Broadband needed, should be available
The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which moved forward in the Senate over the weekend, puts it well: “Access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life in the United States.” This finding seems so obvious now that it is easy to forget the controversy it provoked pre-pandemic. Senators are right to take this opportunity to bridge a divide that will become only more dangerous as society becomes more digital.
The infrastructure debate hinged in its early stages on a not-so-simple question: What is infrastructure, anyway? Legislators are right to agree that broadband counts. After all, Americans don’t get to work on roads, rails and bridges when work is remote. The ability of negotiators to settle on a number as big as the $65 billion in today’s draft legislation is itself impressive. Even more encouraging is the manner in which that $65 billion will be allocated: not only toward creating the connections to make broadband theoretically available to those currently unserved, but also toward making it affordable. These have always been the twin pillars of broadband policy, yet it wasn’t clear until now that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were willing to embrace both.
Lawmakers, advocacy groups and academics can quibble with details of the bill, but they will have trouble denying that it checks all the boxes in the realm of political possibility. There’s $42 billion put toward providing service where it doesn’t exist at all and improving it where it does, delivered in the form of grants to the states. The idea is that states know best what they need and which providers are suited to give it to them. This also represents a smart compromise on the role of municipal networks. An emphasis on so-called middle mile projects linking major nationwide carriers to smaller local ones will also make it possible for those smaller carriers to serve more people more cheaply.
More surprising but just as welcome is $14 billion to extend a covid-era emergency program to give subsidies to low-income Americans - a notable increase from the far smaller sums devoted to affordability in earlier versions of the bill. The legislation further has a requirement that companies receiving subsidies offer a low-cost option, coupled with a minimum speed mandate below what activists desired and industry feared. Also included is Democratic Washington Sen. Patty Murray’s Digital Equity Act, which pushes beyond the traditional boundaries of broadband policy to teach under served groups, from racial and ethnic minorities to veterans to people with disabilities, to actually use the Internet.
In an ideal world, society might ensure that every household has adequate income, and let people decide for themselves how to allocate it, rather than creating separate bureaucracies to help pay for food, rent, child care and, now, Internet bills. But that’s not our current world. Congress is prepared to make a massive investment in a defining element of modern-day infrastructure. Every member should want to help make this history.