HICKORY, N.C., March 29, 2023 – Network connectivity manufacturers CommScope announced Wednesday an increase in fiber cable output expected to go directly into 500,000 homes per year.

The company said it will concentrate nearly $50 million toward the production to drive broadband infrastructure in rural areas. It announced a new fiber cable called HeliARC that it said is smaller and lighter weight that will allow for faster installation to rural homes.

“We will produce more cost-effective and easier-to-deploy fiber-optic cable, add new jobs and simultaneously strengthen the supply chain in America,” said CommScope president and CEO Chuck Treadway in a press release.

Meanwhile, in Catawba County, N.C., optical communications manufacturer Corning also held an event Wednesday to announce the formal opening of its newest optical cable manufacturing campus, also focused on rural and underserved communities.

Corning noted that its investments in manufacturing will “help meet the rising demand for broadband connectivity driven by public and private.”

Standing in front of warehouse workers with machine whirring, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is touring the state’s facilities, said “That is the sound of made in America.”

The announcements are being paraded by the White House as a key part of its strategy to not just connect the entire country with high-speed internet, but to ensure that the infrastructure supporting it is made primarily inside the country.

In his State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden emphasized that his administration would focus on ensuring that fiber cables that go toward federally-funded projects will be made in America. Following the address, the White House Office of Management and Budget released a document proposing rules for implementation of the Build America, Buy America provision in the infrastructure bill.

Critics responding to the proposal have said if waivers are not granted for certain parts of the fiber optic cable, it could jeopardize the four-year timeline for builds using money from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The money is expected to be allocated to the states by June 30.

Earlier this week, the White House announced the “Investing in America” tour starting Tuesday in Durham, North Carolina, to highlight key components of the infrastructure bill and the semiconductor-focused Chips and Science Act.

On Tuesday, Biden toured a Wolfspeed semiconductor factory in Durham. The company in September announced plans to invest $5 billion over 20 years in Chatham County.

DALLAS, March 28, 2023 — Industry experts at Connected America on Tuesday agreed that reaching each individual consumer is the key to a full-fiber future, noting that factors such as affordability and digital literacy go hand-in-hand with last mile deployment.

“Fiber to the home is truly full fiber — and that means every individual unit, whatever that might be,” said Erin Scarborough, senior vice president for broadband strategy at AT&T. “Connectivity to every single human is really what we’re talking about.”

Universal technology access can empower learning and development everywhere from college dorm rooms to prison educational programs, Scarborough added.

Bringing fiber to multi-dwelling units presents a challenge in that it requires the participation of building owners, said Bryan Rader, MDU president for Pavlov Media.

However, Rader argued that fiber installation ultimately benefits the owners as well as the inhabitants. “If you look at any of the studies in the apartment ownership industry today, the number one amenity is internet,” he said. “And if you don’t have great internet — or fiber internet — residents will actually pick a different address.”

An ideal full-fiber future would include at least two provider options for each household, said Raj Singh, CEO of Velankani Communications Technologies, Inc.

In order to encourage competition and investment, government funding programs should set flexible requirements, Scarborough said.

In addition to expanding broadband access, Scarborough emphasized the importance of actively considering affordability and adoption.

“For every human that or household that doesn’t have access to broadband today, two more don’t subscribe,” she said. “And why is that? Well, it’s likely because of affordability.”

Rader noted that digital literacy is a critical factor in adoption. “Success is connecting the customer, educating the customer, making sure they know how to utilize the fiber — that’s the missing piece,” he said.

Panelists acknowledged the role of other technologies in areas where last-mile fiber deployment would carry an extremely high cost. Achieving universal connectivity will require a “cocktail of technologies” — including 5G and fixed wireless in addition to fiber — as well as partnerships between public and private entities, Scarborough said.

But the experts largely agreed that fiber comes with unique benefits, such as long-term sustainability. Even when the initial buildout costs are high, the goal of careful fiber deployment is to create “a pathway with some foresight that allows you to upgrade, change, absorb things that you didn’t foresee,” said Scot Bohaychyk, solutions manager at Emtelle.

Lewis County, Washington and the Lewis County Public Utility District are making progress with their plan to deploy an open access fiber network that should dramatically boost broadband competition—and lower prices—county wide by 2026.

In November 2019, Lewis County PUD received a $50,000 grant from the Community Economic Revitalization Board to study the county’s broadband shortcomings and determine whether taking direct action to address them made sense. In early 2020, the PUD formed the Lewis County Broadband Action Team to further study community needs.

Those inquiries found what most U.S. communities know too well: concentrated monopolization had left county residents overpaying for substandard, expensive, and spotty broadband access unsuitable for modern living.

In response, the Lewis County PUD announced in 2021 it would be building an 134-mile-long fiber backbone and open access fiber network for around $104 million. Around $23.5 million of that total will be paid for by a recently awarded grant by the Washington State Department of Commerce, itself made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act.

In December of 2021, Lewis County PUD public affairs manager Willie Painter was a guest on our Community Broadband Bits podcast in which he discussed the PUD’s vision of deploying fiber across the county’s 2,450 square miles, which is home to about 75,000 Washingtonians, or about 30,000 households. Painter noted then how the PUD’s “shovel ready designs and estimates” is what “empowered our utility to be very competitive in going after state and federal grant dollars to help fund these construction deployments.”

The latest development to have emerged since we last reported on Lewis County PUD, is who the PUD selected as a partner to build the network. The network will be built as part of a 25-year public-private partnership with ToledoTel. While ToledoTel will install, supply and maintain a new fiber optic network connecting more than 2,300 homes and businesses in the Winlock area, Lewis County will ultimately own the final build.

ToledoTel is currently in the engineering and design phase of the project, and has stated it will provide an additional $2.35 million in matching funds for the project, which is slated to be finished before 2026.

Details of the arrangement were finalized in January, and county leaders state that ToledoTel will have exclusive access to the infrastructure for up to three years. After that, ToledoTel will be required to open the network to competitors at a wholesale rate, boosting competition and driving down costs in a residential broadband market largely dominated by Comcast.

Photo of Lewis County PUD building courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

“There’s the convenience, there’s business purposes; all those are really vital and becoming more and more a part of everyday life, and we want to provide those services to everyone in Lewis County that we can,” Lewis County Manager Erik Martin told The Chronicle. “This project is really the beginning, in terms of getting service out to folks, and we want to focus on getting broadband out to all rural areas and all residents of Lewis County.”

A 2021 survey by the WA Department of Commerce found that 64 percent of state households reported download speeds slower than the base FCC definition of broadband, currently a paltry 25 megabit per second (Mbps) downstream, 3 Mbps upstream. The state is currently considering raising the base definition of broadband to 100 Mbps downstream, 20 Mbps upstream.

A local survey by Lewis County PUD found that more than 77 percent of survey respondents had broadband speeds well below the acceptable federal definition of broadband, despite nearly 98 percent of county survey participants considering broadband access an essential utility.

Lewis County is one of many PUDs in Washington State taking full advantage of a flood of new grants — and recently-eliminated Washington State restrictions on community broadband — to belatedly expand access to affordable fiber across the state.

This article by Karl Bode originally appeared on the Institute for Local Self Reliance’s Community Broadband Networks project on March 13, 2023, and is reprinted with permission.