Rural ISPs Fear Broadband Plan Ignores Hard-to-Reach Citizens
Rural telecommunications providers are speaking up in opposition to the National Broadband Plan, saying it will leave rural America behind and harm the providers’ ability to bring voice and Internet services to the last isolated pockets of the nation. The plan’s simultaneous goals of reaching by 2020 100 Mbps download speed for 100 million homes and 4 Mbps download speed for “universal” availability strike some as inequitable.
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The South Carolina Telephone Coalition, writing to home-state federal Commissioner Mignon Clyburn July 7, said “the plan condemns rural Americans to second class citizenship, with broadband plans 25 times slower than what would be available to the average American.” This divide would further drive businesses away from rural areas and into urban centers, it said.
Other carriers say the problem isn’t an “urban-rural” divide but a “rural-rural” divide. Among those is Windstream. It’s not accusing the smaller carriers of crying wolf, said Mike Rhoda, senior vice president of government affairs. They've been dependent on a certain level of universal service funding for a long time, he said. But in some cases, they're choosing expensive options like fiber to the premise while other rural providers are unable to provide anything, he said. If that continues, the divide won’t be between those with 100 Mbps and those with 4 Mbps but “you'll be talking about zero and 100,” he said. Because “we don’t have a stomach today to increase the $4 billion fund,” disbursement from the high cost Universal Service Fund should change so that all carriers receive one-sixth of the cost of building out broadband, Rhoda said. Within six years, all would have received the total cost of building out broadband, he said. Some now receive more than 100 percent of their needs.
The amount of money required to bring everyone up to 100 Mbps is prohibitive, an FCC official said. Analysis showed that bringing broadband at that speed to areas of the country that private enterprise finds unprofitable would cost $320 billion. If funded through the Universal Service Fund, the fee on monthly household phone bills would increase from the current average of about $3 to about $30, the official said.
The FCC remains committed to ensuring comparable service for both urban and rural residents, Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote in response to senators’ questions about the potential digital divide. The 100 Mbps is an “aspirational goal,” he said in a June 15 letter released last week. The median speed used by consumers today is 4 Mbps and is “what many consumers are likely to use in the near term,” he said. It is “one of the highest universalization targets of any country in the world,” he said. According to data provided in the plan, the U.S.’s goal is the second-most ambitious in terms of speed, with only Australia’s goal of 12 Mbps by 2018 being faster.