USTelecom's 2026 Broadband Pricing Report Sings a Familiar Refrain: Backtracking Prices and Surging Speeds

The latest broadband pricing report released by USTelecom | The Broadband Association (USTelecom) tells a familiar – and welcome – tale of falling prices and rising speeds.

Released on Tuesday and, as in previous years, prepared by Business Planning, Inc.'s Arthur Menko, "2026 Broadband Pricing Index: Faster Speeds, Lower Prices" (2026 BPI) analyzes data from 2025. It concludes that real (that is, adjusted for inflation) prices fell as speeds continued to climb. Specifically:

• PRICE: For the most-popular offerings (those delivering download speeds between 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) and 940 Mbps), the 2026 BPI reports that real prices dropped by 6 percent. The price of so-called "entry-level" plans – which provide download speeds between 100 and 249 Mbps and which USTelecom characterizes as "the most accessible tier for price-sensitive households" – reportedly decreased by an even greater margin: over 17 percent. According to the 2026 BPI, the price of gigabit (1,000 Mbps or greater download speeds) services fell nearly 5 percent.

• SPEED: The 2026 BPI concludes that subscribers to the most-popular offerings in 2025 saw speeds increase by nearly 22 percent – and since 2014, those speeds have increased by 145 percent.

Americans appear to recognize that the broadband value proposition hasn't merely improved but stands as a welcome outlier in comparison to other household expenses. According to a March 2026 survey of 1,500 likely voters conducted by Impact Research and cited in the 2026 BPI, only 2 percent of respondents identified the price of home Internet service as a top two cost concern, rendering it the least pressing of all surveyed categories, which included groceries, health insurance, housing, gasoline, and prescription drugs, among others.

It is important to note, of course, that none of this happens by accident. Thanks to the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars in private capital each year – according to an October 2025 USTelecom investment report, nearly $90 billion in 2024 and over $2.2 trillion total since 1996 – fierce competition among a diverse set of facilities-based providers increasingly delivers better service at lower cost.

In a companion blog post, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter summarized the report in plain terms – "broadband internet service continues to deliver more value for less money" – and urged policymakers to ensure that those trends continue. Specifically, he identified copper retirement and permitting reform as two areas ripe for further deregulatory action.

As it happens, in comments filed yesterday regarding the Commission's next report on the state of competition in the communications marketplace, FSF President Randolph May and I made the same two points. We also identified the pole attachment "accelerated docket" and the spectrum pipeline as areas where the FCC can take steps to accelerate broadband investment and deployment.

Free State Foundation scholars have summarized every BPI report released by USTelecom. Posts to the FSF Blog addressing previous versions are available here: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020.

USTelecom Report: Broadband Investment Continues to Rise Rapidly

USTelecom – The Broadband Association is out with its annual report on investment in communications infrastructure by U.S. broadband providers. For 2024, the report documents that America's broadband providers invested $89.6 billion in new infrastructure. This brings the total capital expenditure investment in broadband facilities since 1996 to more than $2.2 trillion.

That's a huge amount of capex for 2024 and since 1996. As far as I know, no one has seriously questioned the validity of USTelecom's annual investment reports.

It's not news that it is very expensive – very capital intensive – to meet America's expanding need for fast, reliable, and secure broadband networks. That's what the USTelecom reports have documented over the last three decades. Certainly, America's broadband networks will be essential to enabling and facilitating the burgeoning use of AI. America's economic security will depend on it.

Of course, there is an important policy context that undergirds any discussion of the role of broadband – and continued broadband investment – in America's economy. Given the competitive environment that exist today, there certainly is no need for adoption of any heavy-handed regulatory mandates such as the now eliminated "Net Neutrality" regulations. They stifle investment and innovation, rather than promoting it.

And there is a need to remove permitting and other impediments, especially at the state and local level, that unduly delay infrastructure projects and render their costs unreasonable.

USTelecom Report: Broadband Value Proposition Steadily Improves

Released on Monday, the 2024 edition of USTelecom's annual report on the competitive broadband marketplace tells a familiar tale of falling prices and rising speeds.

Authored by Business Planning, Inc.'s Arthur Menko, "2024 Broadband Pricing Index: Broadband Prices Continue to Decline As Consumers Choose Faster Speeds" (2024 BPI) reveals that, accounting for inflation, the price of the most popular broadband speed tiers ("BPI-Speed") decreased by 9.4 percent between 2023 and 2024 while the price of faster tiers – that is, those at or near gigabit download speeds ("PBI-Gigabit") – fell by 3.9 percent.

Compared to 2015, BPI-Speed inflation-adjusted prices are 59.9 percent lower. BPI-Gigabit inflation-adjusted prices, meanwhile, have decreased 43 percent since 2017. Of course, context is key – and a look at broader economic trends only underscores the increasing affordability of broadband:

• In real dollars, the per-Mbps price of BPI-Speed offerings has fallen by 81.2 percent since 2015 – and as the overall cost of consumer goods and services grew by 32.2 percent, the nominal price of BPI-Speed offerings fell by 41 percent.
• In real dollars, the per-Mbps price of BPI-Gigabit offerings has fallen by 43 percent since 2017 – and as the overall cost of consumer goods and services grew by 27.5 percent, the nominal price of BPI-Gigabit offerings fell by 21.4 percent.

While prices are shrinking, speeds are accelerating. In terms of downloads, BPI-Speed offerings are more than twice as fast as in 2015: 301 Mbps versus 141 Mbps. Upload speeds similarly have increased, from 51 Mbps to 96 Mbps.

Free State Foundation scholars have summarized every BPI report released by USTelecom. Posts to the FSF Blog addressing previous versions are available here: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020.

U.S. Broadband Providers Made Strong Capital Expenditures in 2023

Capital expenditures by U.S. broadband providers totaled $94.7 billion in 2023, according to the 2023 USTelecom Capital Expenditure Report. USTelecom's report was released on October 18. 

According to USTelecom, the $94.7 billion figure is the second highest annual industry capex in 22 years. USTelecom's 2023 report indicates that U.S. broadband providers have invested over $2.2 trillion in network infrastructure since 1996. In reports for prior years, USTelecom has noted that its capex estimates likely are conservative because they have not included investment by small U.S. broadband providers or U.S. satellite broadband providers.

Continuing strong investment is a clear indicator of a competitive broadband market environment. On July 6 of this year, the Free State Foundation offered many other data points about the market's vibrancy in public comments it submitted in the FCC's 2024 Communications Marketplace Report proceeding. Additionally, on October 7, FSF submitted public comments to the FCC in the agency’s proceeding for the upcoming Eighteenth Section 706 Report. Those comments include data points supporting the conclusion that broadband service is being reasonably and timely deployed to all Americans. Sustaining that progress in deployment will depend on private market investment remaining high and undeterred by regulatory barriers. 

USTelecom Report Shows Price Drops and Speed Increases for Broadband Services

On October 11, USTelecom released its "2023 Broadband Pricing Index." This latest edition of the BPI report found that prices for fixed wireline broadband services – DSL, cable, and fiber-to-the-home – declined between March 2022 and March 2023. According to the BPI Report, inflation-adjusted prices for providers' most popular broadband speed tier decreased by 18.1% and prices for their fastest speed tier option went down 6.5%. Additionally, between 2015 and 2023, inflation-adjusted prices for the most popular speed tier declined 54.7% and prices for the highest speed tier option dropped by 55.8%. 

Also, the BPI Report found that, between 2015 and 2023, "download speeds offered in the most popular tier increased by 141.5%, while upload speeds increased by nearly 285%" and that "[i]n the fastest-offered tier, download speeds increased by 117.1%, with upload speeds up by nearly 90%."

 

The BPI Report also shows Consumer Price Index (CPI) trends for broadband Internet services compared to other goods and services. Between 2015 and 2023, costs for consumer goods and services rose by 28%, according to CPI-U, but consumer prices for the most popular and the fastest speed options went down by 37% and 39%, respectively. 

 

The report relies on the FCC's Urban Rate Survey of the largest 14 wireline broadband providers that collectively serve 90% of all terrestrial fixed broadband services sold in the U.S. The 2023 BPI Report is available on USTelecom's website. FSF Senior Fellow Andrew Long wrote about the 2022 BPI Report in a June 2022 blog post and about the 2021 BPI Report in a May 2021 blog post. 

 

The findings of the BPI Report are particularly significant now that the FCC has opened its Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet proceeding and proposed to subject broadband Internet access services to public utility regulation. The continuing improvements in network speeds and the consumer-friendly pricing trends on broadband service plans are strong indicators that the broadband marketplace is competitive. Certainly, these market developments do not justify imposing stringent new regulation on broadband services. The Commission should not impose public utility regulation on broadband networks but maintain its market-oriented framework that has helped promote the private investment in competitive wireline broadband networks. For more on this point, see Free State Foundation President Randolph May's September 21, 2023, Perspectives from FSF Scholars, "Reimposing Burdensome Net Neutrality Mandates Will Harm Consumers."

USTelecom Reports Record-Breaking Investment Broadband by Providers in 2022

Capital expenditures by U.S. broadband providers surged to $102.4 billion in 2022, according to USTelecom's "2022 Broadband Capex Report." USTelecom's snapshot report was released on September 8 of this year. 

The $102.4 billion annual capex total is up from $86 billion in 2021 and $79.4 billion in 2020. According to USTelecom's 2022 report, U.S. broadband providers have invested over $2.1 trillion in network infrastructure since 1996. In past reports, USTelecom has pointed out that these estimates likely are conservative because they exclude annual investment by small U.S. broadband providers as well as U.S. satellite broadband providers.

Strong private investment in next-generation networks is an intended result of the FCC's free market-friendly broadband policy that has been in place since early 2018. In its Restoring Internet Freedom Order (2018), the Commission recognized that "increased broadband deployment and subscribership require investment, and the regulatory climate affects investment." In that order, the Commission found that "reinstating the information service classification for broadband Internet access service is more likely to encourage broadband investment and innovation" than subjecting broadband Internet access services to public utility regulation." 

 

Following the Senate's confirmation of Anna Gomez to be the fifth Commissioner on September 7, it is widely anticipated that the FCC will be revisiting the statutory classification of broadband Internet access services. But the success of the Commission's existing market-oriented policy in promoting investment – including $102.4 billion in capital investment in broadband by private market providers in 2022 – deserves front-and-center attention when the debate over broadband regulatory policy ramps up. 

The Goal of Broadband Subsidies Should Be to Connect the Unserved, Not Promote Municipal Networks

As the states establish mechanisms for doling out billions of dollars in federal broadband subsidies, time is of the essence. Proposed legislation in California therefore would expedite the regulatory approval process via a 180-day shot clock.

A recent op-ed warns, however, that opposition from advocacy organizations more concerned with promoting municipal broadband than meeting funding deadlines threatens to leave significant amounts of money on the table – and, consequently, a significant number of Californians unnecessarily unserved.

"Welcome to California, Nevada-California Border, U.S. 95" by Flickr user Ken Lund is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In an August 4, 2022, opinion piece published by the Capitol Weekly, Jonathan Spalter, president and CEO of USTelecom | The Broadband Association, described $2 billion in last-mile subsidies from the Department of Treasury as "present[ing] a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand the reach of affordable, high-speed broadband services throughout the Golden State."

Notably, however, the Treasury's Final Rule for the $350 billion State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF) program clearly states that that $2 billion "may only be used for costs incurred within a specific time period, beginning March 3, 2021, with all funds obligated by December 31, 2024 and all funds spent by December 31, 2026."

Accordingly, Assembly Bill (AB) 2749 would require the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) to "review each application and notify the applicant of its decision on or before 180 days from the date that the completed application was submitted." Should the CPUC fail to act within that timeframe or reach an agreement with the applicant to extend the deadline, after 180 days the "completed application shall be deemed approved."

But as Mr. Spalter wrote:

Unfortunately, some California advocacy organizations are attempting to stall the CPUC's broadband grant review process because they claim that the expeditious distribution of broadband funds disadvantages Government Owned Networks (GONs). These organizations are more concerned with supporting the creation of new GONs than getting the desperately needed, reliable infrastructure to underserved Californians.

Despite a well-documented track record devoid of financial viability, constitutional concerns, and countless other shortcomings, municipally owned-and-operated broadband projects undeniably have their champions. Here, however, it seems clear that those opposed to AB 2749 for reasons relating to the municipal broadband cause are missing the forest for the trees.

SLFRF money not spent by the end of 2026 must be returned, and an Assembly committee analysis reveals that, under normal circumstances, CPUC deliberations can drag on for up to a year and a half. AB 2749's 180-day shot clock would accelerate that decisionmaking process – and thereby decrease the odds that time runs out before federal subsidies can be leveraged to connect unserved Californians. On that basis alone, it warrants the backing of all who claim to support the goal of universal broadband access.

Capital Expenditures by US Broadband Providers Surged in 2021

Capital expenditures by U.S. broadband providers surged to over $86 billion in 2021, according to US Telecom's 2021 Broadband Capex Report. US Telecom's report was released on July 18. 

The $86.1 billion annual capex total is particularly remarkable considering the economic difficulties that broadband providers faced in 2021, including microchip shortages, labor shortages, supply chain problems, and the ramping up of inflation. The $86.1 billion in capex for 2021 significantly exceeded the $79.4 annual expenditure total for broadband providers in 2020. (For more on that, see US Telecom's 2020 Broadband Capex Report.) According to US Telecom's 2021 report, U.S. broadband providers have invested over $2 trillion in network infrastructure since 1996. In past reports, US Telecom has pointed out that these estimates likely are conservative because they exclude annual investment by small U.S. broadband providers as well as U.S. satellite broadband providers.

Continuing strong investment is clear indicator of a healthy and competitive broadband services market. (On July 1 of this year, the Free State Foundation offered many other data points about the market's vibrancy in comments it filed in the FCC's 2022 Communications Marketplace Report proceeding.) Importantly, the massive capital expenditure reported by US Telecom is expanding access to next-generation broadband services and delivering faster and more reliable speeds to more Americans.  

2022 USTelecom Broadband Pricing Report: Further Proof that Competition Is Benefiting Consumers

On Wednesday, USTelecom | The Broadband Association released its third annual Broadband Pricing Index (BPI) Report. Once again, the facts demonstrate that competition between broadband service providers is benefiting consumers through ever-higher speeds and – critically, given rising costs overall – steadily decreasing prices.

"2022 Broadband Pricing Index: A Comparative Analysis Showing Decreasing Prices and Increasing Value for U.S. Broadband Service Over Time" (2022 BPI Report) focuses on two types of broadband service tiers – the most popular and the highest speed – and compares their average prices and speeds in 2020 to those from (1)  the year prior, and (2) 2015.

According to the 2022 BPI Report, over the last twelve months, prices for goods and services generally grew 8 percent. By contrast, the average cost of the most-popular tier, adjusted for inflation, fell 14.7 percent, from $42.59 to $36.33. The average price of the highest-speed tier, adjusted for inflation, decreased by 11.6 percent, from $65.78 to $58.12.

Since 2015, inflation-adjusted prices have plummeted 44.6 percent, from $65.62 to $36.33, for the most popular tier and 52.7 percent, from $122.94 to $58.12, for the highest-speed tier.

Meanwhile, average speeds for both tiers increased dramatically between 2015 and 2022:

• Download speeds for the most-popular tier grew 127.7 percent, from 43 megabits per second (Mbps) to 98 Mbps;
• Upload speeds for the most-popular tier expanded at nearly twice that rate: 249.3 percent, from 13 Mbps to 44 Mbps;
• Download speeds for the highest-speed tier increased 84.6 percent, from 141 Mbps to 259 Mbps; and
• Upload speeds for the highest-speed tier increased 107 percent, from 51 Mbps to 103.7 Mbps.

The full 2022 BPI Report is available here, an overview here. For summaries of, and links to, the first two reports, please check out these posts to the FSF Blog: 2021 BPI Report and 2020 BPI Report.

#FSFConf14 Speakers on Need for Federal Privacy Law

At the Free State Foundation's recent Fourteenth Annual Policy Conference, FTC Commissioners Christine Wilson and Noah Phillips voiced their support for a federal data privacy regime. And on May 23, 2022, another speaker at #FSFConf14, USTelecom President & CEO Jonathan Spalter, authored a blog post urging the Biden Administration and Congress to work together "on this essential national priority."

In the meantime, Connecticut has compounded the confusion and chaos wrought by multiple, inconsistent state-level comprehensive data privacy statutes. On May 10, 2022, Governor Ned Lamont signed into law "An Act Concerning Personal Data Privacy and Online Monitoring." Connecticut is the fifth state to date – following California (twice), Virginia, Colorado, and Utah – to fill the federal void.

Nevertheless – and forgive me if I sound like a broken record – recent reporting suggests that federal lawmakers may be making progress behind the scenes toward a workable consensus on data privacy.

During #FSFConf14's "The View from the FTC," a Fireside Chat hosted by Maureen Ohlhausen, former FTC Acting Chairman and Commissioner (a video of which is available here), Commissioner Wilson echoed that optimistic sentiment (direct link here). Describing herself as one who "tend[s] to be a Pollyanna," she stated that "I'm actually hopeful, more hopeful than I have been, because I hear there's a concerted push to get federal privacy legislation across the finish line soon."

Commissioner Wilson also reiterated her position that federal privacy legislation is necessary:

I have been advocating for federal privacy legislation almost from the day that I was sworn in as a Commissioner. And I do think it's important, I think there is a market failure that needs to be addressed. I think consumers have very little understanding of the data that's collected from them and how that data is collected, used, and sold.

I also think that businesses need guardrails, they need to understand the rules of the road. And right now we have states with conflicting opinions about what those guardrails should be, and we have a developing international regime also with conflicting ideas. And so, businesses need clarity and certainty in order to know how to comply with the law, but also to invest and to grow. 

Responding to a related query regarding what the FTC can do in the interim to "to fill the gap," Commissioner Wilson noted the agency's authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act to address "unfair and deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce" and subject-matter-specific jurisdiction pursuant to other statutes, such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). She also highlighted a "body of consents that provide very good rules of the road."

Later in the Fireside Chat (direct link here), Commissioner Phillips, responding to a question from an audience member regarding smartphone apps, acknowledged the existence, with respect to personal data, of an "information asymmetry" – a concept familiar to those who attended Commissioner Wilson's keynote address during FSF's Twelfth Annual Policy Conference in 2020.

Given that "[c]onsumers may not understand fully what they're engaging in," Commissioner Phillips indicated his support for a "nutrition label" solution:

[O]ne of the things I've always felt would be very useful is to look more carefully at things like labels. And understand, you know, what are ways that we can get good information out to people? We do this in a lot of other areas, right?

And you think about food, right? It's maybe not efficient for me every day to, you know, if I'm at the grocery store, examine each label. But if I care, and if I want to, and the cost to you, the producer of Honey Nut Cheerios, is fairly low, that can be a really beneficial rule. A rule that is good for competition. A rule that allows consumers to shop across products, including for those features. 

So let's take what are you doing with your data, right? And Apple has a version of this, in iOS 14, they have these "nutrition labels," they call them. But it's a way of taking complex subject matter and boiling it down in terms that allow people to sort of shop across products and compare. And perhaps even to create markets around features where markets may not naturally arise.

Relatedly, USTelecom's Mr. Spalter, who participated in Free State Foundation President Randolph May's #FSFConf14 "The 'Hottest Topics' in Communications and Internet Policy" Fireside Chat (a video of which is available here), earlier this week published a blog post titled "Global Privacy Leadership Begins Here at Home."

After acknowledging the Biden Administration's "efforts toward harmonizing strong consumer privacy protections around the world" via the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Declaration, Mr. Spalter made the salient point that "for the U.S. to truly lead this worldwide endeavor, our nation must first lead by example here at home."

He therefore "urge[d] the Administration and Congress to work together, with a sense of urgency and purpose, to [adopt national privacy legislation] in the current legislative session." Specifically, a bill that "deliver[s] consistent online privacy protections that apply uniformly across the country and to all companies in the internet ecosystem."

US Beats the EU in Head-to-Head Comparison of Broadband Trends

On April 4, USTelecom released a report titled US vs. EU Broadband Trends: 2012-2020. The new report highlights several different metrics by which the broadband Internet services market in America is outperforming the market in European Union nations.

Among its contents, USTelecom's report includes these key findings:

• Deployment: US leads by 11 percentage points ≥30 Mbps; +25 pp ≥100 Mbps 
• Adoption: US leads by 10 pp ≥25 Mbps; +21 pp ≥100 Mbps 
• Competition: US benefits from nearly twice the fixed facilities-based competition of the EU overall; when comparing rural areas, the US lead extends to 7x. 

The US beats the EU by a particularly wide margin when it comes to high-speed fixed broadband in rural areas. USTelecom found that 91% of rural areas in America were covered with fixed broadband compared to 60% in the EU – a staggering 31% difference. Indeed, fixed broadband coverage in the US even exceeded fixed broadband coverage for all areas in the EU, 91% to 87%.

 

A critical reason for America's broadband advantage over the EU is the heavy investment in broadband infrastructure in the US, as seen in the following charts excerpted from the report:

 

(click to magnify)

For more on US versus EU comparisons on broadband, see USTelecom's report.

Strong Network Investment by U.S. Broadband Providers in Tumultuous 2020

Capital expenditures in networks and connectivity infrastructure by U.S. broadband providers totaled $79.4 billion in 2020, according to US Telecom's 2020 Broadband Capex Report. US Telecom's report was released on September 22.  

The $79.4 annual expenditure total is impressive considering the seismic economic disruptions and setbacks suffered by much of the U.S. economy in 2020. Last year's investment by U.S. broadband providers brings the total network capital investment by U.S. broadband providers since 1996 to a whopping $1.9 trillion. And as US Telecom's report points out, its estimates over the years likely are conservative since they exclude annual investment by small U.S. broadband providers as well as U.S. satellite broadband providers. Small providers and satellite providers made perhaps $2 billion in network investments in 2020. 

As I and other Free State Foundation scholars have pointed out in prior publications, continuing strong investment enabled U.S. broadband networks to successfully carry surging data traffic induced by COVID fears and government-imposed lockdowns in 2020. 

For more, see the 2020 Broadband Capex Report as well as a brief article about it by US Telecom's Mike Saperstein.  

Latest USTelecom Broadband Pricing Report Shows Continued Decline in Costs, Increase in Speeds

In "Biden Broadband Plan: Claims That Broadband Is 'Too Expensive' Are Unfounded," a May 7, 2021, Perspectives from FSF Scholars, Free State Foundation President Randolph J. May and I cited a number of sources, including USTelecom's 2020 Broadband Pricing Index, to demonstrate the efficient operation of the broadband marketplace. Prices are on a long downward trajectory, the number of competitors is growing, and service quality (including, but not limited to, speed) is improving.

On Thursday, USTelecom released the 2021 edition of its Broadband Pricing Index. It confirms that, even as the COVID-19 pandemic drove a dramatic spike in usage, between 2020 and 2021 prices continued to decline and speeds once again increased. In the words of USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter, "more Americans have cheaper and flat-out better broadband service choices than they did one year ago."

Key takeaways:

• In the past year the price of the most-popular broadband service tiers declined by an additional 7.5 percent (in constant 2015 dollars) after falling 20.2 percent between 2015 and 2020. When inflation is taken into account, those values increase to 9.3 percent and 28.1 percent, respectively.
• The price of the highest-speed tiers decreased an additional 2.3 percent last year after falling 37.7 percent between 2015 and 2020. Adjusted for inflation, those totals are 4.2 percent year-over-year and 43.9 percent during the prior five-year period.
• Download speeds for the most-popular tiers have risen by 126 percent since 2015, from 43 megabits per second (Mbps) to 98 Mbps.
• Download speeds for the highest-speed tiers have climbed from 141 Mbps in 2015 to 248 Mbps in 2021, an increase of 77 percent.
• Upload speeds have risen by even greater percentages over the same time period: 256 percent for the most-popular tiers (from 13 Mbps to 45 Mbps) and 98 percent for the highest-speed tiers (from 51 Mbps to 99 Mbps).

For purposes of comparison, the author of the report, Telcodata and Business Planning, Inc. founder Arthur Menko, notes that the cost of all U.S. consumer goods and services, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, has increased 12.2 percent since 2015 and by 2.6 percent between March 2020 and March 2021.

The Perspectives referenced above is the third to date in an ongoing series of pieces highlighting flaws in the Biden Broadband Plan. I urge you to read "Biden Broadband Plan: Misdirected Broadband Subsidies Hurt Competition and Consumers" and "'Future Proofing' Subsidized Broadband Would Inflate Consumer Prices," as well.

In addition, "Biden Broadband Plan Favoring Government-Owned Networks Lacks a Constitutional Foundation," by Mr. May and Seth L. Cooper, Free State Foundation Director of Policy Studies and Senior Fellow, provides an insightful critique of the plan's stated preference for broadband networks owned and operated by local municipalities.

Broadband Organizations Join Together to Form America's Broadband Future

On May 14, seven broadband providers and trade associations announced the formation of America's Broadband Future, a coalition that "will urge lawmakers to bridge the digital divide by expanding access in rural America, equipping vulnerable communities with resources needed to get connected, and investing in digital literacy initiatives to empower all Americans to thrive in the digital age."

On its home page, America's Broadband Future asserts that:

Unfortunately, some of the broadband policy plans being discussed in Washington, D.C. fall short. They fail to provide the resources necessary to empower and enable vulnerable communities to get connected quickly. And they fail to prioritize those unserved areas of the country that are most in need of major broadband investment. 

Free State Foundation scholars have addressed various shortcomings of the broadband-specific provisions in President Biden's American Jobs Plan in the following Perspectives from FSF Scholars and blog post:

• "Biden Broadband Plan Favoring Government-Owned Networks Lacks a Constitutional Foundation"
• "Biden Broadband Plan: Claims That Broadband Is 'Too Expensive' Are Unfounded"
• "Biden Broadband Plan: Misdirected Broadband Subsidies Hurt Competition and Consumers"
• "'Future Proofing' Subsidized Broadband Would Inflate Consumer Prices"

The founding members of America's Broadband Future are AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast, Verizon, CTIA, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, and USTelecom.

USTelecom Study Comparing Broadband in the U.S. and the EU Confirms the Wisdom of a Light Regulatory Touch

USTelecom | The Broadband Association yesterday released a study comparing broadband deployment and adoption levels in the United States and the European Union (EU). Not surprisingly, it underscores the indisputable superiority of the former's largely hands-off approach to the public-utility model embraced by the latter.

In 2017's Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIFO), the FCC under then-Chairman Ajit Pai once again embraced a light-touch regulatory framework for broadband Internet access service. In an October 2020 Order on Remand responding to the D.C. Circuit's 2019 decision in Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, which largely upheld the RIFO, the Commission concluded that:

[E]ven with unprecedented increases in traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, [American] broadband networks have been able to handle the increase in traffic and shift in usage patterns…. [U]nlike the European Union, which takes a utility-style approach to broadband regulation and has had to request that bandwidth intensive services such as Netflix reduce video quality in order to ease stress on its network infrastructure, the United States has not had to take similar steps, despite similar surges in Internet traffic. This country's robust and resilient broadband networks are, in significant part, the result of over two decades of almost continuous light-touch regulation, which has promoted substantial infrastructure investment and deployment.

The just-released USTelecom study, "US vs. EU Broadband Trends (2012-2019)," provides strong evidentiary support for that assessment.

Unencumbered by the investment disincentives inherent in public utility regulation, American broadband providers spend three times more on network infrastructure than their EU counterparts. As a direct consequence, the United States enjoys a substantial, across-the-board advantage with respect to both deployment and adoption:

• Facilities that can deliver 30 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream cover 12 percent more of the U.S., and infrastructure capable of 100 Mbps or greater downstream has been constructed in 25 percent more of this country.
• Over 9 percent more Americans subscribe to 30 Mbps service, and over 21 percent more subscribe to 100 Mbps or greater packages.

American leadership is even more pronounced in rural areas, where deployment of 30 Mbps service exceeds that in the EU by over 22 percent.

To quote USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter, "if the U.S. had followed the EU's more regulatory path, then our nation's digital divide could be more than triple what it is today."

USTelecom Report on Broadband Documents Price Reductions, Speed Increases

USTelecom – The Broadband Association recently released a report comparing 2015 broadband pricing and speeds to those available today. "2020 Broadband Pricing Index: An Analysis of Decreasing Prices and Increasing Value for Broadband Service Over Time," as its name suggests, finds that "Americans are paying less today for broadband services that are significantly more capable than they were five years ago."

A few highlights:

• The price of the most popular broadband service tier is 20.2 percent lower in 2020 than it was in 2015 – and 28.1 percent lower when inflation is taken into account.
• Savings are even greater for the highest-speed tier: 37.7 percent (and 43.9 percent when inflation is considered).
• Speeds, meanwhile, have increased, by 15.7 percent for the most popular offering and 27.7 percent for the highest-speed offering.

All of this is made possible by the $70-80 billion that providers invest annually in broadband infrastructure.

And while these statistics make plain that broadband is far more affordable than in the past, USTelecom at the same time acknowledges that there is more work to be done by government and private stakeholders to remove obstacles to adoption.

As I noted in a previous post, USTelecom is a partner in the "K-12 Bridge to Broadband" initiative, which works with school districts to identify, and connect at discounted rates, the 30 percent of students who lack the connectivity necessary to participate in remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The full report, authored by Arthur Menko, founder, Telcodata and Business Planning, Inc., is available here.

US Telecom Report for 2020 Spotlights Booming Broadband

Earlier this month, US Telecom released its report "Industry Metrics and Trends 2020: The Broadband Boom." Among the report's key projections for 2020:

• 84% of U.S. households (109 million) will subscribe to fixed broadband by the end of 2020;

• Wireless will account for 79% of voice connections, compared to 4% for traditional phone lines;

• 6% of U.S. households will use traditional phone lines, while 65% will be wireless-only and 29% will be Internet-based voice service, mostly from cable operators; and

• Traditional switched telephone subscriptions will be 24 million, down from 186 million in 2000. 

US Telecom's report data and projections regarding the decline of switched access lines and the concomitant rise of wireless and VoIP service are particularly striking, yet not at all surprising in light of trends over the last several years. 

A public policy implication of such dramatic declines in traditional voice services should be the elimination of the FCC's unbundling and resale regulations. The Commission has an ongoing proceeding in which it proposes to remove certain unbundling mandates. For more, see my February 13 Perspectives from FSF Scholars paper, "FCC Should Go Full Speed Ahead in Removing Unbundling Regulations."   

Former State Regulators Call on FCC to Reform Legacy Rules

A report published on September 20 by Mr. Tony Clark and Ms. Monica Martinez connects the reshaping of the competitive landscape in communications services since the mid-1990s with the need for eliminating regulatory mandates that can no longer be justified in today's marketplace. "The More Things Change, the More Things Need to Change: Why New Realities Require New Rules," is written by two former state public utility commissioners and published by USTelecom. 

The occasion for the report is the FCC's establishing of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund for funding universal service for high-speed broadband via a proposed two-phase reverse auction framework. As Mr. Clark and Ms. Martinez explain, as the FCC increases competitive awarding of universal service subsidies, it should eliminate unfunded mandates on incumbent local exchange carriers that no longer receive such subsidies. They outline a handful of reform proposals that merit careful consideration by the FCC: 

• "[C]larify that any regulatory obligations placed on a service provider in a particular territory no longer apply to that provider when it stops receiving an associated subsidy"; 

• "[S]treamline or eliminate rules that prevent carriers from discontinuing service and exiting the market where competitive alternatives exist, particularly when the competitor is being funded by the government with support previously earmarked for the incumbent";

• "[E]liminate any ETC obligations where a provider is no longer receiving a subsidy through a Universal Service program"; and

• "[S]tate [carrier-of-last-resort] COLR obligations should be preempted where an incumbent provider loses the federal subsidy, unless the state steps in to make up the difference." 

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Aggregate Broadband Investment Increased from 2016 to 2017

This week, USTelecom released a new research brief titled "U.S. Broadband Investment Rebounded in 2017." In the report, Vice President of Industry Analysis Patrick Brogan provides evidence that broadband investment totaled $76.3 billion in 2017, an increase of $1.5 billion (or 2%) from 2016 to 2017.

This is significant news because it is the first time that annual aggregate broadband investment grew in three years. As FSF scholars have noted in past blogs and FCC filings, aggregate broadband investment declined each year from 2014 to 2016. (See here, here, and here.) This likely was due to the stringent regulations imposed in the FCC's February 2015 Title II Order, which raised costs for providers and crowded out network investment. Since the FCC repealed the Title II public utility-style regulations in its December 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order), the broadband industry has rebounded and aggregate capital investment is growing again.

In a May 2018 blog, I used data collected from broadband providers' 10-K forms to create a sample which found that broadband investment had increased significantly from 2016 to 2017. Although my sample's estimate of the industry's percentage increase was off by quite a bit, my prediction that broadband investment would grow for the first time in three years was correct:

[W]hile my estimate of a 14% increase in capital investment should be considered a fairly rough estimate of industry-wide broadband investment, I am very confident that from 2016 to 2017 broadband providers significantly increased capital investment. In fact, any increase in broadband capital investment from 2016 to 2017 is worth noting because investment declined in both 2015 and 2016.

When regulatory costs increase, as they did with the imposition of the Open Internet Order, broadband providers will invest less than they otherwise would have absent such regulatory costs because the additional costs reduce the return on investment. Although the RIF Order does not take full effect until June 2018, the mere prospect of the FCC returning to a light-touch regulatory regime, along with strong competition among many broadband providers and technologies, appears to have played an important role in encouraging additional capital investment throughout 2017.

Most importantly, this news is a win for consumers because an increase in broadband investment suggests that providers are competing to deploy new networks, upgrade old networks, and/or develop innovative services, all of which benefit consumers.

Broadband Industry Groups Ask FCC to Reconsider Unnecessary Privacy Rules

Last week, multiple industry groups representing Internet service providers filed a petition asking the FCC to stay the unnecessary privacy regulations. The petition also discussed how ISPs are taking steps to protect customers’ privacy online. The groups, which include CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom, as well as various advertising and advocacy groups, state that the FTC's framework has protected Internet users for years while the FCC’s new rules create an inconsistent and confusing framework that weakens data protection online.