Free State Foundation President Randolph May and Senior Fellow Andrew Long filed comments with the FCC today in response to the Commission’s “Section 706” Inquiry.
Immediately below are four paragraphs excerpted from the beginning of the Introduction and Summary of the Free State Foundation’s extensive data-rich authoritative comments.
The plain text of Section 706 posits two straightforward empirical queries. One, to what extent is "advanced telecommunications capability" – that is, broadband Internet access at sufficient speeds to satisfy actual consumer needs – currently available to all Americans? And two, with respect to those locations where "broadband" is not yet available, is it being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion? Thanks to the Broadband DATA Act and the Commission's implementing efforts, for the first time interested parties participating in a Section 706 inquiry have at their disposal an official, communal data source upon which responses can be based: the National Broadband Map.
Consequently, these questions never have been so easy to answer – nor have the responses ever been so incontrovertibly clear. Data recently made available by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel (though curiously not included in the Section 706 NOI itself) reveals that, as of May 2023, only 7.2 million out of a total of 115 million serviceable locations – just over 6 percent – were unserved. Incredibly, and at the same time the accuracy of the data was improving, the number of unserved locations shrank by more than 13 percent, or 1.1 million, in only six months. Thus, with reference to the specific metric called for by Congress and developed by the FCC itself, broadband undeniably is both available and being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion.
Further, the Biden Administration's "Internet For All" initiative, which encompasses a dizzying number of federal subsidy programs administered by a worrisome number of different agencies, is in the process of injecting tens of billions into the network infrastructure construction pipeline. As touted in a June 2023 White House press release regarding the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Affordability, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, "President Biden and Vice President Harris are delivering on their historic commitment to connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed Internet by the end of the decade" (emphasis added).
Thus, there should be no doubt: $2 trillion and counting in private investment since 1996 has brought broadband to the vast majority of Americans, and existing federal subsidy programs are doling out tens of billions so that even the most cost-prohibitive locations are being connected. There is an inevitable lag between the commitment of funds and when networks become operational – one that the Commission could do more to shorten, especially with respect to pole attachment disputes, permitting, access to rights of way, and other bureaucratic red tape – but with an absolute minimum of $140 billion in taxpayer dollars committed to closing those digital divides that remain, not to mention matching funds as well as state and local money, there is every reason to conclude that nothing is standing in the way of universal broadband availability.
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