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Christopher Mitchell: Brendan Carr is Wrong on the Treasury Department’s Broadband Rules

The Federal Communications Commission has no excuse for why the agency finished with the same bad data it started with.

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1 year ago

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The author of this Expert Opinion is Chris Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at Institute for Local Self-Reliance

With all due respect to Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, his reaction to the Rescue Plan Act’s State and Local Fiscal Relief Fund (SLFRF) spending rules is way off base. As I wrote last week, the rules for broadband infrastructure spending are a good model for pushing down decision-making to the local level where people actually have the information to make informed decisions. (Doug Dawson recently also responded to Commissioner Carr’s statement, offering a response with some overlap of the points below.)

See Christopher Mitchell, Treasury Department Rescue Plan Act Rules Improve Broadband Funding, Broadband Breakfast, January 13, 2022

The Final Rule from the Treasury Department gives broad discretion to local and state governments that choose to spend some of the SLFRF (SLurF-uRF) funds on broadband infrastructure. The earlier draft of rules made it more complicated for networks built to address urban affordability challenges.

However, in coming out against the rules, FCC Commissioner Carr is giving voice to the anger of the big cable and telephone monopolies that cities can, after collecting evidence of need, make broadband investments even in areas where those companies may be selling services already. Commissioner Carr may also be frustrated that he has been reduced to chirping from the sidelines on this issue because the previous FCC, under his party’s leadership, so badly bungled broadband subsidies in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that Congress decide NTIA should administer these funds and have the state distribute them.

Nonetheless, the issues that Commissioner Carr raised are common talking points inside the Beltway and we feel that they need to be addressed.

Background Note

The failure of the FCC to assemble an accurate data collection is many years in the making. No single presidential administration can take the full blame for it, but each of them could have corrected it.

President Joe Biden’s FCC is not yet fully assembled because of delays in appointment and in Senate confirmation, but it would not be reasonable to lay blame on the current FCC for the failures discussed below. That said, it is not clear that we are on a course for having better maps and data that will resolve these problems anytime soon.

Commissioner Carr’s Criticism 

Commissioner Carr jumps immediately into the rural vs urban frame, suggesting that the Biden Administration could leave rural families behind by allowing local governments to invest in broadband in areas where an existing provider may already claim to offer service. Outlawing this practice – which he and others close to the largest cable and telephone companies call “overbuilding” – has been a major point for Republican FCC Commissioners.

  • Rather than directing those dollars to the rural and other communities without any Internet infrastructure today, the Administration gives the green light for recipients to spend those funds on overbuilding existing, high-speed networks in communities that already have multiple broadband providers. This would only deepen the digital divide in this country.

Pardon me? Logically, it is not clear what exactly Commissioner Carr is griping about here. Using Maryland as an example, if Baltimore is allowed to spend some of its funds to ensure unconnected families in public housing have high-quality Internet access, it is not clear that rural Garrett County in the western part of the state is harmed. Local governments do not receive different amounts of funds based on whether they spend it on broadband or other allowable expenses.

See Christopher Mitchell and other from the Institute for Local Self Reliance in the Broadband Breakfast Live Online for Wednesday, January 19, 2022 — The Community Broadband Network Approach to Infrastructure Funding

Broadband Breakfast on January 19, 2022 — The Community Broadband Network Approach to Infrastructure Funding

States could be the issue. Perhaps Commissioner Carr is concerned that Maryland will use some of its SLFRF money for broadband and it will spend too much in urban areas rather than rural regions. That would be an historical anomaly, even though there are far more people living in urban areas than in rural areas who are not on the Internet. And yet, nearly all state and federal dollars have gone to rural areas for infrastructure improvements, with very little being spent to help the low-income families left behind in urban areas. There is no history of states prioritizing urban investments over rural.

Bad Data, Srsly?

What I found really galling though was this bit:

  • It gets worse. The Treasury rules allow these billions of dollars to be spent based on bad data. It does this by authorizing recipients to determine whether an area lacks access to high-speed Internet service by relying on informal interviews and reports—however inaccurate those may be—rather than the broadband maps that the federal government has been funding and standing up

It is 2022. The FCC announced three weeks ago that it did not have a timeline for better maps.  Many of us have complained for more than 10 years about the misleading and inaccurate collection of claims that the FCC advances as its understanding of where broadband exists in the United States.

Commissioner Carr has been an FCC Commissioner for more than four years, nearly all of that time when his agency was run by a Republican. For part of that time, the Republicans controlled the Presidency, the House, and the Senate. They have no excuse for why his party’s FCC finished with the same bad data processes it started with. No one was defending the FCC data or maps during those years, but the FCC did not bother to begin collecting new data.

Now Commissioner Carr claims that “parts of this country” have broadband services at speeds near 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. OK, Commissioner. Where? Do you have a secret list? No, these are talking points to obscure the fact that Commissioner Carr and his agency has utterly failed to track precisely what “parts of this country” actually has access to broadband.

Will I agree that most, perhaps 80 percent, of the country has access to 100 by 20 Mbps? Yes. But that doesn’t matter if no one can agree which homes are well-served. And it opens up a whole other set of questions that Carr neatly sidesteps, which is that contemporary broadband service goes beyond the academic question of whether an ISP provides that service most of the time at some price. If the price isn’t affordable, then there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Or as we like to say, if it’s not affordable, it’s not accessible. And, if the service is not very reliable, then there is a problem that must be addressed.

This is why the final rule is both necessary and good: because it allows communities the flexibility they need to address not just the gaps in infrastructure, but reliability and affordability as well. But of course Commissioner Carr should know that we do not have this information at the federal level, because I’m quite sure he opposes collecting pricing and other information. Despite the many instances in which providers have lied to the Commission in presenting the areas they offer service, Carr objects per se to local evidence gathered via interviews to understand where broadband actually is.

A Prediction: This Is Not A Problem

It is remarkable to see the amount of performative horror Commissioner Carr expresses at the prospect of a city like Baltimore using some of the Rescue Plan dollars to ensure its families in public housing are on the Internet, even if a cable provider could theoretically sell them Internet access for $75/month, or provide a subsidized service if they jump through all the right hoops. Compare that to the silence from the Commissioner when it became clear that the largest telephone companies took billions of dollars in broadband subsidies and might have forgotten to upgrade their services.

The SLFRF Treasury Rules give the appropriate amount of deference to local and state leaders to act in an utter void of information about what is available to each home. Commissioner Carr is deeply worried – because the largest cable and telephone companies are deeply worried – that some places will use these dollars to build networks that are unneeded or would create too much competition for the existing companies.

My prediction is that communities will not do this. Of course it’s not zero: a cardinal rule of dealing with large numbers of humans is that there are always outliers. But of the cities that allocate some of their SLFRF dollars to broadband infrastructure, they will overwhelmingly focus on areas where there are real affordability and reliability challenges from existing services. The reality is that very few of these investments will result in any material losses to existing ISPs, but the monopoly providers know that even modestly opening the door to locally built and operated infrastructure driven by community-driven solutions could open the floodgates to the competition they fear so much.

Commissioner Carr has spent years as one of a very small number of people that could correct the abject failure of the FCC to collect useful information about broadband deployments. The rest of us have had to move on and figure out how to work in the absence of data. The best option is to allow for local decision-making where they can collect evidence and act. And most importantly, they will have to take responsibility for their actions and lack of action in ways that FCC Commissioners often do not.

Editor’s Note: This piece was authored by Christopher Mitchell, director of the Institute for Local Self Reliance’s Community Broadband Network Initiative. His work focuses on helping communities ensure that the telecommunications networks upon which they depend are accountable to the community. He was honored as one of the 2012 Top 25 in Public Sector Technology by Government Technology, which honors the top “Doers, Drivers, and Dreamers” in the nation each year. This piece was originally published on MuniNetworks.org on January 20, 2022, and is reprinted with permission.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.

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Broadband Breakfast is a decade-old news organization based in Washington that is building a community of interest around broadband policy and internet technology, with a particular focus on better broadband infrastructure, the politics of privacy and the regulation of social media. Learn more about Broadband Breakfast.

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Broadband Mapping & Data

Tom Reid: Accountability in Broadband Maps Necessary for BEAD to Achieve Mission

The sheer magnitude of the overstatements in the FCC’s map makes the challenge process untenable.

Published

1 week ago

on

June 1, 2023

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The author of this Expert Opinion is Tom Reid, president of Reid Consulting Group.

With millions of American households stranded in the digital desert, we need to achieve accountability in broadband to make sure the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding achieves its mission. The broadband gaps can be readily identified despite the air of mystery surrounding the topic.

Broadband improvements have been constrained for decades by inaccurate maps, yet the Federal Communications Commission continues to accept dramatically exaggerated availability and capacity claims from internet service providers. The cumbersome challenge process requires consumers and units of government to prove a negative — a logical fallacy.

The Reid Consulting Group and other parties, including Microsoft, have developed robust algorithms to reliably identify actual broadband availability. RCG utilizes Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data due to the large quantity of consumer-initiated tests. In Ohio, as an example, we draw on more than 16 million speed tests reflecting the lived experience from millions of households. We combine the speed test findings with FCC and Census data to deliver irrefutable identification of unserved and underserved locations.

Such methodologies offer State Broadband Leaders the opportunity to reverse the burden of proof in the BEAD program, requiring that ISPs submit concrete evidence supporting their availability and speed claims. As an example, in Ohio, RCG’s maps were accepted as proof of unserved status for the 2022 state grant program. BroadbandOhio then required ISPs to submit substantial proof in their challenge process. In other words, the ISP’s were tasked with proving a positive instead of expecting citizens to prove a negative.

ISPs and the FCC denounce crowdsourced data unless conducted under unusually restrictive conditions. The ISPs have successfully promoted unsubstantiated myths regarding the value of consumer-initiated speed tests.

Myth: Bad tests are because of poor Wi-Fi.
Reality: RCG eliminates speed tests with weak Wi-Fi and includes GPS enabled wired devices. Even first-generation Wi-Fi would saturate a 25 Megabits per second download and 3 Mbps upload connection.

Myth: Residents only subscribe to low-speed packages.
Reality: According to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, in areas where rural electric cooperatives offer broadband, 25 to 33 percent of rural subscribers opt for the top speed tier offered. We can clearly see this trend in areas where fiber has been deployed in recent years, as described later in this article.

Myth: People only test when there is a problem.
Reality: Network problems prompt tests, as do resolutions of problems.  RCG recommends focusing on the maximum speed test results to eliminate this “unhappy customer effect.”

Finding the truth: Broadband and the lived experience

In Ohio, RCG analyzed more than 14 million consumer-initiated speed tests over a three-year period. The data reveals a clear pattern of carrier overstatement. The stark visual contrast between the two maps is hard to ignore — and while this study is focused on Ohio, the issue remains nationwide in scope. The sheer magnitude of the overstatements makes the FCC challenge process untenable.

Figure 1: Ohio Broadband Reality vs. FCC ISP stated coverage map.

RCG utilized the “maximum speeds ever seen” at a location for generating maps and coverage figures, but we also examined the results from the average of speed test. Switching between average and maximum speeds does not change the overall picture of broadband availability. As an example, Figure 2 focuses on an area around Bolivar, Missouri. Looking at the maximum speed turns Bolivar itself a deeper green, meaning “better served,” but the rural areas around Bolivar remain predominantly red, meaning “unserved.”  The preponderance of evidence clearly demonstrates that much of the rural area around Bolivar remains unserved, even at maximum speeds.

Figure 2: Map visualization illustrating the difference between viewing average speeds in the Bolivar, Missouri area and maximum speeds documented.

When rating broadband availability in the Bolivar area at the Census block level and overlaying with ISP coverage claims at the H3 R8 level, you can see that many of the unserved and underserved areas have been reported as served to the FCC by ISPs (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Carrier overstatement small scale in Bolivar, Missouri. RCG speed map with FCC H3 R8 hexagon overlay.

Zooming out to examine the entirety of Missouri (Figure 4), the pattern of ISP overstatement becomes quite clear. According to the FCC maps, most of the state is served, whereas the analysis conducted by RCG shows that significant areas remain in need of broadband investment. As with Ohio, the scope of the overstatement in Missouri presents an unreasonable burden on the public to challenge.

Figure 4: Missouri reality vs. ISP Reports, March 2023.

Showing Progress: Change of State Analysis

Change-of-state analysis taps progressive releases of Ookla records to identify areas where broadband speeds have set new highs. This approach works not only for grant funded projects but also private investments. The area surrounding Byesville, Ohio (Figure 5) reveals a significant uptick in test volume, test locations, and speeds from 2020 to 2022. Side-by-side comparison shows a large number of “green” (served) speed test locations where there used to be only “red” (unserved) and “orange” (underserved) results. This change is a direct result of a Charter Communications Rural Digital Opportunity Fund deployment.

Figure 5: The unserved area around Byesville, Ohio before and after broadband deployment.

State Broadband Leaders can use these capabilities to document progress and identify lagging projects. Any service area will always exhibit a mix of speed test results.  Even in an area like Byesville where fiber-to-the-home has been deployed, not all the location “dots” will turn green. However, the preponderance of evidence clearly shows that a funded ISP — in this case, Charter — has made good on its commitment to expanded broadband access. ISPs can help by conducting speed tests at the time of installation from the customer’s premises and by increasing minimum packages to 100/20 Mbps or higher.

There is no mystery to solve — we know how to identify areas lacking broadband services. For many rural Americans, even their telephone services have become unreliable, still dependent on the now-decrepit copper cables built in the 1940s through 1960s. We all depend on a healthy rural economy for our food, water and energy. Let’s make the commitment to build the infrastructure needed to bring these households into the internet age — starting by bringing reality and accountability to the availability maps.

Tom Reid is the president of Reid Consulting Group, a firm specializing in broadband. They work with clients to generate insights, create actionable plans, and identify funding sources to connect unserved and underserved areas. RCG’s engagements in eight states have delivered 6,000 miles of fiber construction with a total project value of $1.6 billion and has secured over $330 million in grant funds on behalf of clients. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.

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Expert Opinion

Johnny Kampis: Broadband Industry Hopeful to Get Waivers from Biden Administration Protectionist Policies

The Buy America mandate could seriously hamper the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.

Published

2 weeks ago

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May 26, 2023

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The author of this Expert Opinion is Johnny Kampis, director of telecom policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

In a presidential administration rife with protectionist policies, the broadband internet industry is optimistic it will receive waivers from the “Buy America” mandate that threatens to derail plans to close the digital divide.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is likely to announce state funding allocations for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program by the end of June. That is the biggest piece of the taxpayer-funded pie allocated by Congress to extend broadband infrastructure across the U.S. over the next several years.

But, as the Taxpayers Protection Alliance has reported, broadband industry leaders say the Buy America mandate could seriously hamper the effort. As part of the mandate, the Biden administration has said that at least 55 percent of the component parts of a product used in federal construction projects must be sourced domestically. That rule applies to any infrastructure project, but broadband has taken center stage recently with the BEAD funding imminent.

Because fiber-optic cables primarily used in broadband infrastructure projects include materials such as aluminum, copper, glass, plastic and steel that are primarily manufactured in other countries, under the current rules they would be forbidden. And many other important cogs in the broadband machine, such as routers and switches, are mostly made overseas. Even the left-leaning Brookings Institution noted the policy “could put broadband deployments as risk.”

Fortunately, the Biden administration is softening on its Buy America policies — at least in the broadband industry. NTIA chose earlier this month to exempt several categories of equipment such as broadband routing equipment, transceivers and antennas from the domestic manufacturing requirements in the Enabling Middle Mile Infrastructure Program. The agency said that “although there are public and private efforts underway to increase manufacturing capacity… industry will not be able to address shortages of the manufactured products and construction materials required for middle mile network deployment within the timeframes required.”

Broadband Breakfast pointed out in a recent article that it will take several years to ramp up production of semiconductors in the U.S. and the BEAD program has set a five-year timeline for project completion.

“The estimates are that it would take at least, at a minimum, three to five years to bring a semiconductor chip plant to the U.S.,” said Pam Arluk, vice president of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association. “And even though the BEAD program is going to be over several years, that’s still just not enough time.”

The inherent difficulties in meeting the Buy America mandate, and the precedent now set with the middle mile program, provide optimism that waivers will likely be offered with BEAD. But that is just one of many infrastructure programs now being funded by taxpayers through federal recovery programs.

As President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union Address in February, “American-made lumber, glass, drywall, fiber optic cables…on my watch, American roads, American bridges, and American highways will be made with American products.”

Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria pointed out that what he calls the “Biden Doctrine” violates the spirit of the World Trade Organization and its framework of open trade. And another Post columnist, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, noted that protectionist policies tend to hurt more people than they help — giving as an example steel tariffs that aided 60,000 steel workers, but threatened the jobs of 6 million other workers in industries paying inflated prices for steel.

Strides in broadband waivers are a good sign, but the Biden administration must do more to curtail its protectionist policies as industries use economic recovery funds to build infrastructure in the coming years.

Johnny Kampis is director of telecom policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.

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Angie Kronenberg: The FCC Must Act Now to Save the USF

While the USF remains vital in an ever-increasing connected world, it is in serious jeopardy of surviving.

Published

3 weeks ago

on

May 18, 2023

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The author of this Expert Opinion is INCOMPAS President Angie Kronenberg.

Last week, the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband held a hearing titled “The State of Universal Service.” The Universal Service Fund is our nation’s critical connectivity program that helps ensure that voice and broadband services are available and affordable throughout the country.

Since its creation by Congress in the 1996 Telecom Act, the USF has become a program that millions of families, community anchor institutions and small businesses rely on to get connected. It has been especially valuable for families and businesses that rely on it for work, school and telehealth at home.

The USF spends about $8.5 billion annually to help fund affordable connectivity in rural areas, low-income households, schools, libraries and rural hospitals. Today, the Federal Communications Commission is working to make high-speed broadband as ubiquitous as telephone service, and broadband is the essential communications technology the USF now supports.

While the USF remains vital in an ever-increasing connected world, it is in serious jeopardy of surviving. To fund the programs, telecom providers are required to pay a certain percentage of their interstate and international telecom revenues, known as the “contribution factor.” Typically, telecom providers collect these USF fees from their customers on their monthly bills.

However, the telecom revenues that fund the USF have declined over 60 percent in the last two decades. As a result, the contribution factor has skyrocketed from about 7 percent in 2001 to a historic high of about 30 percent today, as a higher portion of telecom revenues is needed to sustain the fund. That means certain consumers and businesses are now paying an additional 30 percent on top of their phone bills in order to fund the USF.

Telecom revenues continue to decline so rapidly because customers today rely more on broadband services and less on landline and mobile phone services, but broadband revenues do not pay into the USF. While the FCC has modernized each USF program to help support broadband service, it has not modernized its funding mechanism to require broadband services to pay into the Fund even though historically the agency has required supported services to be included in the contribution system.

Without intervention, the contribution factor is predicted to rise to 40 percent by 2025. This is unsustainable and puts the stability of the entire USF at risk. In fact, the contribution factor has become so high that it has led some groups to challenge the USF in federal court as unconstitutional, which also threatens the sustainability of the USF.

Reforming the USF funding mechanism is urgently needed and long overdue

Over 340 diverse stakeholders have come together as the USForward Coalition calling on the FCC to move forward with USF reform by expanding the contribution base to include broadband revenues. This solution is based on the recommendation in the USForward Report (that INCOMPAS helped commission), which was written by USF expert and former FCC official Carol Mattey.

The USForward Report explains that the most logical way to reform the contribution system and sustain the USF is to include broadband revenues in its funding assessment. Under this approach, the contribution factor is estimated to fall to less than 4 percent. It also means that the services that get USF support are paying into it, rather than solely relying on telecom customers, including those that have not made the switch to broadband, such as older Americans.

In fact, some members of Congress understand the urgency of reform and also want the FCC to act. The Reforming Broadband Connectivity Act, for example, is a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would require the FCC to reform the contribution system within one year.

Some question whether large tech companies should be assessed to contribute to the USF, and the short answer is “No.” Tech companies invest $120 billion each year in global internet infrastructure, and unlike broadband providers, these companies do not request or receive USF funding for these investments.

The FCC also lacks the authority to regulate tech companies and doing so would require Congress to act. This would further delay reform and expand the FCC’s regulatory authority over all online content and services — an overreach that many question as too broad since nearly every business today has an online presence and uses the internet to conduct business. Moreover, proposals to target certain tech companies risk skewing the online marketplace and competitive markets.

Some also question whether we still need the USF at all, and the short answer is “Yes.” While Congress allocated tens of billions for broadband, most of this investment is targeted for deployment, yet a significant portion of the USF programs focus on affordability. We not only have to make sure we build out our broadband networks, but also that communities can then afford to subscribe to these services.

The FCC should not wait to reform the USF. The USForward Report sets out a real plan that the FCC can and should implement. Congress should encourage the FCC to act now and save the nation’s critical connectivity program.

Angie Kronenberg is the president of INCOMPAS, where she manages the policy team and its work before federal, state and local governments, as well as leading the association’s efforts on membership and business development. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.

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