Last week we noted how Trump illegally declared he was killing the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act. The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools to Americans of all kinds long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
The bill helped everybody (including Trump-supporting rural veterans), but because Trump’s team assumed that the word equity meant “exclusively help minorities,” the program has become the latest victim of our mad, incoherent, con man king and his army of mindless earlobe nibblers.
It hasn’t taken long for the decision to have ripple effects in the real world. South Dakota, for example, says it’s cancelling $5 million in broadband investment because of the uncertain future of the grants that were going to be funding the plan:
“In South Dakota, the funds would have helped bring accessible and affordable internet access and technology to rural, aging and low-income South Dakotans, as well as tribal communities. Infrastructure like 5G towers and fiber-optic lines needs to be added to neighborhoods.”
Uniformly helping people access the internet: how utterly, diabolically woke! And how “populist” of King Trump to illegally end a beneficial law passed by Congress.
South Dakota Rep. Erik Muckey doesn’t mince words in explaining how the Trump administration has no idea what they’re destroying:
“This crusade to eliminate any funding that has anything to do with even the word equity, even if the word equity has nothing to do with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, that it’s purely about actually helping basic infrastructure get to rural communities and native nations, it’s just a farce.”
This will be repeated across numerous states like Vermont, which is also cancelling planned broadband investment. Thanks to Trump’s incoherent zealotry, dozens of states are having to cancel plans to expand fiber access to rural communities, or kill off digital literacy programs designed to help rural locals get online in order to access employment, education, and health care opportunities.
This isn’t about “saving money,” especially coming from a country whose new king is throwing $45 million ego parades. It’s not about serving any constituents (these programs were broadly popular). It’s about a pathological need to be cruel.
It’s quite a policy coup from Republicans and Libertarian “free market” think tank guys, who repeatedly threw a hissy fit for years, falsely claiming that some modest net neutrality rules would “stifle broadband investment” (but are now quiet as little church mice for some reason).
If you read the actual Digital Equity Act, race is barely mentioned. It’s basically just a bare bones effort to try and ensure that everybody has access to decent broadband. That’s important in a country where congressional corruption has resulted in telecom market failure at the hands of shitty regional monopolies, whose lack of competition and oversight results in expensive, spotty, slow, and low-quality access.
When people complain about substandard access, the follow up Republican policy is to shovel them toward Elon Musk’s Starlink, ignoring that the increasingly congested satellite service lacks the capacity to scale to handle U.S. coverage gaps, is too expensive for the rural Americans who need it most, harms scientific research and the ozone layer, and is run by an erratic, conspiratorial bigot.
Democrats certainly have their failures on telecom policy (see: their corrupt inability to support the Gigi Sohn FCC nomination), but a lot of the legislation passed in 2021 (specifically ARPA) was primarily the result of Democratic initiatives, and is genuinely helping to drive affordable, super fast fiber into areas that have never seen access before.
But when the corporate U.S. press writes about broadband policy and market failures, the fact that unpopular Republican policies are specifically and cruelly designed to stall progress and make our digital divide worse (especially for their own constituents) is either downplayed or not mentioned at all.
The Trump administration has illegally declared the Digital Equity Act of 2021 “racist and unconstitutional,” and called for it to be dismantled. The grant program had been helping push affordable fiber optic broadband into communities long neglected regions by regional telecom monopolies, be they minority, low-income, rural, suburban, or urban.
Trump, who, I’d guarantee, has no idea how the program worked or what it does, took to his personal propaganda platform to whine about the program:
The Digital Equity Act provides $2.75 billion for three beneficial grant programs aimed at bringing affordable broadband access to rural communities, disadvantaged urban communities, schools, and anchor institutions. Much of this money still hadn’t been doled out yet, but in many instances the money was funding affordable fiber to long-neglected communities.
These kinds of investments usually have significant downstream economic benefits thanks to expanded access to education, health care, and remote employment opportunities.
Consumer groups like Public Knowledge were quick to note that Trump lacks any authority to kill the Digital Equity Act (passed by Congress as part of the infrastructure bill, which is the dictionary definition of legal), and that its destruction will heavily harm many of his own constituents, including red state veterans.
In the case of the Digital Equity Act of 2021, Republican Senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed it is “impermissible race-based discrimination under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”
That’s gibberish by racist imbeciles who aren’t bright enough to even understand what they’re destroying. In many of these examples, Republicans are claiming that efforts to prevent discrimination are in fact discriminatory, an argument that will struggle to gain traction in anything other than our most rightward-lurching court (which, unfortunately for those of us with empathy, is a growing part of our legal system).
The Digital Equity Act barely mentions race; simply including some vague language stating that deployments must be even and non-discriminatory. That was enough to set ignorant racists off. This program was hugely beneficial to red states, and veterans, and rural and urban dwellers alike. Its destruction, assuming it stands, is immeasurably ignorant and yet another broad policy embarrassment.
Republican policies are directly making your broadband access shittier and more expensive. But in most press coverage Republicans never have to take true or consistent ownership of said shitty policies. Republicans will be allowed to pretend this sort of destruction is about cost savings, but it’s usually either about bigotry, ignorance, or coddling terrible, unpopular telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast.
U.S. education and journalism (especially local) is so shitty, most of the electorate will then never tether their shitty and expensive broadband access to their own electoral choices. Wash, rinse, repeat.
So you may have noticed that the media red carpet has been rolled out for Ezra Klein’s new book, “Abundance.” I don’t think the premise of the book is particularly original or challenging: that government should promise and efficiently deliver big things that genuinely help the public.
But as we noted last week, I had some issues with Klein’s simplistic description of government broadband subsidy programs like BEAD, the Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment program poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill.
Klein singled out BEAD as example of almost absurdist government waste, noting the program has taken longer than it should to deliver any broadband (correct), and that the program has a lot of cumbersome restrictions for providers looking to participate (also correct).
But Klein’s framing of the program was superficial, implying that the program (which was poised to start funding projects this year) was so loaded with restrictions as to be an irredeemable waste. Klein also failed to note why this program program took so long and had so many restrictions.
BEAD isn’t any poster child for government efficiency, but many of its restrictions exist for good reasons. Many of them involve trying to combat past corporate fraud and government dysfunction. It isn’t, as Klein tries to claim, just government trying to impose annoying bureaucracy because everyone really loves bureaucracy for some ambiguous reason:
“This is how liberal government works now.”
Klein’s portrayal of BEAD as an abject and pointless bureaucratic failure (which it most decidedly isn’t), actually works against “abundance.” The GOP has been trying to frame this program as a pointless bureaucratic nightmare for several years (current FCC boss Brendan Carr got mad at us last year when we pointed this out). I’d wager those false claims are how it got on Klein’s radar in the first place.
Abundance Right Under Your Nose
More damning to me is that Klein also failed to mention that other programs launched the same year are doing exactly what Klein claims to be looking for. Like the $350 billion, 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which is currently doling out $25 billion in broadband grants to help deploy affordable fiber to countless U.S. communities that, in many cases, have never been connected to the internet before.
I speak constantly with the people all over this country deploying this particular “abundance.” Every single week as part of my research on U.S. broadband I talk to a different municipality, utility, cooperative, or small rural provider rolling out fiber thanks to ARPA grants. Fiber broadband access that’s usually cheaper and much faster than anything available in major metro areas.
In many areas, cooperatives, leveraging experience from 100 years earlier when they were forced to address electrical market failure, are pushing out $60 per month symmetrical gigabit fiber to people who’d been neglected by the private sector and government for a generation. A lot of these ARPA deployments are being helped by the broadband mapping improvements mandated by BEAD.
And, unlike a lot of past government subsidy programs (where the entirety of funds are thrown in the lap of giant regional telecom monopolies), a lot of this money is going to small, local, rural ISPs. A lot of it is going to communities that are building their own popular, community-owned local broadband infrastructure. This seems like something somebody interested in abundance might want to mention in any of the countless book promotion podcast interviews?
ARPA (which had far fewer of the restrictions Klein laments) is, of course, funding countless other essential improvements and infrastructure. There’s a brand new community center and affordable housing center being built here in South Seattle that’s a stone’s throw from my backdoor.
Klein doesn’t mention ARPA’s broadband successes because he either didn’t do enough research into broadband to understand it, or the example contradicted the implication of his book (that Democrats love bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake). I genuinely get the sense he didn’t actually do research when it came time to talk about broadband. He saw Republican complaints and riffed off them.
Now Democrats do suck at messaging. Nobody knows this community center near my house is thanks to ARPA because there’s absolutely no signs saying so. Democrats suck at taking public credit for a lot of this stuff. And the ad engagement based press usually doesn’t cover it because “boring” infrastructure stories don’t get clicks, and they’re afraid to appear biased to Democrats.
I don’t say any of this as some sort of apologist for government bureaucracy. I’ve genuinely spilled more ink on U.S. broadband policy dysfunction more than anybody alive. But if Klein wants to portray himself as a policy expert and his book as the final word on infrastructure, these are all weird omissions, and stuff any broadband policy expert would have told him in a half hour conversation.
I also take issue with the way Klein downplays consolidated corporate power and corruption.
Most of our burdensome U.S. regulation wasn’t created by well-intentioned reformers or caricatured avocado-toast gobbling Millennials living in Pasadena. It was primarily built by those with the most influence on government policy and those most usually inclined to benefit: consolidated corporate power. The lion’s share of government function persists because it benefits America’s biggest companies.
Our tax filing processes aren’t convoluted because being convoluted is fun, they’re convoluted to coddle the rich, confuse the poor, and benefit tax prep companies. Our broadband policies aren’t bureaucratic for bureaucracy’s sake; they’ve convoluted messes because dominant regional monopolies have made a complicated mess of markets to their own benefit, and routinely muddy up good faith reform and want to deter anybody looking to change things.
The primary culprit of bad regulation isn’t progressive reform. It’s corruption and regulatory capture. It’s careerist revolving door regulators who stopped caring about the public interest a decade earlier, assuming they ever did. It’s a Congress so heavily lobbied by corporate interests it’s literally too corrupt to function or pass even the most basic reforms (see: our lack of internet privacy laws).
As somebody who has studied and written about telecom policy for several decades, corruption is at the very heart of that sector’s bureaucratic dysfunction. If you’re talking about abundance and you think corruption and consolidated corporate power is some kind of afterthought in the conversation of why the government consistently fails to deliver, I’m going to have a hard time taking you seriously.
The conversation “Abundance” wants to have is also just weirdly crafted for a different time (read: pre-fascism). Trump authoritarianism is dismantling what little corporate oversight and consumer/labor power remains, ushering in a golden age for corruption. We can obviously still debate policy; but this particular conversation at this particular moment feels like bickering about drape colors while an arsonist sets the house on fire.
The remarkable successes of the decades-old partnership between biomedical research institutions and the federal government are so intertwined with daily life that it’s easy to take them for granted.
The negative consequences of defunding U.S. biomedical research can be difficult to recognize. Most breakthroughs, from the basic science discoveries that reveal the causes of diseases to the development of effective treatments and cures, can take years. Real-time progress can be hard to measure.
As biomedicalresearchers studying infectious diseases, viruses and immunology, we and our colleagues see this firsthand in our own work. Thousands of ongoing national and international projects dedicated to uncovering the causes of life-threatening diseases and developing new treatments to improve and save lives are supported by federal agencies such as the NIH and NSF.
Considering a few of the breakthroughs made possible through U.S. federal support can help illustrate not only the significant inroads biomedical research has made for preventing, treating and curing human maladies, but what all Americans stand to lose if the U.S. reduces its investment in these endeavors.
Basic science research on what causes cancer has led to new strategies to harness a patient’s own immune system to eliminate tumors. For example, all 12 patients in a 2022 clinical trial testing one type of immunotherapy had their rectal cancer completely disappear, without remission or adverse effects.
Despite these incredible successes, there is still a long way to go. In 2024, over 2 million people in the U.S. were estimated to be newly diagnosed with cancer, and 611,720 were expected to die from the disease.
Nearly every family is touched in some way by autoimmune andneurodegenerative diseases. Government-funded research has enabled major advances to combat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers are also gaining insight into what causes multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the protective covering of nerves and can result in paralysis. Scientists recently found a link between multiple sclerosis and Epstein-Barr virus, a pathogen estimated to infect over 90% of adults around the world. While multiple sclerosis is currently incurable, identifying its underlying cause can provide new avenues for prevention and treatment.
Alzheimer’s disease causes irreversible nerve damage and is the leading cause of dementia. In 2024, 6.9 million Americans ages 65 and older were living with Alzheimer’s. Most treatments address cognitive and behavioral symptoms. However, two new drugs developed with NIH-supported research and clinical trials were approved in July 2023 and July 2024 to treat early-stage Alzheimer’s. Federal funding is also supporting the development of blood tests for earlier detection of the disease.
None of these breakthroughs are a cure. But they represent important steps forward on the path toward ultimately reducing or eliminating these devastating ailments. Lack of funding will slow or block further progress, leading to the continued rise of the incidence and severity of these conditions.
Infectious diseases and the next pandemic
The world’s capacity to combat infectious disease will also be weakened by cuts to U.S. federal support of biomedical research.
Over the past 50 years, medical and public health advances have led to the eradication of smallpox globally and the elimination of polio in the U.S. HIV/AIDS, once a death sentence, is now a disease that can be managed with medication. Moreover, a new version of treatments called preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, offers complete protection against HIV transmission when taken only twice per year.
Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical role biomedical research plays in responding to public health threats. Increased federal support of science during this time allowed the United States to emerge with new drugs, vaccine platforms with the potential to treat a variety of chronic diseases, and insights on how to effectively detect and respond to pandemic threats.
The National Institutes of Health contributed over $100 billion to support research that ultimately led to the development of all new drugs approved from 2010 to 2016 alone. Over 90% of this funding was for basic research into understanding the causes of disease that provides the foundation for new treatments.
Defunding biomedical research will result in a cascade of effects. There will likely be fewer clinical trials, fewer new treatments and fewer lifesaving drugs. Labs will likely shut down, jobs will be lost, and the process of discovery will stall. The U.S.’s health care system, economy and standing as the world’s leader in scientific innovation will likely decline.
University shortfalls directly resulting from cuts to research support will dramatically reduce the capacity of American institutions to educate and provide opportunities for the next generation. Funding cuts have led to the shuttering or heavy reduction of training programs for future scientists.
Graduate students and postdoctoral trainees are the lifeblood of biomedical research. Supporting these young people committed to public service through research and health care is also an investment in medical advancements and public health. But the uncertainty and instability resulting from the divestment of federally funded programs will likely severely deplete the biomedical workforce, crippling the United States’ ability to deliver future biomedical breakthroughs.
By cutting biomedical research funding, Americans and the rest of the world stand to lose new cures, new treatments and an entire generation of researchers.
That was again confirmed by the departure last week of Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment (BEAD) boss Evan Feinman, who had some pointed words on his way out the door:
“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington.”
Given the problems with past broadband subsidy efforts, BEAD had more than a few conditions. Including requirements that states try to spend taxpayer money on affordable fiber networks wherever possible. And some light conditions that big ISPs at least try to provide one affordable broadband tier for poor Americans if they’re going to take taxpayer money.
Feinman’s letter hints many of these requirements are decorative. I suspect most would have never been enforced in any serious way anyway by our dying regulators. But they’re still being declared “woke” by the Trump administration, which is changing key parts of the grant program to the direct benefit of Elon Musk. They’re even removing “equity” from the name of the program in many states because they’re ignorant bigots.
Under a functional broadband grant program, states would push fiber as deeply into rural communities as possible, ideally in the form of “open access” fiber networks that generate local competition. From there, you’d address the rest of the gaps using fixed wireless and 5G, then fill in the remaining holes with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband options like Starlink.
You’d also spend time to confirm that the companies you’re giving taxpayer money to can actually deliver what they’re promising. The Trump FCC didn’t do that with an earlier program (the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, RDOF), resulting in a whole bunch of companies (including Musk’s Starlink) gaming the system to get money for projects they didn’t deserve or couldn’t finish.
BEAD also required that we improve broadband mapping; you don’t want to throw $42.5 billion dollars at a problem you haven’t managed to measure yet. That last bit is a major reason why the program has been slow to result in real-world access (scheduled to start this year in many states).
But Musk being Musk, and the GOP not really being interested in doing the reading, want to simply throw Starlink at as many Americans as possible, ignoring the service’s congestion problems, high costs, and environmental impact. They want to act as if Starlink is magic, slather their favorite conspiratorial billionaire with subsidies, then declare U.S. broadband effectively fixed to thunderous public applause.
Which again is a shame because this amount of broadband grant money is historic. And any grants that get doled out to Musk for Starlink are grants that will need to be taken away from small businesses, local rural providers, popular local cooperatives, or popular local community-owned broadband networks, which tend to be more affordable, and better at serving the needs of their own neighborhoods.
The Trump administration and Musk may find this a more difficult task than they assume. Countless states are already well underway with planning for major fiber expansion, and stealing that money back from locals so it can be thrown at inferior satellite access will piss a lot of people off.
But the effort to game the system is another splash of rank hypocrisy by Musk, who pretends to hate subsidies right up to the point where his companies are showered in them, and claims to hate “government waste and fraud” unless he’s directly and personally involved.
We’ve often noted how there are $42.5 billion in broadband grants headed to the states courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. The GOP voted against the bill, but have repeatedly turned around and taken credit for its looming benefits among our broadly misinformed electorate. And, as we predicted, they’re now redrafting key components of the program to the direct benefit of Elon Musk.
To ensure that the $42.5 billion taxpayer money was spent wisely, the bill included numerous provisions, including a recommendation that states try to prioritize the funding of fiber. Because higher capacity fiber is generally future proof, whereas satellite services like Starlink are congested, expensive, harm the environment, and are seeing slowdowns as the network’s customer base grows.
The NTIA also included some bare bones requirements that ISPs taking taxpayer money try to ensure that any resulting service is made affordable to poor people. Big ISPs like Comcast and AT&T were quick to complain last year, and the GOP held fake government “investigations” into the outrageous scandal that is trying to help poor people get online.
These fairly sensible restrictions (which I suspect would have never been enforced in any serious way anyway) are being declared “woke” by the Trump administration, which is changing key parts of the grant program to the direct benefit of Elon Musk:
“Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program in a statement yesterday. Lutnick said that “because of the prior Administration’s woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations, the program has not connected a single person to the Internet and is in dire need of a readjustment.”
One reason it’s taken so long to get the funding off the ground is the U.S. government and states needed to more accurately map broadband access. We’ve noted repeatedly how U.S. broadband maps have been historically terrible. The GOP and telecom industry in lockstep has resisted improving them, knowing full well they would highlight widespread market failure and consolidated monopoly harm.
Under a functional broadband grant program, states would push fiber as deeply into rural communities as possible, ideally in the form of “open access” fiber networks that generate local competition. From there, you’d address the rest of the gaps using fixed wireless and 5G, then fill in the remaining holes with low Earth orbit satellite broadband options like Starlink.
But Musk being Musk, and the GOP not really being interested in doing the reading, want to simply throw Starlink at as many Americans as possible, ignoring the service’s congestion problems, high costs, and environmental impact. They want to act as if Starlink is magic, slather their favorite conspiratorial billionaire with subsidies, then declare U.S. broadband effectively fixed.
It’s also worth noting that in many instances they’re renaming the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) to strip the word “equity” out. Because, you know, racist kakistocracy.
The problem is that by redirecting billions of dollars to Musk, you’re directing it away from a lot of locally owned businesses and smaller providers that are intimately familiar with and directly serve these neighborhoods. You’re also potentially directing funds away from extremely popular community owned fiber providers that have made affordability a key focus of their deployments.
Given states have been spending years developing their state specific spending plans for this BEAD program, it’s not entirely clear how successful the GOP will be in rerouting a big chunk of the $42.5 billion to their cronies, but it’s abundantly clear they’re going to give it the old college try.
The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) continues to quietly help fund a number of extremely popular community-owned, open access fiber deployments that are challenging entrenched U.S. monopoly power, and driving super cheap, community-owned and operated fiber networks into long neglected towns.
New York State, for example, just leveraged ARPA funds to give a $26 million grant to Oswego County. Oswego County is going to use that money to build an open access fiber network. That means multiple ISPs can come in and compete over shared infrastructure owned by the county. Our Copia report showcased how this model can help disrupt monopoly power and lower broadband costs for users.
The anchor tenant on Oswego County’s new network, Empire Access, will provide locals with 500 Megabit per second (Mbps) service for $50 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $65 a month; and symmetrical 2 Gbps service for $100 a month.
That’s not great news for regional New York State monopolies Charter and Verizon, who’ve grown fat and comfortable charging much higher prices for much slower access. The lack of real competition between the two giants for decades has resulted in high prices, slow speeds, spotty coverage, inconsistent upgrades, repair delays, and substandard customer service.
Meanwhile in Minnesota, Carver County officials say they’ve also been leveraging ARPA funds to deploy affordable gigabit fiber to every county resident. Their model is slightly different: The city has used grant money to build dark fiber, which they then lease to a company called MetroNet as part of a public-private partnership. MetroNet is offering locals gigabit fiber for prices way less than regional monopolies:
“Metronet currently offers four tiers of service with varying promotions, which currently include symmetrical 150 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $35 a month; symmetrical 500 Mbps for $45 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) for $50 a month; symmetrical 2 Gbps for $70 a month; and symmetrical 5 Gbps for $110 a month.”
Again, this kind of stuff doesn’t get much attention from a press that declares infrastructure too boring to cover. But this kind of stuff is quietly transformative all the same. It’s also not clear to me why Senate Democrats aren’t competently messaging the impact ARPA funds are having on affordable broadband. Or local community centers, local road improvements, or affordable housing.
But some states (most notably Vermont, Maine, California, and New York) are trying a different tack: they’re investing heavily in community-owned open access infrastructure, and treating broadband more like an essential utility (where maximizing shareholder profits isn’t the top priority). They’re leveraging an historic infusion of federal funds to put local communities in charge of their own connectivity fate.
Entrenched telecom monopolies, which have worked tirelessly over decades to dismantle broadband competition and state and federal oversight, have worked tirelessly to demonize and undermine community broadband access. But in a decade it should be interesting to see what the data says about the differing approaches.
Keep in mind that states are also poised to receive more than $42.5 billion in additional broadband grants courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill. That program has significantly more restrictions than ARPA, and there’s every indication that the Trump administration will do its best to redirect as much of that money as possible away from community owned endeavors and toward companies that kiss Trump’s ass.
By now we’ve laid out the case that U.S. broadband is spotty, expensive, and slow due to regional monopolies and the corruption that protects them. Despite this, every time the U.S. decides to spend taxpayer money on broadband, said corruption usually ensures that we throw most of that money into the laps of the same giant companies responsible for our broadband woes to begin with.
America loves dumping billions of dollars into the accounts of AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, or other giants in exchange for layoffs and half-deployed networks. Companies that have lobbied for decades to crush all competition and defang regulators to ensure U.S. broadband remains as expensive and spotty as possible get billions of dollars to do very little (or nothing). It’s utterly pathological and it never changes.
Case in point: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recently announced that the state would be doling out $204 Million to deliver broadband to 100,000 Pennsylvanians in 42 counties. Officials insist that project applications were evaluated based on “experience and ability of the applicant to successfully deploy high-speed broadband service,” and “affordability standards that include a low-cost option.”
The problem: nearly all the money was simply dropped into the laps of Comcast and Verizon, the latter of which has an extremely long history of ripping off Pennsylvania telecom subsidy programs in exchange for networks that are routinely not fully delivered. Verizon was at the heart of a major scandal on this front in the 90s, and again in the 2000s when accused of neglecting its aging DSL networks.
Another problem: smaller ISPs, cooperatives, and community broadband networks (which have a solid track record of deploying more affordable access) were ignored entirely. Penn State Telecommunications Professor Sascha Meinrath tells me that community broadband ISPs and nonprofits that promised to deploy faster broadband at much lower costs were completely snubbed:
“I’ve now talked to multiple ISPs that offered a faster, cheaper service but got turned down,” he said. “And I’m like, so wait a second…what criteria were they using to decide on these two companies? There’s just a real lack of clarity as to what’s transpired here, frankly.”
Worse, Meinrath notes that the state politicians in charge of the organization in charge of determining who won awards (the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA)) conveniently wound up driving most of the awards to their own districts:
“All four of the board members — like Republican Senator Gene Yaw — have projects in their own very small districts, which statistically speaking is an incredible occurrence, because only one tenth to one twentieth of the state is covered by these grants.”
There are questions about how any of this is even legal. In several of the grant applications the state appears to have twisted itself in knots to approve funding for Comcast and Verizon — in key political districts — without bothering to offer the slightest transparency into how the state made determinations.
Pennsylvania is also one of 17 states where telecoms like Comcast lobbied for what’s effectively a state ban on community-owned broadband networks, despite the fact such networks routinely help drive affordable access — and competition — to broken broadband markets.
In PA policy conversations, Meinrath notes that the PA government likes to pretend that this law doesn’t exist, despite the section in question being literally titled “prohibition against political subdivision broadband services deployment.” The entire state policy apparatus is custom built to make it difficult to challenge monopolies — while simultaneously denying that this is happening:
“They [giant private providers] have a right at first refusal for muni networks, but also for public private partnerships, which again, this is not even acknowledged by the state,” Meinrath said. “You can imagine if there is a law that is on the books – Title 66, paragraph 3014, subpart H – but declared to not exist, officially – it makes it very awkward.”
This is all par for the course. Politicians from both parties will wax poetic endlessly about the need to “bridge the digital divide.” But even the best intentioned are too politically timid to acknowledge that monopolization and competition problems exist, much less propose solutions.
So when pressured to “fix the problem,” their solution is almost always to throw a bunch of money into the laps of politically powerful telecom monopolies responsible for much of the problem in the first place. Companies that are, as extensions of our domestic surveillance systems, now well beyond the reach of coherent reason, accountability, or the law.
There are billions more in broadband subsidies headed to the states via the $42 billion in broadband subsidies included in the infrastructure bill. But unlike Pennsylvania’s recent grant awards, the federal process will actually involve something genuinely resembling transparency, hopefully giving small businesses, cooperatives, and community owned broadband networks a better shot.
Still, telecom monopolies like Comcast and Verizon are there too, working overtime to ensure they not only hoover up the lion’s share of the funding, but don’t face any sort of “onerous” requirements, like having to actually deliver uniform, affordable broadband access to poor people.
There’s an historic $50 billion in broadband subsidies currently heading to the states courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). There are plenty of potential hiccups on stuff like mapping that could screw things up, but, any way you slice it, this money should still have an amazing, positive impact on affordable broadband expansion in the U.S..
Amusingly though, the same Republicans who vehemently opposed and voted against both bills are now happily taking credit for the benefits among their constituents. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, for example, has repeatedly tried to take credit for state broadband efforts funded by money he voted against:
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis keeps crowing about Florida’s broadband investments made possible via Florida’s “Broadband Opportunity Program.” A significant chunk of those funds ($400 million, page 5) were only made possible via the federal ARPA bill DeSantis and state senators opposed, but good luck finding any mention of that in state press releases on the subject.
In Montana, Republican Governor Greg Gianforte has also repeatedly issued press releases lauding broadband subsidies doled out by the state, without mentioning that Montana’s ConnectMT program is primarily going to be built on the back of ARPA and IIJA funds.
In Texas, Republican Senator John Cornyn has also lauded the $3.3 billion in broadband funds headed to his state (more than any other state in the country) thanks to an infrastructure bill he voted against:
“This is so essential and so important to this region,” Capito told attendees. “I just want to say congratulations. It’s not going to be easy, but I can’t wait until we can stop talking about how we need to connect us all, you know. Because that will mean that we’re all connected.”
Except Capito voted against the federal ARPA funding (and a $1.7 million grant doled out to Woodlands Development Group) that laid the initial groundwork for the entire project. On the plus side, Capito did vote in favor of the infrastructure bill, though that funding hasn’t yet reached local projects yet.
In most states, Republicans are basically just taking the federal broadband funding they votedagainst, and infusing it into state-level programs with entirely new names. That the money came from the federal level isn’t even mentioned, much less that Republicans fought against it.
Normally, a functional, healthy local press would inform locals that Republican leaders are voting against projects that make their life better, then falsely taking credit for it on the other end. But given we’ve largely eviscerated what’s left of local news, leaving communities “served” by right wing propaganda mills like Sinclair Broadcasting, that’s almost certainly not happening with any consistency.
Between COVID relief and the new infrastructure bill there’s a massive, historic, $50+ billion taxpayer subsidy headed for the broadband industry that should do a lot of good in shoring up access in underserved locations. But we’ve also noted how the government still doesn’t have a great idea of where that money should be spent, because our broadband maps (while improving) are generally terrible.
And we’ve also noted that (surprise), the telecom industry’s biggest players are working overtime, state by state, to ensure that this money goes exclusively to them, and not to any of the smaller utilities, cooperatives, municipalities, or small private businesses in desperate need of such funding.
The infrastructure bill dictates that states should be in charge of their own broadband funding and grant process, which makes sense. The problem is that when it comes to telecom lobbying and corruption, states are even more corrupt than the federal government. So what we’re seeing is a process that favors entrenched interests, resulting in pretty obvious outcomes.
That’s a major problem, since most of the most exciting innovation in telecom is happening at smaller ISPs, local utilities, cooperatives, and community broadband projects (I just wrote a paper for Techdirt and Copia on this very subject), which tend to offer faster, cheaper, more reliable (and locally staffed) service than most of the nation’s lumbering regional monopolies.
In Louisiana, Issie Lapowsky at Protocol notes local communities already earmarked for broadband improvement funds have had that money unceremoniously stripped away after the funding awards were challenged by large, incumbent telecom giants.
So what I’m seeing repeatedly is a giant telecom with an unlimited budget, challenging each and every grant or award doled out to smaller businesses, smaller cooperatives, utilities, or municipalities. These smaller operators can’t afford to go toe to toe with with giant companies, which are able to outspend and out politically maneuver them, ensuring the biggest players get most federal and state grant money:
Fifteen other broadband grants are being contested in Louisiana alone, and similar fights are playing out across the country. Now, thanks to a massive amount of broadband funding set to flow into states under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, these fights could become even more frequent — and even more fierce. “It’s happening all over the country,” said Jonathan Chambers, a partner at Conexon, “but it’s going to get worse.”
I’ve seen some variety of this play out in most states as the funding began to flow.
I’ve written about how monopolies like Charter Communications and Comcast are making life hell for anybody who applies for federal broadband grants by saddling them with costly, onerous challenges at the NTIA, based on flawed FCC mapping data.
I’ve talked with state leaders in Maine who say federal broadband maps still rely heavily on bogus coverage claims by incumbent monopolies, which allows them to both mask the sorry state of U.S. broadband competition, and direct funds away from areas they falsely claim are already served.
I’ve also written about how monopolies like Charter, Comcast, and AT&T are convincing numerous states to pass laws blocking federal grant money from going to cooperatives, utilities, and municipalities, despite this specifically being forbidden by federal rules.
Monopolies like Charter are hoovering up more than half of all grants in states like Montana, pissing off smaller ISPs in desperate need of funds.
And I wrote about how the FCC still hasn’t built an adequate system allowing smaller companies or municipalities to challenge FCC broadband mapping data they know to be false, which lets monopolies overstate coverage and claim any additional grant funding to these areas is “duplicative.” If locals do challenge, again, it’s a costly and cumbersome battle waged against a national ISP with unlimited funding.
So again, Americans talk endlessly about our absolute fealty to “small businesses,” but if you dig below the surface, you’ll routinely find (and I know this may come as a surprise to many) systems that inherently favor the wealthiest and most politically powerful companies.
That’s not to say the $50 billion+ broadband funding infusion isn’t going to do some amazing things. Or that incumbent ISPs winning these awards won’t follow through on their deployment promises (though their history on this front isn’t great). But it’s pretty obvious that state corruption is going to result in a lot of money being mindlessly thrown in the lap of monopolies… because that’s how it’s always been done.
