The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.
Joe Coldebella:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m Joe Coldebella, and we are in the Harrison Edwards Media Center at Mountain Connect in Denver, Colorado. Joining me is Dr. Christopher Ali, chairman and professor in telecommunications at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. Dr. Ali, welcome to the Broadband Bunch.
Christopher Ali:
Thank you so much for having me.
Joe Coldebella:
Chris, it’s so awesome to have you here. Before we dive into the topic that you had at Mountain Connect, I would love it if you could share with the listeners just a little bit about yourself and your journey into the world of broadband.
Christopher Ali:
Yeah, for sure. I am happy to. So, like you said, my title is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications, and I’m also a professor of telecommunications at Penn State. I’ve held this job for about a year now. Before that, I was a professor of media studies for nine years at the University of Virginia.
I hold a Ph.D. in communication studies from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And my work is all around broadband policy, planning, and deployment, especially in rural and remote areas. So I’m the author of the book Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity, and that came out in September 2021. So kind of an auspicious moment, two months before the Infrastructure Act.
And most of my work right now is around broadband stories, getting states ready, so much of a lot of people’s work for broadband money, thinking about mapping. I do a lot of public writing. So I’ve written for The New York Times. I’ve written for The Hill. I’ve written for GovTech most recently on all these areas connected to the larger issues of the digital divide.
Joe Coldebella:
And it’s great to have you on the podcast because you have a neutral voice, which is I think important. Because in your talk yesterday, I was able to catch up about the last 10 minutes. And you had a little bit of a donnybrook in there. I was going to say, you should have been a referee. It was awesome. So, I would love it if we just dive into your talk yesterday, in terms of Broadband after BEAD: Planning for the Long Term.
And I would love it if we could unpack that because I think right now everyone is concentrating on building the infrastructure and everyone has got their laser-like focus on bringing connectivity to everyone, but there’s a big “but”. And I think the “but” is, what’s going to happen afterward.
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. This is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. And to be honest, I was going to say just between you and I, except just between you and I and your listeners, something that worries me is when I hear state officials say things like, “We’re going to end the digital divide in five years.”
So this is what prompted me in conversation with the folks at Mountain Connect to really be thinking about, “Well, what does broadband life look like after the BEAD program, and what should providers and contractors and policymakers be thinking about?” This is where I see I have a privileged position being an academic. I have my own beliefs and my own politics in this space, of course, but I don’t have a financial stake in this game. I’m not laying fiber. I’m not making policy. And I’m critiquing policy.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. We try to be objective.
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. And so this gave me an opportunity to throw out some ideas of what I would like us to be thinking about in the long term. Again, all around this idea the digital divide or the digital divides that exist are going to supersede the BEAD program. Just because there are 42 billion in the air, don’t get me wrong, it is crucial. I’m of the opinion that it won’t connect everybody. So what do we think about that? The other thing, and this is what I brought up, is it brings up three issues. One is sustainability. And sustainability… I mean, two things.
One is economic sustainability, particularly for small providers. I mean, BEAD is going to be great for CapEx, but what about OpEx? You still have to run your network and your customer service after BEAD.
Joe Coldebella:
100%.
Christopher Ali:
So, how are we making sure that small providers can not only survive after this capital injection but can thrive? So, that’s question one. Question two that I post to the audience is, “What are we doing about climate change and sustainable networks?” This summer is going to be the coolest summer of summers yet to come. And this summer was, excuse my language, but hella hot. So what are we doing to protect our workforces?
What are we doing to protect the hardware of our networks? What are we going to do when the sea level rises? And what are we going to do with all that saltwater? These are some things I’d like us to be thinking about and certainly will supersede the next five years. I also talked about redundancy, both redundancy and networks, but also redundancy in terms of programs.
I call it the “boogie person” in the room is overbuilding. But what’s the relationship between overbuilding, competition, and redundancy? And last but not least, I talked about the need for experimentation. We have a fiber-first policy, and I agree with that. But fiber first does not mean fiber only. So how do we make sure that there’s still room for other technologies to experiment with?
And I’ll just give you an example. I’ve just finished some focus groups with first responders, who are absolutely dependent on wireless for obvious reasons. And the amount of patchiness in first respondent networks is abhorrent. People are getting hurt. Our first responders are getting hurt, but also civilians are getting hurt. So this is just one example where we continue to advance with wireless.
Precision agriculture is another example. Emergency management is another example. So fiber first does not mean fiber only. And, of course, they go hand in hand because a great fixed wireless network needs a robust fiber optic network.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so many good points in there. Hopefully, we’re going to bounce around, and I won’t miss too much. But the first point that you brought up was a really interesting one. It’s like we’re not going to connect everyone.
Christopher Ali:
No.
Joe Coldebella:
And I think though, it’s one of those things where just listening and eavesdropping in conversations, the thought is like, “Oh, the goal is to connect everyone.” And it’s like, “And then, if we do fall short, I think that it’s almost like it’s seen as a failure.” But I don’t look at it that way. I think the idea is that we need to bring everyone who wants to get connected to become connected.
Christopher Ali:
I mean, that’s a great way of thinking about it. The other way, and what I’ve just been trying to push in a bit of my own writing, is let’s be a little bit more realistic with this. Because what I also don’t want is for folks to say, “Well, we’re going to connect everybody. And because we didn’t, that’s a failure.” If you set your goal at 100%, I think even maybe setting goals at numbers might be the right… Let’s make sure we are spending this money efficiently and democratically. Let’s make sure that there are a lot of people at the table.
And then, we need to constantly reevaluate. And that’s again why I’m thinking that we need to be thinking about life after the BEAD program. If you look at state broadband offices, a lot of them have sunset clauses as if the digital divide isn’t going to continue to exist. Affordability, there’s always going to be an affordability problem. We need these offices to be thinking in the long term.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s incredible. You’re the first person that’s made me aware that the offices will be closing, which is crazy. I know that there have been offices that have been open for many, many years prior, but to your point, it’s like at what point does connectivity end? It doesn’t. So, that’s amazing. Is it a few offices? Is it a lot of offices? Or is it a question of budget?
Christopher Ali:
I don’t know off the top of my head how many. I know, for instance, that Pennsylvania has a sunset clause, which I do believe is 2030. I’m also pretty sure, but I might need one of your fabulous listeners to check me on this. I’m pretty sure Texas has a sunset clause as well. I think these are the offices that were established in the wake of BEAD rather than longstanding offices, for instance, Virginia or Minnesota, which have been around forever and will continue to, hopefully, be around.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. And those are seen as north stars in terms of what they’re doing.
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
So my hope is that as this progresses, both legislatures see the writing on the wall and say, “Hey, listen, guys, let’s pump the brakes here. We need to make sure that this office continues because connectivity broadband is only going to grow.”
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. And we’re only going to experience more challenges as more people get connected. In my mind, the real work of digital equity begins after connectivity. I mean, obviously, connectivity is a big part of digital equity, but then there are all these other components, affordability being one of them. I mean, the BEAD program is not going to correct affordability. ACP is not. I mean, it’s done a great job. We need to get it renewed. We need to get it reauthorized.
Maybe states can step in. But fundamentally, the reason why affordability is a problem is because inequality is a problem. Poverty exists in this country. And so we need these offices to be around to make sure that the most disadvantaged of our communities continue to have access.
Joe Coldebella:
So, I was hoping we could go a little bit off script here in the sense that, we’ve got the communities that are disadvantaged. But it almost seems to me, I do think about the problem is, have we not given them the steps that we all got when we first were introduced to the internet?
I don’t know how you were introduced, but for me, I went to a computer center. I learned around other people, and then slowly but surely, my literacy improved. But it seems as though what we’re doing with the different programs is like we’re saying, “Okay, listen, you could have it in your house,” and then you’re off to the races. It almost seems like we’re missing a step.
Christopher Ali:
Definitely. A broadband network is useless unless people can afford to use it and know how to use it. It is absolutely useless, right? It’s just glass in the ground.
Joe Coldebella:
Super intimidating too, right?
Christopher Ali:
Oh, for sure. For sure. We need to make sure that the people are empowered. And also, because digital literacy is a cradle-to-grave issue. What matters to a 15-year-old and the skills that they need and want to use; it’s going to be very different than me at 40 or my parents at 70. And when those 15-year-olds are 70, they’re going to have a different set of learning apparatuses. So we need to make sure that there’s continuing education. It’s not just the one class at the library. It’s a constant engagement with education.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s so true, right? Because it’s like, “Oh, listen, I’ll take one class, and I’ll be off to the races.” And it’s like, “No.” Because we all know that if you put a slash in the wrong place or if you put .com or whatever, and then it’s like you get frustrated, “Oh, this isn’t for me.” And I could see where people get frustrated that they throw up their hands and then they totally ignore it.
And then, that opens up a bigger issue. As we walk through the halls here, folks say, “Oh, listen, we need to bring internet to folks or connectivity for economic reasons, for educational reasons, for telehealth reasons.” And you and I talked about this before. There also should be an entertainment component as well to give people a reason to go on the internet to enjoy it, just not for medicine’s sake.
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. One of the things that I ask people when I do interviews or focus groups is, “What do you want to be able to do with the internet that you can’t do right now?” And I open the door to, “You know what? I’d really love to be able to play Fortnite, or I’d really love to be able to binge this Netflix show that everyone was talking about. Or I’d really love to have my grandchildren over more, and I know I need the internet.” And all of these matter.
This is the quality of life here. So, yes, economic development, support, telehealth, education, public safety, civic engagement, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Quality of life matters, and broadband factors in.
Joe Coldebella:
You made such a great little nuanced point there that I want to call out for grandparents. They always want their grandkids to show up, but the grandkids don’t want to go. So it’s almost like, “What’s the carrot to get them to go?”
I’m sure the grandparents appreciate the kids, and they want to enjoy them. Listen, when you go to Grandma’s or you hang out with Grandpa, you’ll also be able to have your device to do what you need to do. And then, you can also hang out with Grandpa, or you can teach Grandpa about the internet.
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. Or maybe Grandma and Grandpa can FaceTime when we’re on vacation. I mean, I FaceTime with my parents a lot, and I have that privilege. I have that luxury. When folks might be reluctant to adopt broadband, we need to identify the reasons why. Rather than bringing our own assumptions as to you just don’t know what you’re missing. We need to be seriously engaging. “Okay, what is it that you’re worried about? And what would you be able to do more? And maybe we can find that common ground.”
Maybe that’s going to help folks see the value of the networks that are going to be passing through their doors. And I think, again, back to the ongoing life of a state broadband office, they can play crucial rules, maybe not in doing that door-to-door but finding the right trusted community partners to help in that endeavor.
Joe Coldebella:
Absolutely. So, I did an interview with Ashley Harris with Gig East in Wilson, North Carolina. And she works with those communities that are working towards learning about the Internet. She went into a retirement home. They first went in there. It’s like, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
Then she introduced them to YouTube, and they were able to search for the things that were part of their past. And all of a sudden, they got to see a program that they saw when they were a little kid. Then, she’s like, “They went from going to being like, ‘Hey, I don’t want to have anything to do this,’ to ‘When is Ashley showing up to share more about the internet with us?'”
Christopher Ali:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s wonderful. And I’d love to see more of that type of engagement happen. We’ve heard this a lot here in Mountain Connect. Meeting folks where they are, oftentimes, means they’re not online. Oftentimes, that means meeting them quite literally in the physical world, where they are, and having conversations about hopes and fears and dreams and reluctances, and working through what broadband and connectivity can do for their everyday lives. And that includes YouTube.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, exactly. Right. And to that point, yesterday, you had some very passionate folks in your session about ACP and the Universal Fund. First, I would love it if you could describe what that is in terms of four folks, and then we can go from there.
Christopher Ali:
All right. So let’s take the easy one first, which is the ACP, which is the Affordable Connectivity Program. The Affordable Connectivity Program was part of the Infrastructure Act. It is $14 billion. And what it does is it subsidizes a monthly broadband subscription for low-income households. And so it’s $30 a month for low-income households or $75 a month on tribal land. The FCC actually, I think just last week, increased it to $75 a month for those in very high-cost areas. This is particularly true in very rural areas where the subscriptions are quite expensive.
Joe Coldebella:
And can it only be used for connectivity? Or can they use it for, let’s say, they want to get an Amazon Fire or a tablet?
Christopher Ali:
There is a $100 credit for hardware. It doesn’t go very far, right? But this has been a tremendous success, although it is under-enrolled. The ACP is currently under-enrolled. So there’s a big push to get more families to get in there.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. And it’s crazy because heard that it’s under-enrolled, but it’s also burning through money.
Christopher Ali:
Holy smokes, like gangbusters. So it looks like the $14 billion is going to run out sometime halfway through 2024. Right now, I don’t want to say burning through, but we’re distributing about $500 million a month. And it looks like in May or June 2024, the ACP will run out. Right now, Congress has not reauthorized it, which means we’re going to have millions of families either be disconnected or really struggle to pay for full-fledged broadband.
And I should just add that here in the United States, we pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the world already. And so even $30 a month for a lot of families isn’t enough to help them out. So that’s the ACP.
Joe Coldebella:
Okay. And so we could stretch that out to the Universal Fund?
Christopher Ali:
Okay. So the Universal Service Fund, I called it yesterday in my talk, the third rail of broadband policy. No one wants to talk about it because it’s incredibly complex. But basically, what it is, is a larger subsidy program. There are four programs of it. One is called the High-Cost Fund, which is now called RDOF. And that subsidizes broadband deployment in high-cost areas.
Really, here, what we’re talking about is rural and remote areas where there’s no market case to bring broadband. And so it provides a subsidy to the provider to roll out their network. There’s also a program called E-Rate, and that subsidizes broadband for schools and libraries. Then there’s a program called Lifeline, and Lifeline is a $9.25 low-income subsidy. I’m missing one.
Healthcare, rural healthcare, and that’s the same thing. It subsidizes connectivity for rural health centers. The way the USF is funded is through a tax on your phone bill. But here’s the kicker, not your mobile phone bill, your landline phone bill. And so, as you can imagine, as people are cutting the cord of their landline phones, there’s less money. So what’s happening is that the tax is going up and up and up and up and up.
Joe Coldebella:
So, it’s interesting because I haven’t had a landline since, I want to say, 1999.
Christopher Ali:
Wow.
Joe Coldebella:
So I cut the cord, and I haven’t had cable since probably 2010. So, I mean, I’m an early adopter. I want to cut it. So where’s all the money coming from, and have there been discussions in terms of altering it to make it a little less burdensome on landlines?
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. Because it ends up being a regressive tax. Those at lower income who have a landline end up paying more than, for instance, folks like you and I who’ve cut the cord and paid significantly less, like our contributions to USF. Yeah. So, the FCC was ordered by Congress to issue a report on the future of the USF. Congress has just started a working group on thinking through revising USF. There’s been a lot of ideas floated around, one of which is to charge high-capacity edge providers.
So, for instance, Netflix occupies a huge amount of bandwidth during prime time. Should they be compelled to contribute to universal service because they gobble up so much of the bandwidth of Americans?
Joe Coldebella:
So it’s interesting that you bring them up. We did a poll on our LinkedIn page. Should Meta, Netflix, or those folks contribute? And the interesting part was it was about 50-50.
Christopher Ali:
Interesting.
Joe Coldebella:
50% thought that they needed to step up as they’re super profitable companies. And then, the other half is like, “No, that should be a responsibility shared.” So it’s so complex.
Christopher Ali:
It is. There’s politics. There are feelings, extreme feelings. It is also incredibly economically complex. I mean, the meetings that went on, and the papers and the reports from the FCC… I mean, thousands and thousands of pages of regulatory documents were needed to even establish this.
But I think what we’ve realized now, and I think this is one of the reasons why no one really wanted to touch USF, is because of the technical and technological complexity of the whole thing. We are now at a point where we cannot afford not to look at it. So ACP is a great example. Should we include a massive affordability program as part of USF so that Congress doesn’t have to keep reappropriating money?
Joe Coldebella:
Right. Well, I don’t know about you, but when I go to these events, it starts as a little bit of a whisper like, “Hey, do you know the ACP program?” I heard that five months ago. And now, slowly, it’s starting to become a little bit of a conversation.
And I have a feeling in the fall it’s going to be full-throated like, “Hey, listen, we need to do something because next year is going to be here faster than we know it, and then all of a sudden everyone’s going to get shut out.” So these are all grant programs. Congress needs to step up and make this permanent because broadband obviously is not only not going away but also actually becoming a more part of everyone’s life.
Christopher Ali:
Right. Yeah. So this is something that was also floated in the discussion yesterday in my talk, was whether or not Congress needs to create a permanent fund outside of the USF, especially for affordability.
That definitely needs to be on the table. The other thing that we could be thinking about, and this is getting really into the weeds of broadband policy, but if we brought back net neutrality which gives the FCC greater jurisdiction over broadband providers. And because we’re moving them from title one to title two of the Telecommunications Act, is this a way that we could compel the FCC to do more in this space? Right now, they legally can’t do a lot.
So a great example is during the start of the pandemic, the FCC started something called the Keep Americans Connected Pledge. I don’t know if you remember this. And it was an ask, not a demand, that providers do not shut off the internet for those families who could not afford it because of pandemic-related economic hardship. There’s no legal ability for the FCC to order that to happen. They had to ask. And to their credit, almost every provider did sign the pledge, right?
Joe Coldebella:
That’s what I heard as well. We did an interview with the folks from Education Superhighway, and they said that they were amazed at how much the folks were able to literally like, “Listen, this is more important than business. This is about people.” And they bent over backward to make sure that that happened, which was phenomenal.
Christopher Ali:
Until the pledge expired. And I say that with a smile, but it’s also just to demonstrate how the FCC’s hands are tied in these types of moments. So I guess what I’m saying in the long run when we’re thinking about ACP and thinking about USF is I want all of these options on the table so that we can have a serious conversation about them.
Joe Coldebella:
So can we talk a little bit about net neutrality?
Christopher Ali:
Yeah.
Joe Coldebella:
Because I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I hear it and I don’t get it. You’ve got these two sides, and they both seem to make a good pitch. Could you give a case for both sides?
Christopher Ali:
Sure. Funny enough, this is what I do at about week 13 of my Introduction to Telecommunications course. We do a week on net neutrality, and I weigh both sides. Then students can write about what they want to write about. So the side in favor of net neutrality is the following, your internet service provider should not be able to discriminate against the type of content that you want to be able to access.
A very succinct example is that video consumes a ton of bandwidth. I subscribe to Netflix. I think it’s $14.99 a month. My ISP shouldn’t be able to charge me more because I’m consuming video. That’s an example of discrimination. I’ve accessed this content. I shouldn’t have to pay my provider more to access it. It’s not like cable, where you pay for different tiers. So that’s the argument. And, of course, it goes even bigger than that. Think about news and information.
What happens if my provider only lets me have one source of news, and I have to pay the provider to access other websites? It gets into democratic principles like that. What if I want to blog and now have to pay to get my words out there? This is I think the larger issue. It’s not just about Facebook and social media, but it’s about freedom of speech. That is the pro-net neutrality that all bits are created equal, in the same way, that a telephone company can’t charge me more for calling my husband or my auntie. Right? That’s the analogy.
On the other side, the anti-net neutrality, a provider might say, “Hey, we’ve invested billions of dollars in building out this network. Shouldn’t we be able to charge consumers what we want just like a cable company does?” You got your basic cable package. Then, if you want HBO, you pay a little more. You want the ESPN sports package, you want international news, right?
You’re always paying a little bit more. And a broadband provider who is sometimes also a cable provider is saying, “Hey, this is a pretty good economic model for us, especially for those who are using high-capacity bandwidth like video. Shouldn’t we have the right because there’s hogging our traffic, shouldn’t they have to pay more?” And so that’s the con side of net neutrality. Right now, of course, in this country, we do not have net neutrality.
The interesting side part here is a question for mobile providers, something like zero rating. When T-Mobile says, “Hey, you can get a video for free. It wouldn’t count against a data cap or something like that,” that would technically be a violation of net neutrality because they’re discounting that service. So there are a lot of moving parts to the net neutrality argument that could get flushed out a little bit.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, these issues are so nuanced, just in terms of whether or not someone is going to have fiber or wireless or a LEO. There’s an argument or a case for everything. Because when I hear things, I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I can see that.” So it’s really an interesting nuanced game that we’re playing.
Christopher Ali:
It definitely is. And one of the things that I’d love to do, and what I continue to work on is to make sure that communities and consumers are empowered to make the right choices for them. So I once authored this piece called “Everything You Want to Know About Broadband (But Were Afraid to Ask)”. And it unpacks all the different technologies. I mean, it is an incredibly steep learning curve. It is so intimidating. It is technical; it is technological. It’s full of legal jargon. I mean, so many of these policies-
Joe Coldebella:
An alphabet soup for sure.
Christopher Ali:
Alphabet soup, EBB, USAC, FCC, ACP, USDA, I mean, I could go on.
Joe Coldebella:
And you’re not even talking about in terms of NOX.
Christopher Ali:
Holy smokes, I was just at a session about pawns today.
Joe Coldebella:
Right, exactly.
Christopher Ali:
What the hell is a pawn?
Joe Coldebella:
And there are a lot of new folks entering the industry, and I think that we need to make sure that when you say something in terms of an acronym, even if it’s something that’s like WISP, you and I know instantaneously. But I’ve been in rooms where someone who’s super intimidated raises their hand, “What is a WISP?”
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely. One thing I love about the broadband community is I find it incredibly welcoming, and I just want to make sure that people feel comfortable asking those questions. They have a right to ask, “What is a WISP?” We’re throwing around these acronyms. So the learning curve is really intimidating in this kind of broadband space. As a policy scholar, I mean, that policy is not written for communities. It’s written for telecom lawyers. No offense to any telecom lawyers there. I’m good friends with a lot of them.
Joe Coldebella:
And no, it really is. When you have a mayor or a city manager, they deal with the trash and with parks and recreation. And all of a sudden, it’s like, “Hey, we need you to bring connectivity to our town of 35,000 people, or it’s going to die.” I mean, talk about intimidating.
Here I am trying to make sure that everything that I can see and understand is working, and then all of a sudden, you’re going to put this avalanche of technology on me. It’s got to be super intimidating.
Christopher Ali:
It’s got to be. And so I’ll put it out there in our conversation, and I’ve certainly said this in Pennsylvania with my new position at Penn State. I want to be the person that if people are nervous about asking questions, they can feel free to reach out to me and say, “Hey, could you walk me through what exactly this is? What is a megabit, and how does that differ from a megabyte?”
Joe Coldebella:
Right. And it’s just those simple questions, especially for the small rural communities, and we’ve talked about this before in terms of the digital divide. Is the digital divide going to shrink or is it going to grow? And it’s tough because it’s also one of those things as well in terms of the technology that we bring, right?
Christopher Ali:
Absolutely.
Joe Coldebella:
I’ve never had any interactions with a LEO, low Earth orbit satellite. There I got you.
Christopher Ali:
There you go.
Joe Coldebella:
But I work with WISPs and obviously fiber and cable, so it’s one of those things where it’s all working together and all working differently. So, what’s the answer? I don’t know.
Christopher Ali:
I don’t think anyone knows. We started the conversation here. I, for one, support a fiber-first strategy, but that doesn’t mean fiber only. As I write in my book, I say this is an all-hands-on-deck situation that goes both for providers and for technologies, to be honest. But I mean, a fiber optic network as deep as we can get into this country will be a benefit for everybody. It will be a benefit for 5G providers, for instance. It’ll be a benefit for fixed wireless; it’ll be a benefit for LEOs.
Joe Coldebella:
No, absolutely. And so, that actually brings me to the question of open access versus, I guess it would be, a private network. We’d love to get your take on each one of those as well. I was in a talk yesterday, and they were talking about overbuilding, right? When is it good and when is it bad?” And the example was brought up of Mesa, Arizona, which if you’re familiar with Mesa, the homes are really close together.
So there’s a real opportunity for a broadband provider to lay fiber and have a high take rate. The only problem with that is now there are four folks putting fiber in the area there. So it’s crazy. Obviously, you want competition, but then what’s going to ultimately happen is one, two, or maybe three of those folks are going to get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
Christopher Ali:
Right. I actually hadn’t heard that there was fiber overbuilding going on in Mesa. I’ve actually never heard of overbuilding fiber before. So thank you for educating me there. In my mind, the most ideal situation is thus, a publicly funded fiber optic network, one cable to the home in which any type of ISP can sit. So it’d be open access. Then any type of ISP can sit on top of that network and provide service.
Maybe there’s a low-cost one; maybe there’s a premium one. And then, it’d be up to the household too. But the fiber is always there. That would be amazing.
Joe Coldebella:
Now, is that for rural communities and maybe some of the underserved or inner-city part areas?
Christopher Ali:
Well, I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if that was just the case everywhere, right? I mean, Ammon, Idaho is the best example that they’ve actually done this. But that being said, most of the fiber is being deployed not by public entities but by private companies. I’m a big proponent of open access. I think it makes absolute sense, and I think there’s a really important history lesson here.
So for anyone listening who may have cut their internet teeth in the 90s, you’ll remember AOL. AOL didn’t own a single cable. They piggybacked off telephone lines. Usually, those owned by, let’s say, who were the big owners at the time AT&T and Sprint. But they didn’t own anything. And at that point, it was because telcos were forced to lease their lines. So, basically, telephone lines for data were open access. You still had to pay. To use AOL, you had to pay.
Joe Coldebella:
Was that the legislation from ’96?
Christopher Ali:
Yeah. And so we had thousands of ISPs in the late ’90s using the infrastructure owned by AT&T and Sprint, thousands of ISPs. AOL was one of them. That’s why you could put that CD-ROM into your computer and get the internet.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. Oh, that’s great. No, I never knew that.
Christopher Ali:
But AOL did not own a single telephone line. And then, later on, cable comes along, and we get rid of all of these open-access requirements. And suddenly everything becomes proprietary. So Comcast is doing its thing. AT&T is doing its thing. CenturyLink is doing its thing. No leasing.
We go down to just a handful of major ISPs. I would love to see a situation, and the BTOP program certainly did this with the middle mile, which is if you’re getting federal money to deploy fiber, that fiber should be open access. You should be compelled to, if someone wants to lease parts of your fiber, to provide a competitive service. We’re going to have to look and see what states are going to do here with BEAD money to see if there’ll be any open access provision. There are going to be some folks who are very interested to see what different states are going to do for open access.
Joe Coldebella:
And it’s really interesting just listening to the folks as well because I love the open-access model. But there’s also, I think, some problems. I was in a session, and one of the gentlemen was talking on a platform with 16 ISPs.
So there’s a little bit of a problem there. Can there be too much competition? Or do we let market forces determine the answer? So it’s one of those things where maybe one or two service providers have 70% or 80% of the market, but then there are these niche carriers that allow them to do whatever it is they do and let the market decide.
Christopher Ali:
I think that would be the way to do it, how much competition can the market sustain? Right now, we’re not even letting that be a chance because everything is proprietary and everything is these local monopolies. We hear so much about folks not having any choice in a broadband provider, right? They’ve got the one.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. And then, yeah, you hear all these scary stories, especially if it’s a DSL line. And then they want to do an open access model, and then all of a sudden, a special interest group magically pops up funded by said company. I can see where places just get so frustrated because it’s like, “If you’re not going to come to my place, at least let me forge for my own fiber, so to speak.”
Christopher Ali:
And this is where I’ll get a little snarky about this word, overbuilding. I think the only folks really concerned, legitimately concerned about overbuilding, not fiber on top of fiber with government subsidy. But I think these are the folks who are just afraid of competition.
When a community is dissatisfied with its incumbent, maybe the incumbent is doing DSL or the prices are astronomical, and a new entrant wants to come in and, let’s say, deploy fiber, overbuild it, use a government subsidy. In my mind, that’s not even overbuilding, that’s competition. And Jonathan Sallet, formerly of the Benton Institute, wrote about this and said, “Why don’t we just call overbuilding competition?”
And I agree that we don’t want to see duplicated funds for the same technology. Again, going into that situation in Mesa, it seems like it’s going to get a little messy.
Joe Coldebella:
I’m in Fairfield County in Connecticut, one of the densest counties in the country, and fiber is supposedly on the way. I’ve got cable or whatever, and there is some competition, but I think another reason why is… to talk out of school, is they’re making money hand over fist. And they don’t want to give it up.
Christopher Ali:
No, totally. They’re possibly getting some government subsidy. I don’t know what’s going on in Fairfield, but maybe, plus as a local monopoly, they can charge whatever they want because you have no option. You’re not going to switch to a geosynchronous satellite service, for instance. You’re not going to go back to a DSL network, even if it might be available. So, if you’re the cable operator in a community without a fiber builder, you’re looking pretty good in terms of, got a good thing going with your local monopoly.
Joe Coldebella:
This is another anecdotal story, but I have a friend who lives just out of New York City. And he’s in a very large apartment building, and it’s exclusive to one carrier. And so what happens is that they pay the landlord to have exclusive rights to their building. Because once again, they’re cutting out the competition, then the prices get higher and higher and higher. So it’s a slippery slope that we’re living in.
Christopher Ali:
Definitely. And that’s an illegal practice, although we hear it happening a lot. But cable providers are not supposed to lock MDUs, multiple dwelling units, another acronym, into an exclusive contract. The other thing I just learned, just speaking about apartment buildings, is I didn’t realize that the new FCC map treats an apartment building as one serviceable location, not as 30, 40, 50, or a hundred units. That does alter how much of an area is actually being served. This is something I learned here at Mountain Connect, which is pretty cool. I mean, not that the practice is cool, but I love learning.
Joe Coldebella:
Of course.
Christopher Ali:
So there are still a lot of issues around monopolies overbuilding competition that we need to iron out. Because at the end of the day, the policy of universal service, is it predicated upon competition or is it predicated upon local monopolies? In this country, we don’t like monopolies, right? We have regulations against monopolies. But it does seem that in telecom, we’ve allowed these monopolies to happen.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. I think there are a lot more monopolies than we like to add onto.
Christopher Ali:
Oh, for sure.
Joe Coldebella:
In some respects, we’ve always been on the tip of the spear in terms of innovation, but because we’ve done so many layers. If you look at other countries, they’ve almost leapfrogged us because a lot of countries understood that fiber is the way to go, and we’ve had to jump through these different hoops. So it’s definitely going to be an interesting few years.
Christopher Ali:
Definitely, it is. We’re definitely behind the ball, definitely. But there are things that we can do right now that would improve the situation. A great example is dig-once. So a dig-once policy means, if I’m a department of transportation and I’m ripping up a highway, I should put down a conduit for a fiber optic cable so that when a provider comes in, they don’t have to re-rip up that highway. Now there’s $110 billion for road and bridge repairs in the Infrastructure Act. There’s $65 billion for broadband.
Doesn’t it make sense that we should have nationwide dig-once policies? So that when a Department of Transportation goes to rip up a highway, we’re putting in fiber right away without thinking. This has been happening in other countries where, when you have a new build, you put in fiber right away by law.
Joe Coldebella:
So what’s the snag? Because that makes sense for everybody. Is it the sense that people don’t want to give up that, as the cable itself would be used by everyone?
Christopher Ali:
Well, I’ll give an example of Virginia. Virginia has floated this a couple of times, and it was determined… I can’t remember when the last time it was floated. I think it might’ve been 2018 or 2019, that it wasn’t economically feasible, that it would be too expensive to dig it up and put a fiber optic conduit in there. But this was all before the Infrastructure Act money. I’m really hoping that we’re going to see a number of states —
California is a great example of a state that is quite proactive with dig-once, but I’d love to see more states follow this model where if you’re digging up a highway, you put a fiber optic conduit in.
Joe Coldebella:
California is its own special animal. I look at it, and sometimes I say, “Wow, they’re doing things right.” And then, sometimes I’m like, “Oh, California, what are you doing?” But one area I think that they got right was the middle mile. And I would love it if you could talk about that as well. I think that the problem is the BEAD money had some money set aside for the middle mile. But from my understanding, money went super quick and went away.
Christopher Ali:
It did. So there was a middle mile program in the BEAD… sorry, not in BEAD, but in the Infrastructure Act. It was $1 billion again through NTIA. That money was distributed in fall 2022. It went super quickly. Something I learned is I think there were about $7 billion in requests for only $1 billion. They ended up stretching that to $1.09 billion because so many matching funds were added. So they could stretch that out a little bit, but $1 billion did not go very far.
Joe Coldebella:
And I also heard that in terms of the BEAD money, that there’s a little bit of wiggle room that it’s not only about the Last mile now, that if there’s a way or you can show just cause, then you can attach some funding to the middle mile.
Christopher Ali:
To the middle mile. Right. But you have to still have a last-mile component. You can’t just build the middle mile for the middle mile’s sake of BEAD money. You have to have that last mile. So you can do the middle mile to the last mile, but not just the middle mile. At least, this is my understanding. What California did is pass a bill, this would’ve been, I want to say, 2021, $6 billion for broadband. And that included I think $3.5 billion for the middle mile and $2.5 billion for the last mile.
That’s just one state. So they tripled the amount of money that was in the BEAD program… or sorry, the IIJA, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Again, let’s get rid of these acronyms. So California really has been thinking proactively about pushing out that middle mile because… for those folks who may not know what a middle mile does or what it is, the connection from your internet service provider to your home is the last mile. And that mile is useless unless the data has somewhere to go. That’s where the middle mile comes in. So we need to make sure that we have robust fiber-optic middle miles. And we’re lacking those here in the United States.
Joe Coldebella:
Well, in some ways, we put the cart before the horse in the sense that shouldn’t we have made sure that the middle mile… This is just me and my soapbox. It seems though the two things that we should have gotten right, and maybe it’s too pie in the sky, is that first thing is like, “Hey, listen, let’s make sure the middle mile is good in terms of all the exchanges and everything. So once you build to the home, then it’s a lot easier.”
The second is mapping. So, I actually had some guys on from Vetro Fiber yesterday, and they allayed a little bit of my fears. I think that a lot of people were, “Oh, the maps, the maps, the maps.” The maps are getting a lot better. They are always evolving and changing. So I know that people are really afraid, but this is a big country to map. And so they were saying that we’re on the right path, which is reassuring.
Christopher Ali:
Maybe I’ll go back to the middle mile for a hot second.
Joe Coldebella:
Please do.
Christopher Ali:
Just to plug the role that electric cooperatives have played because, over the last few years, they have been getting grants from USDA to do a middle mile for their smart grid. So suddenly, you’ve got all of these rural electric cooperatives, there are 900 in the country, with really amazing middle-mile networks. And then, you’re seeing them using that because it’s already built, using that to push out into retail.
Joe Coldebella:
And I love that you brought those guys up because they do an amazing job.
Christopher Ali:
Amazing.
Joe Coldebella:
Because that’s what they’ve been doing. I wish we would lean on those folks more because they do an absolutely incredible job. And to your point, smart cities, I think that there are 50 or 60 different definitions flying around. Ultimately, you want it to be a smart city where everyone is connected like Chattanooga.
So it’s definitely an interesting direction that we need to head in. So we’re talking about all this money. It was an absolutely phenomenal visit. And then, you hear everyone talk about this $42 billion in terms of BEAD money. And then, you just brought up how California themselves pushed in $6 billion. So I’m going to ask the question that no one wants to ask, but everyone is thinking. How much do you think it’s going to cost for, I guess, the Broadbanding of America?
Christopher Ali:
If I knew that number, I feel I’d be a wealthy person indeed because I would sell that number. I don’t know. I actually don’t know. So many numbers are floated around. In 2017, the FCC said $80 billion. That is not nearly enough. We know that, right? Because we’ve already injected way more than that into it.
I think the more important thing, rather than determining a raw number, is figuring out the mistakes of the past. We’ve spent between I think 2009 and 2017, it was $47 billion. Obviously, there were hundreds of billions available through Capital Project Fund and State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds through COVID relief funds. There are billions of dollars on the table. So the question is, “Why haven’t we done this with all of this money that was made available?”
The Recovery Act after the Great Recession had $7 billion for broadband. And so there’s a need to look through, I mean, how we define broadband, 25/3 is way too slow. The technologies that we have previously allowed to count as broadband, DSL is a great example there. So what I want to make sure is that the mistakes of the past won’t be replicated. And so I think putting money into the NTIA is a good idea, moving it to the states, so long as the states are equipped to handle this money.
Joe Coldebella:
I love the broadband offices.
Christopher Ali:
Me too. Me too.
Joe Coldebella:
I’m not usually a fan of adding an extra layer. But I think in this case, it’s perfect because you’ve got all this money coming from Washington. But in Idaho, there’s a difference there in terms of just how everything works. Or in Arizona, it works differently. So I think that broadband offices are a great lifeline, and hopefully, they won’t be sun-setted, but they will continue to grow.
Christopher Ali:
Right, exactly. Full circle now. They are incredibly important. They’re incredibly important resources, not only to do allocation of funding but to do best practices, training, resources, connections, and advice. And so, yeah, I’m a big fan of broadband offices.
Joe Coldebella:
I mean, we could probably do this here for hours. Do you have any upcoming projects or future books?
Christopher Ali:
Yeah, very exciting. I’m launching a new project, which I hope is going to become a new book. It’s going to be all-around stories and a couple of reasons why. One is that in these conversations about broadband, we talk about speed. We talk about points on a map; we talk about technologies. What seems to be left out is people. And like we said, broadband is useless without people.
So one of the privileges, and one of the amazing privileges that happened when my last book came out is that folks are reaching out to me wanting to share their stories and wanting to have their stories heard and acknowledged. For me, this is going to be a great opportunity to spend the next two years listening.
I think I spent a lot of time talking, and it was time to listen. And so I’m going to be doing some more travel across the country. My last book was just on rural life; this new book is going to be much bigger. And I want to give those folks who have felt they haven’t had their voices heard; I want it to be heard. So if anyone is listening and has a broadband story, shoot me an email and I’d love to interview you. The other thing is that stories can be incredibly impactful for policy.
It can drive policy. And I think sometimes, when all we do is base policy based on the data point, we lose any context.
Joe Coldebella:
I 100% agree. It’s got to be that yin and the yang, right? You’ve got to have real-life examples so people can understand. To your point, if we live in a sea of data, that’s good in terms of a macro. There’s also the micro in terms of figuring out what’s the reason why.
Christopher Ali:
Right. Absolutely. This is meaningful to people’s lives. And so that’s going to be the project. What is going to take me through the next two years is the broadband stories project.
Joe Coldebella:
Super exciting. We’re for sure going to have you back then. But hopefully, we’ll have you before that.
Christopher Ali:
I hope so, too. Yeah, this has been great.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, love it. Thank you so much again for being on the show, and I really appreciate your time.
Christopher Ali:
Well, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. That’s going to wrap up this episode of The Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
