices."

The new analysis is based on data from the United Nations (including the International Telecommunications Union,) the World Economic Forum, the World Wide Web Foundation plus academic and corporate research. It includes material on more than 130 countries, although not every nation has been ranked in every category.

Brotman characterizes the five leading countries as sharing "one commonality: they have benefitted the most when government challenges companies to raise their aspirations, increase the pace of innovation, and expand the scale of investments.”

In the wake of a tsunami of broadband infrastructure-related bills coming out of both the House, the Communications Subcommittee has scheduled a Jan. 30 hearing on "Closing the Digital Divide: Broadband Infrastructure Solutions.

Representing cable broadband providers will be Matt Polka, president of the American Cable Association, whose members are the smaller and midsized operators on the front lines of deploying plant in rural areas.

The subcommittee lists almost two dozen bills and resolutions that will (or at least could) be the subject of the hearing, including two added Friday (Jan. 26), the Connecting Broadband Deserts Act (H.R. 4287), and the Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act, which was also introduced in the House.

The bill referring to broadband "deserts" is from Democrats Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) and Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), is meant to target so-called digital red-lining by defining an urban area census block where less than a third of the residents have access to advanced telecommunications as a "desert" that the FCC must take immediate action to fix by removing barriers to infrastructure investment.

Also scheduled to testify are Brad Gillen of CTIA; Nancy White of North Central Telephone Cooperative, and Jonathan Spalter of USTelecom.

The dueling broadband bill introductions from Democrats and Republicans this week continued Friday with more than a half-dozen offerings from both sides.

On the Democrats' side, Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) introduced H.R. 4847, the Broadband Deployment Streamlining Act, which aims to speed deployment by "reforming and improving" the application process for building out broadband using public lands. President Donald Trump last week had signed two executive orders to do just that.

The Democratic bill:

 1) "Requires procedures to be established for tracking applications, monitoring the time between receipt and final decision, and reasons for denial;

 2) "Bases application fees that applicants pay to the designated federal agency on the actual costs of review and maintenance of that application;

3) "Requires that executive agencies act on siting requests with 270 days; and

 4) "Preserves agency obligations to follow applicable environmental laws."

The bill would also mandate a Government Accountability Office report on the National Broadband Map, a government effort to identify where broadband is accessible and where it isn't.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and David McKinley (R-W. Va.) offered up their second broadband bill of the week, the Climb Once Act, which would, they said, ensure that no federal laws get in the way of local "climb once" policies that "allow for a list of pre-approved contractors that pole owners agree on to handle make-ready work, eliminating the need for multiple contractors to perform the work."

The pair introduced a "Dig Once" bill Jan. 17.

Not to be outdone, Republicans followed with more of their promised broadband bill blitz.

Communications Subcommittee chair Marsha Blackburn unveiled five bills Friday, the third tranche of its series of bills, dealing mostly with historic preservation and environmental reviews.

Related: Cable Ops Push for Codified Overlashing Rules

H.R. 4832, “Restoring Economic Strength and Telecommunications Operations by Releasing Expected Dollars (RESTORED) Act,”  would allow companies eligible for Universal Service Fund high-cost money to get up to a 7-month advance on the funds in disaster areas.

H.R. 4845, “Connecting Communities Post Disasters Act,” would give facilities in disaster areas a five-year exemption from environmental and historic reviews to allow them to replace/improve their facilities.

H.R. 4842, “The Streamlining Permitting to Enable Efficient Deployment of Broadband Infrastructure,” would exempt environmental and historic preservation reviews on federal property if another facility on the same property has already been granted one; would exempt other such reviews in some other circumstances.

Related: FCC Takes 'Historic' Pole Position

H.R. 4847, “Broadband Deployment Streamlining Act,” would "direct the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to issue regulations within one year to streamline applications processes to locate or modify communications facilities on public lands."; "amend Section 6409 of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act to institute a firm shot clock by which applications must be granted or denied (an application is deemed granted if the agency fails to grant or deny within the allotted time)" and "would require a GAO report evaluating accuracy and reliability of data collected for the National Broadband Map" (mirroring the Democratic bill).

H.Res. 701 would express "the sense of the House" that environmental and historic reviews for broadband buildouts "should be narrowly tailored and proportional to lands that are physically impacted by the deployment of such facilities."

Jessica Rosenworcel, one of two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission, has set up her own mechanism for gathering data on broadband deployment — or, more to the point, lack of deployment.

She told an FCC oversight hearing audience on Oct. 25 that she has set up an e-mail account, broadbandfail@fcc.gov, and is encouraging the legislators’ constituents who “have not been able to get service, or live in an area that lacks it” to write her about it.

She noted that the National Broadband Map, created along with broadband subsidies in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has not been updated in more than three years. The Commerce Department, which had funded it, ran out of stimulus funding for that task.

Related: House Looks at Broadband Mapping, Definitions

Rosenworcel said she will share that crowd-sourced broadband availability info with agency chair Ajit Pai and the other commissioners.

“Too often the FCC cobbles together data for each individual rulemaking and report without a comprehensive and updated snapshot of where service is and is not,” she said in prepared testimony for the hearing.

Closing the digital divide is one of Pai’s key agenda items, too. Rosenworcel clearly has a different view of how that can be achieved.

She also took the opportunity to brand as “crazy” the FCC’s suggestion, in seeking comment on broadband deployment, that it could reset the 25 Megabits- per-second high-speed broadband benchmark set under former chair Tom Wheeler to 10 Mbps. “We won’t solve our broadband problems by lowering our standards,” she said.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill to boost Obama Administration era Global Connect initiative, including through additional funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and with the goal of boosting access to broadband in developing countries.

The DIGITAL AGE (Driving Innovation and Growth in Internet Technology And Launching Universal Access to the Global Economy) Act  would include encouraging global "dig once" policies, spectrum re-use and promoting various Internet values like lower costs, a free and open 'net and nondiscriminatory access.

The bill would direct the State Department, USAID and other relevant agencies--that would include the FCC--to work with other government, financial institutions and private industry to:

• "encourage a competitive market for investment and innovation in internet infrastructure and services;
• "ensure effective, efficient, and transparent spectrum allocation;
• "encourage internet infrastructure sharing;
• "improve the affordability of internet access devices;
• "promote the creation of public access facilities;
• "encourage integration of internet backbone and other infrastructure into existing infrastructure projects supported by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and others, and;
• "encourage companies to adopt flexible policies infrastructure sharing and spectrum re-use."

Ajit Pai, the first Indian American FCC chair, this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona struck a nonbinding agreement to coordinate with his opposite number in India on issues including accelerating broadband deployment and spectrum policy for mobile broadband.

Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have introduced a bill to boost rural broadband in rural and tribal areas.

The Broadband Connections for Rural Opportunities Program Act is meant to close the rural digital divide by providing new federal grants for high-speed broadband buildouts to supplement the money already available through the UDSA's Rural Utilities Service.

It would also double the RUS broadband program funding (to $50 million).

Capito and Gillibrand cited FCC stats saying that 40% of rural and tribal areas do not have access to broadband, but also suggested their bill was about competition, not just providing access where none existed.

"when high-speed broadband is available, consumers often have only one choice for service and pay more for high-speed plans than consumers in some other advanced countries," they said in a joint release announcing the bill.

ISPs have long argued that government funds should be targeted to areas without service first, not where government money underwrites competition to existing privacy investment and service.

Some Republican senators have signaled to FCC chairman Tom Wheelerthat they are scratching their heads over the FCC's use of the 25-Mbps downstream/3-Mbps upstream metric to decide that broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion.

They argue that while the FCC is using that to measure access to broadband, it is using a different metric for rural broadband and regulating Internet access.

The FCC's most recent fixed broadband report (and wireless broadband for that matter) came to that conclusion, much to the chagrin of ISPs investing billions to deploy that plant.

In a letter to Wheeler, a sextet of senators said they were concerned that that the "arbitrary" benchmark fails to record what most view as broadband and say they are troubled by the FCC's use of a different metric--10 Mbps--for rural broadband.

"While your 2016 Broadband Progress Report finds a deficiency in deployment at the 25/3-Mbps benchmark," they wrote, "your fact sheet touts the Connect America Fund subsidies -- which only require providers to offer speeds of 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up -- as increasing broadband deployment."

The letter, which echoes a number of criticisms -- including the 10 Mbps/25 Mbps difference -- that were leveled by the FCC's Republican commissioners after the report was released, noted that Netflix recommends a 5-Mbps download speed and Amazon suggests only 3.5 Mbps.

They said it was "unclear how applying a different definition of broadband to urban and rural areas is consistent with this clear Congressional directive [of universal access]," they wrote. "Nor is it clear how the Commission can justify defining broadband by the 25/3 Mbps benchmark in one context (when assessing the market under section 706), but ignoring this definition when it sought to regulate 'broadband' Internet access providers in its Open Internet Order – there, essentially including any service above dial-up as 'broadband.' If the Commission concluded that providers are providing a 'broadband' service worthy of increased regulatory protections, it seems inconsistent for the Commission to not count all such 'broadband' providers in the Commission’s Section 706 analysis."

Signing on to the letter were Sens. Steve Daines, Roger Wicker, Roy Blunt, Deb Fischer, Ron Johnson  and Cory Gardner.