Policy of Relying on Competition Led to Gaps in Fiber Deployment, Crawford Says

Miss It, released in January. South Korea -- with its ubiquitous high-speed connectivity -- is "the future," she said. The U.S. "took a wrong turn" in 2004 when it assumed a fiber-wireline battle would lead to competitive markets, but instead phone companies have focused on wireless, and cable ISPs now dominate a stagnant market with little competition. She said broadband connectivity is following the same pattern electrification did last century, when a few companies dominated the market and largely bypassed rural and poorer residential areas until major efforts by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. She said the interest by hundreds of communities -- often with Republican mayors -- and cooperatives in municipal fiber networks shows it's not partisan. She hopes pressure from cities eventually will "embarrass" federal policymakers. She said federal tax policies are needed to make capital cheaper for such co-ops and startup network providers. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said a policy problem is the billions spent annually subsidizing carriers' operating expenses instead of paying for fiber network buildouts in specific areas. Crawford said a separate connectivity concern is China's plan to have 80 percent of its homes wired with fiber, and to extend that to developing countries, bringing an "essentially a Chinese internet." She said 5G almost surely isn't the route to closing the connectivity divide because it won't increase coverage but instead likely lead to markets being divided up, each with a single operator dominating.