Broadband Should Be of Same Quality in All Areas, Rural Summit Told
Whether everyone can have the same level of access to broadband isn't a policy question -- that was decided a long time ago, said officials during the Utilities Telecom Council Rural Broadband Summit in Arlington, Virginia, Tuesday. While the FCC is still working on what the upcoming spectrum auction will look like, many telecom service providers and rural communities are waiting to see how they can get broadband to everyone and close the digital divide. Programs such as the Connect America Fund from the FCC and grants such as the Community Connect Grant Program from the Agriculture Department are there because if a community doesn’t have those services, it will be disadvantaged, officials said. Even though access is still the main problem, current policies and court cases -- Title II and FCC pre-emption of municipal broadband rules, for example -- are affecting the progress of utility rural broadband, some lawyers at the summit said.
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To have comparable service in every home in the country, everyone needs access to fiber-to-the-home service, said Jonathan Chambers, FCC Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis chief. Some argue that “reasonably” in the case of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 means “something less,” but he doesn’t agree. “If you allow policymakers to have low expectations, you’ll hit your target, you’ll get low-level service,” Chambers said. “You need to raise expectations and you need to demonstrate that those expectations can be met by the service that you’re willing to provide.”
Rural communities in a Verizon territory should start taking a “hard look” at how residents can get access to broadband, Chambers said. He said not only is Verizon not coming, but those communities shouldn't expect anyone else to show up, either. “If you don’t do it, it isn’t as if somebody is going to roll into your town and build for you,” he said. “The FCC has said that we are no longer relying on that age-old contract between the telephone companies and the government where the telephone companies are forced to provide phone service and now broadband service. It does mean communities that are currently underserved will have to … engage in a little bit of self-help.”
Broadband isn’t a network that requires a town to be in the "right place," as with highways and railways in the past, Chambers said. There's no limit on where fiber can be built, he said, but it does affect commerce and where people choose to live, much like highways and railways.
The FCC is still working on the format of the Connect America Fund Phase II, said Alexander Minard, Telecommunications Access Policy Division deputy division chief. The commission is evaluating the proposals that organizations such as USTelecom submitted on how to conduct a competitive bidding process, he said. Then, once that's decided, the auction will be finalized, Minard said. The hope is to have clarity on what the Phase II auction will look like in the next few weeks or within a month, he said. The commission will be releasing a list of what is and isn't going to be available for auction in each area of the country, Minard said. And once that's released, it will give telcos an idea at what level they want to participate in the auction, he said.
No matter what happens with the Open Internet order and Title II classification of Internet services, Kevin Cookler of Lerman Senter said he believes the FCC has a better chance of arguing its pre-emption of municipal broadband rules in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, because the courts have agreed the commission has authority to do so. But Doug Jarrett of Keller & Heckman disagreed, saying the FCC is on “much thinner ice” with the pre-emption orders than with Title II. "They have a much better shot at getting some of the Open Internet order approved," he said. Congress should step in and look at the market for transit arrangements because if there are just a few companies that are in control of and setting the market price for them, it should be reviewed, like the Open Internet order said it would be, Jarrett said.