FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is circulating a draft of this year’s Broadband Progress Report within the commission which states that 10% of Americans cannot get broadband service at speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. The numbers are quite different for urban and rural areas, however – with 39% of rural Americans lacking access at that speed, while only 4% in urban areas lack such access.
“While this nation continues to make progress in broadband deployment, advanced telecommunications capability is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans,” says a summary of the progress report draft released publicly late last week.
The summary also lists the steps that the FCC is taking to increase broadband deployment, including modernizing the E-rate program that pays some of the costs of bringing broadband to schools and libraries, the Rural Broadband Experiments program that will help bring broadband to unserved areas in 12 states, and plans by 10 price cap carriers to accept Connect America funding in exchange for a commitment to bring broadband to unserved areas within their serving areas. What the FCC doesn’t mention is an initiative that could probably make the biggest impact on closing what the commission calls a “persistent urban-rural digital divide”: the CAF program for the nation’s smaller rate of return carriers that primarily serve rural areas.
Not including this initiative most likely was not an oversight. It likely was left off the list for a different reason: Wheeler early last year pledged to have a CAF program for ROR carriers in place by year’s end, but that has not yet happened.
Progress has been made in shaping the program, but no action has yet been taken – and while a vote on the 2016 Broadband Progress Report is on the agenda for the next monthly FCC meeting scheduled for later this month, there is nothing on that agenda for an ROR CAF program, suggesting we won’t see anything until February, at the earliest.
Industry Criticism
The news about the draft report drew criticism from USTelecom and from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), with both organizations arguing that broadband is being deployed in a timely fashion.
“Private industry has invested over $1.4 trillion to build robust networks that reach most Americans and, as the Commission found just ten days ago, continue to significantly increase in speed and performance every year,” wrote the NCTA. “The fact that the Commission released the positive Measuring Broadband America report without fanfare during the quietest week of the year while trumpeting its [Broadband Progress Report] findings far and wide just two weeks later confirms that this report is more theater than substance.”
According to USTelecom, “this annual process has become a cynical exercise, one that eschews dispassionate analysis, and is patently intended to reach a predetermined conclusion that will justify a continuing expansion of the agency’s own regulatory reach.”
Harsh words for the FCC’s Broadband Report findings are not something new. Last year the commission drew considerable criticism when it raised the speed used to define broadband.
Other FCC Broadband Report Findings
Other findings from the draft of the Broadband Progress Report include:
- 41% of schools (serving 47% of students) have not met the commission’s short-term goal of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff
- Only 9% of schools have fiber connections capable of meeting the FCC’s long-term goal of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students
- 41% of tribal lands residents lack broadband access
