Utility-Based Broadband Touted as Solution for Addressing Digital Divide
Broadband infrastructure can be seen as a fourth utility after water, gas and electricity.
Teralyn Whipple
HOUSTON, May 5, 2023 – A utility-based broadband model is the only solution to bridge the digital divide, panel heard at the Broadband Communities Summit Thursday.
“If we’re going to solve the digital divide, we need to use the utility model,” stated Josh Leonard from engineering company Burns and McDonalds.
A utility model, sometimes dubbed municipal broadband, is broadband infrastructure owned by public entities. Service is provided to residents by service providers that lease publicly owned networks in an open-access system.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, most state and city officials understand that broadband needs to be the fourth utility – after water, gas and electricity – said Leonard, but they do not treat it as such.
Utilities understand how to operate large infrastructure projects that connect hundreds and thousands of homes, said Sean Stokes, partner at Keller and Heckman law firm. Utilities already have a core internal communication capability and already have essential infrastructure in place such as utility poles.
Although utilities rarely want to be an internet service provider, Stokes continued, they are uniquely positioned to effectively run the network and lease it to providers. Open access enables partnerships with entities that want to be investors but don’t want to operate or be a provider, said Ashley Poling of fiber network software company COS Systems.
Building single-use fiber, as many ISPs do when connecting communities, harms communities by requiring multiple digs in the future. The goal is to build capacity for all current and futures once, said Franciso Arbide of NextEra Infrastructure Solutions
Does so allows more flexibility to add providers, eliminates issues if providers have poor service, and put pressure on non-performing providers, said Arbide.
Entities looking to invest in large-scale infrastructure investments are not making realistic assessments of the actual cost of deploying infrastructure, cost and time to access utility poles, increased cost and delay in supply chains, and labor shortages, said Stokes. The best solution is to utilize the assets that utilities already have in their toolbelt, he said.
Experience is the number-one priority when looking to build a broadband project, agreed Seema Patel of Chapman and Cutler. “Having experience in the industry is really going to be critical,” she said.
“This infrastructure-based utility model is what succeeds,” said Poling. “The states that understand this will really achieve almost 100 percent digital equity. Others will not.”
