What Happened To Our Broadband?

On Monday, the FCC announced its new broadband initiative for the next decade. That got me to thinking, because didn't we have a broadband initiative back in the 90s? I could have sworn I remember seeing pictures of then-Vice President Al Gore installing fiber optic cables in schools when I was in middle school.

Telecom Again?

Actually, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 did create a broadband policy and most states paid a total of $320 billion to have a few companies (most notably, AT&T and Verizon) replace old copper wiring with new fiber-optic cables throughout the US. The idea was to then have "open access policies" which would allow other companies to come in and use the infrastructure laid down to foster a competitive marketplace, eventually lowering costs for consumers.

Thanks to some lobbying, that never happened. Look around today, and what you see in almost every major market is not a competitive environment, but rather, a duopoly. The fiber optic cables have not fully been installed as promised and America is 15th in the world when it comes to broadband connectivity.

Who Wants the Competition?

The complexities about how this happened (including lobbying from the telecom industry and former telecom employees being appointed to the FCC) go back more than a decade and are a bit deeper than can be detailed here, but basically, what we now have is a murky area where a public utility (which is to be available statewide) is more or less controlled by a few private companies. Companies that don't want competition.

No Clicks For the Sticks

While this certainly is a concern, what's most alarming is that, unless there's a profit margin to be met, broadband will not be available to communities that are too small or too spread out, even though taxpayers paid AT&T and Verizon billions of dollars to upgrade the Public Switched Telephone Networks, a public utility.

Yet, there are stories of rural communities still using dial-up who have approached AT&T and Verizon and have offered to pay them to tap into their broadband lines to bring high-speed internet to rural communities, only to be denied access.

Verizon has even threatened to stop adding fiber optic cables unless legislation is changed in their favor, a sort of broadband blackmail. And, if you happen to be in a town with limited options and choose AT&T as your provider, they'll suspend your connection if you happen to blog bad things about them. Of course, this is after they increase your rates and before they limit your usage.

Searching For Competition

But there may be some help on the horizon. Last month, Google announced plans to select one city to test its new ISP. Creating an ISP is expensive (hence the open access policies other countries use); while it may fail miserably, but we need competition injected into the telecom industry, or America will continue to pay for sub-par broadband.

Otherwise, we'll have to continue our surrender to the few gatekeepers of the Internet.