Telecom Divides on Treasury's Broadband Aid Rules
Stakeholders divided in comments Friday on a Treasury Department-proposed final rule allowing only broadband projects in areas without 25/3 Mbps to be eligible for the $350 billion in state and local funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (see 2105100060).
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Those opposed to leaving the eligibility threshold at 25/3 Mbps include Common Sense, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Incompas, NATOA and New America’s Open Technology Institute. Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and some other Democratic leaders criticized the benchmark (see 2107080066). “25/3 Mbps cannot meet the demands of today, and it certainly will not do so in the future,” Incompas said. “Assessing where providers are not upgrading their networks and funding a competitor who will build the network and provide the service needed will incentivize the incumbent to upgrade.”
“It seems incongruent to preclude broadband projects where there is a wireline connection of 25/3 -- a benchmark Treasury recognizes is not sufficient and which is considerably lower than that set for funded projects,” NATOA said. “Such a low standard will strand countless communities using decades-old copper infrastructure that the industry is rapidly attempting to abandon,” EFF said: Consumer usage long ago passed this metric.
Those supporting 25/3 Mbps include Frontier, Lumen, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and USTelecom. “Anything less would represent an inefficient use of public funding and shortchange Americans in the communities that remain unfunded and/or underserved,” Frontier said.
Wireless groups criticized the threshold for appearing to favor wireline. The interim final rule “is arbitrary and leads to irrational results,” CTIA said. It “never actually explains why only wireline connections are considered relevant for determining areas that are served and thus not eligible for” American Rescue Plan Act money and the group “can identify no reason for this unique distinction.”
The Wireless ISP Association “strongly supports” 25/3 but is concerned by the “thinly veiled industrial policy stemming from the ‘wireline’ modifier.” There “is nothing in the” proposal “that would provide a basis for distinguishing between a wireline broadband service and a fixed wireless service for the purpose of determining whether consumers in an area are unserved or underserved,” WISPA said.
The Fiber Broadband Association, NTCA and WTA took more nuanced stances, in some cases focusing more on supporting Treasury’s proposal to require eligible projects to be designed to deliver 100 Mbps symmetrical. Prioritize “funding first for ‘unserved’ areas that still lack reliable, wireline 25/3 Mbps service,” WTA said. “Once those unserved areas are identified and funded, focus should be on helping providers with rural networks offering service between 25/3 Mbps and 100/20 Mbps upgrade to 100 Mbps symmetrical” and higher-speed services “as broadband demands increase.”
“Building networks today that can meet the demands of tomorrow will drive the greatest value,” NTCA said. “The most efficient long-term strategy” is “to deploy a network that has long-term durability and whose capacity can be expanded at nominal cost.” So 100 Mbps symmetrical for buildouts “is advantageous because it will effectively ensure that unserved and underserved households receive future-proof (all-fiber) broadband connections,” FBA said.