Dr. Ali joins the podcast to talk about his book, Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity. He was part of our spring speaker series, visiting Nebraska for a joint event with the Rural Reconciliation Project. His work provides an analysis of U.S. broadband policy and the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan.
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Related Topic Research/Articles:
Dr. Ali joins the podcast to talk about his book, Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity. He was part of our spring speaker series, visiting Nebraska for a joint event with the Rural Reconciliation Project. His work provides an analysis of U.S. broadband policy and the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan.
Ep Notes:
Related Topic Research/Articles:
Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and has not been thoroughly reviewed for completeness or accuracy.
[00:00:00] Gus Herwitz: This is Tech Refactored. I'm your host, Gus Herwitz, the Menard Director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska. If we were the sort of podcast that had themed music, today's theme music would be the Proclaimers. I would walk 500 miles because we are talking with Dr. Christopher Ali, who walked many more. Then 500 miles in his exploration of rural broadband. Dr. Christopher Ali is an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His research include a wide range of topics relating to communication, communication, policy and regulation, rural [00:01:00] broadband, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, media, local.
And local news. He's actually here in person with us having just given a talk in conjunction with our center and the Rural Reconciliation, uh, project at the University of Nebraska College of Law where he is been talking about his, uh, recent book, "Farm Fresh Broadband". And that is what he is here speaking with us today about.
Christopher, thank you for joining us.
[00:01:27] Christopher Ali: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:28] Gus Herwitz: So can you just start by telling us a bit about, uh, your journey that you took in this book?
[00:01:33] Christopher Ali: Yeah. So, you know, I'm a, I'm a policy scholar by training and so when I, when I start a new book project, I start by reading a lot of policy and, and normally I would kind of couple that with elite and expert interviews, talk to regulators, talk to lawmakers, talk to uh, providers and trade associations.
And, and so I did all that and it took a couple of years and I read tens of thousands of pages of policy documents and [00:02:00] public comments to regulatory dockets. And then about two years into this project, I started to realize that maybe my readers don't find broadband policy.
As fascinating as I do, it turns out that not, not everyone does. I also started to realize that I don't think policy makers are finding this that interesting. And, and I started to realize that we needed to both as scholars and as policy makers, humanize broadband policy. It is, it is so technical. It is so technological.
It's intimidating. It's not written for communities, it's written for lawyers. Sorry to anyone who's a lawyer.
[00:02:36] Gus Herwitz: I'm a lawyer.
[00:02:36] Christopher Ali: Okay. Sorry. Um, then I started to kind of expand my methodological toolkit and part of that involved a road trip. It was, uh, 3,600 miles from Charlottesville, Virginia to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and back.
My hound dog tuna and I did this over the course of a summer in 2018. And along the way we talked to. Anyone and everyone who would speak to us, [00:03:00] this included, you know, folks on the street who wanted to say hi to Tuna and I would talk to 'em about their internet access advocate, state representatives, farmers, broadband providers, regulators.
And, and what it did is it allowed me to put a human face on the digital divide. Yes. But also specifically around policy issues. Because one thing you know that I argue in my book is, That broadband at the end of the day is, is actually in fact not about technology or politics or policy or, or companies or markets.
It's about people and, and we need to make sure that policy makers and scholars keep that in mind.
[00:03:35] Gus Herwitz: So you, uh, You go on the road trip, I'll just start asking, we're we're both scholars methodological questions? Yes. You, you, did you just hop in the car and look for people? Or how did you find, how did you plot out your, the route that you were going to take, which I will note apparently did not go through in Nebraska.
And, uh, how, how did you find, uh, the people that you spoke to?
[00:03:57] Christopher Ali: That's, that's a great question and I love [00:04:00] talking about qualitative research methods, so I could talk about this all day. What I first did was I tapped the network of folks who I interviewed. So I'd done all of these elite expert interviews and I reached out again and said, Hey, I'm gonna be doing something that looks like this drive.
Who do you know? Who could I speak to? Who could you do an introduction for me? And then that's really how the road trip and actually ended where I ended up going. Kind of shape. And then once I was on the road, then I started to dictate a little bit more where I was going. The end goal, of course, was visiting my parents in Winnipeg so that I had to get to Winn.
Um, and, and you're right, I, I did not make it to the Nebraska. I took, I took a right at Missouri. So it was kind of a combination of, you know, what we would call snowball sampling, sampling of convenience, and then, but like, the folks on the street were certainly not targeted. Those were just people who would come up to me or I, There was this one story, I was in Missouri at a grocery store of all places, and, uh, apparently you can, you can drink beer in a grocery store in [00:05:00] Missouri.
And so I was buying a beer. And I talked to this couple in line to grab beer and groceries about broadband and, and, and this was new for me to kind of get the, the everyday life perspective on a policy issue, and it was so incredibly formative. And so much so in fact, that this is something I'm really encouraging policy scholars to do is to include more ethnographic methods.
I'm not saying I did ethnography, but ethnographic methods like field visits, like audience interviews, participant observation into kind of our methodological toolkit, which I think will really help. In this vital process of policy translation,
[00:05:36] Gus Herwitz: I'll, I'll just chime in with my, my own 2 cents with a, a similar sort of perspective.
I, I also do law and policy work in this area and in in technology policy generally. And it's not ethnic graphic, but we, we just need more actual survey sort of research and let's talk to actual people because, and this is something that we'll, uh, I touch on. I expect so many of the people active [00:06:00] in these discussions.
They're active in these discussions for a reason. They, they have their own political acts to grind or perspective that they're arguing for, which isn't necessarily representative of the, the people on the ground. So I very much applaud the methodology of actually getting into the field and talking to folks.
Which raises the question, what did you find when you went out into the field?
[00:06:22] Christopher Ali: I mean, a couple of things. One, Folks in rural America, The, the folks that I talk to, again, particular, I say rural America, but I, you know, primarily agricultural communities in the Midwest, right? Are much more sophisticated.
About broadband access and accessibility that I think a lot of policy makers give them credit for. They, they know the frustrations around broadband. They know they have to engage in data management, for instance, and, and when they can download and they've got a satellite connection, they know they can download things at two o'clock in the morning.
Interestingly enough, one of my kind of companion pieces was done with a doctoral candidate in a county in [00:07:00] Surry, uh, or Surry County of Virginia. Where we did exactly the same thing. We asked, this was a county without broadband access. How do you get information and, and one of the things we learned is that it is a lot of work.
They're aware of the amount of work it goes into to do things that, that you and I might take for granted or that listeners might take for granted. So there is, there is, there's a, there's a hunger for it and there's a need for for connectivity and there's also a tremendous amount of frustration. As to particularly around large providers, why is it expensive?
Why don't I have it, Why does my internet keep coning out? So again, I I, that, that, that's definitely something that I, that I found. And then the flip side is a, just a tremendous amount of innovation and resiliency around. How to bring connectivity to communities. I spoke to so many amazing digital champions who were looking at innovative, uh, funding mechanisms like, like bonds and public private [00:08:00] partnerships to, to make the connectivity happen.
And the other thing, and this really helped kind of nuance my understanding. Of, of broadband is that it needs to be about community empowerment and community choice, particularly in terms of technology. This is something I talked about today in my talk is we're so bullish on fiber these days, but fiber is expensive and there are really great wireless options.
Um, and, and so we need to make sure, This is something I I and I learned is that the, you know, the communities who are the most successful. Have a good understanding of what connectivity, what types of connectivity they need in their everyday lives. So
[00:08:37] Gus Herwitz: to, to, uh, thoughts on that. First, just, just a small, uh, observation or potential future direction for research that, uh, just came to mind.
Uh, and this is really nothing to do with your topic or immediate work, but the idea. There are communities where getting access to information is slow and costly. One of the, uh, active topics of discussion [00:09:00] in the miss and disinformation community is, do we need to add friction into the availability of information?
If information were slower or more costly, would that affect the information sources that, uh, consumers choose to, uh, turn to? And it, it just dawned on me when he said, This could actually be a really rich source of studying, uh, this and disinformation and how consumers, uh, select the information they consume.
So for anyone out there interested in a good dissertation topic, feel free to, uh, give me coauthor credit. I guess , but, uh, I just couldn't, uh, pass that up. I, I also have to just reflect on my own experience, which is in many ways very similar. And we, we discovered, as we were talking before, uh, we started recording.
That you and I are have almost crossed actually. Um, a decade ago you were doing your PhD at, uh, the University of Pennsylvania Annenburg uh, school, and I was doing a post, uh, uh, 2011 to 2013 at the, the law school there at the University of [00:10:00] Pennsylvania. So we were, we were both right there at the same time.
And after that, I came out here to Nebraska. And one of the things that I learned very quickly when I started talking to folks on the ground is it's a lot more complex and nuanced than the Washington DC focused policy debate gives folks credit for. Um, the, the debate at that time and the discussion at that time, and still somewhat to this day was, Well, you've got your.
Your telephone companies that do DSL and your cable companies that do coaxial, and then you've got the wireless companies and tho those are the technologies and fiber is this new thing that we're starting to get. And very quickly I started talking to ISPs that. They had cable plant, but they also had acquired some DSL equipment and were using DSL to offer service to a couple dozen customers because they didn't have cable, but they had some old phone lines and they were experimenting with uh, uh, fixed wireless [00:11:00] to reach some other customers.
And all the new stuff that they were building was fiber and weight. That's not the story that we talk about. We talk about one technology versus another, but on the ground it's all hands on deck. We, we need to be creative to, uh, uh, solve this problem.
[00:11:18] Christopher Ali: Yeah, I, I couldn't agree with you more. It is much more complex.
It's much more community driven. It is, you know, exactly what you said, all hands on deck, both in terms of the type of entities providing connectivity and in terms of the type of technology. Of course, I, for one, would like to see us entirely abandon DSL networks, which are incredibly outdated. We're removing in that right direction.
Although what does concern me is when companies abandoned DSL networks and don't replace them with anything. And then we're gonna end up with more broadband deserts, thanks to some innovative lobbying by Verizon and at and t to the FCC to abandon copper networks. But yet it is the complexities of it.
And the other thing, We are kind of myopically focused on infrastructure without also focusing on everything else, particularly [00:12:00] affordability. Right. And I, you know, I, I was pleased that the emergency BroadB benefit program is getting underway. I would've preferred it to be, to stick at the $50 a month rather than of $30 a month.
I want more providers. In fact, I, I want providers to be obligated to provide a low cost high performance tier for everybody. So, you know, that's a component of the digital. Usage skill development. I was just reading today, uh, CNET had an article about how particularly elderly folks weren't able to book vaccine appointments or didn't know how to order their groceries online.
I mean, a broadband infrastructure is useless unless we can afford it and know how to use it. And like, so the digital divide, there's not the digital divide, it's the digital divide's emphasis on the, on the s there that, that we need to be thinking. much more strategically about, And so I was glad that the infrastructure package included both, uh, the Emergency Broadband Benefit program and then also the Digital Equity Act.
[00:12:57] Gus Herwitz: So the, the infrastructure package, this is the ia j [00:13:00] a that was recently enacted by Congress, which includes 65 billion for broadband support. Can you say a bit more for listeners who might be unfamiliar with that? What, what's going on with that? Yeah, absolutely.
[00:13:11] Christopher Ali: So, 65 billion dollars for Broadband. 42.5 billion dollars specifically for infrastructure in, in high cost, rural, remote areas, 14 billion for affordability, 2.75 billion for digital equity.
1 billion for middle mile and one or 2 billion for tribal, and 2 billion for USDA. I think that gets us to 62, 65 billion. And, and so this is all part of, again, the Biden Administration Infrastructure Act. The, the really interesting thing here to, well, one of the, one of the many inch. Interesting things is who's gonna be managing this money?
It's largely going to the NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, uh, here too for In and Out Player with broadband deployment, who is now going to be, you know, the star of the show, so to speak, kind [00:14:00] of eclipsing the Federal Communications Commission and USDA in terms of broadband funding.
So right now they're in the process of crafting the rules around what's called the BEAD program, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, which will manage the 42.5 billion. NTIA is gonna write the rules and then states will have to apply for this money. And then states will be the ones who ultimately decide who gets the money.
And so there's, there's a really interesting process going on other way, and I am, I think there was 765 comments filed to the NTIA, and I am in the process of reading, reading through them to see what folks are saying. So it's gonna be a really interesting road ahead. You know, some of the things that I'm thinking about are, will kind of the worst aspects of the history of funding broadband repeat themselves in terms of the favoring of the myopic, favoring of, of the largest providers.
How are cooperatives and, and municipalities and local [00:15:00] providers, local and regional providers going to be protected? Right now there's a rule saying they can't be discriminated. Will we see NTIA following, for instance, Treasury and USDA saying they should be prioritized? We don't know What are state's going to do Right now?
Only 26 states have broadband offices and why that is significant is that what a state has to do is NTIA will go to a state and say, Okay, you are eligible for. X, Y, Z amount of money, minimum a hundred million dollars. And then the states have to come together with a five year broadband plan to be able to access that money.
States need to be equipped to be able to, to do that. Yeah.
[00:15:36] Gus Herwitz: This is one of the biggest concerns and challenges I've been hearing o on the ground about administration. Some states are, especially those who do have those offices, um, or who do have state utilities commissions who are very active. Nebraska has a really active public service commission in this area, but many states don't.
And you need to put in the application, you need to have a plan. You need to have [00:16:00] sophistication and knowledge, and there's another challenge buried in here. If you don't, as a state, what are you going to do? There's all this money being. Being danged out there, you're going to hire consultants. And those consultants, they don't have the state's interest in mind.
They have their, we can get money by being consultants, interest in mind, so that there's a lot of administration concern potentially in the NTIA's uh, administration of this program. Yeah.
[00:16:24] Christopher Ali: Ab you know, you hit it absolutely on the nail on the head there Gus. Um, one of the things. Predatory consultants has keep, keep me up at night.
I once had a county contact me and say that a consultant had offered to write their grant applications at a hundred thousand dollars a grant. He said, County of 5,000 people, a hundred thousand dollars a grant. Like they, they're kind of coming out of the woodworks when all this, this money is coming through.
And then the flip side, flip side is if states fail to apply for this money, then other entities can bypass the state and apply directly to Ntia for it. Right. So [00:17:00] again, you know, going back to the larger concerns that I write about in my book, is this an opportunity for companies that are well positioned, that have a team of lawyers available?
And if, you know, let's say Idaho fails to apply for money, will we just see the incumbent try and get access to it and kind of undercut everybody else who, who might be interested in, We need to make sure that states are equipped and empowered to, to take advantage of this. Again, otherwise, this money is gonna go to waste and this is too much money.
This is too much money to waste.
[00:17:30] Gus Herwitz: So let's, uh, bring us back to your book and also the Counterpoint to the Ntia a's administration. Historically, the Federal Communications Commission has administered what's known as the Universal Service Program, and th this actually dates all the way back informally to the Federal Communication Commission Regulation of at and t, where at and t was effectively required to offer telephone service to anyone who requested that service.
And the way that. [00:18:00] This would be funded is across subsidies from long distance and urban areas to residential and rural areas. And in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, we were trying to introduce competition. We'd already broken up at and t and this system didn't work anymore. So Congress created what's known as the Universal Service Fund, which historically has included.
It's varied between about five and 10 billion, but in over the last 20 years or so, it's been about, uh, 5 billion a year in subsidies to support telephone build out to rural areas. But in 2011, the FCC began to transition that to internet service, and this is, uh, what's known initially. The Connect America Fund.
So, with, uh, uh, that as a running start, why don't you pick up your discussion of the story from there?
[00:18:50] Christopher Ali: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, it's very, we were very late in the game as a country to start funding broadband in, in, well, starting to think about funding broadband in [00:19:00] 2011. And for the record, U S D A had actually been doing it since 1995 and then had a formal program in place in, in starting in, I think 2000, 2001, although U S D A.
Significantly less money than $5 billion a. So we've got the, we've got the FCC and they developed the Connect America Fund and it, it came in two phases, kind of, I guess 2.2 phases. The first phase was a bit of a trial Connect America, phase one, couple hundred million Connect America. Phase two is kind of, the hallmark began in 2015 with two different programs.
The the regular one. Identified the 10 largest, what's called price cap carriers. And these are really the 10 largest national telephone companies. And the FCC said, All right, here are the areas that we've identified that don't have connection. Here's how much we're gonna give you per area. Go ahead and do your thing.
And it amounted to a billion dollars a year. The largest winner of this was CenturyLink at 505 million a year for six [00:20:00] years. That's a tremendous amount of money. 505 million a year for for six years. Now couple of issues here, aside from just doling out money to your 10, your 10 buddies, is that the build out requirements were really quite low.
In 2015, the FCC set the definition of broadband at 25 megabits per second Download three megabits per second to upload yet. These carriers only had to deliver speeds at 10 megabits per second download one megabit per second upload. What that meant was that they could continue to deploy DSL copper wire rather than think about, uh, more innovative or dare I use the word futureproof technologies again, like fiber.
And so we saw these companies use that ten one threshold as a ceiling to. Rather than a floor to build upon, and this is why we end up with these kind of islands of availability. His guba SEC would say in a lot of his early work islands of avail. and, but islands of ability with dsl. And DSL now is the most prevalent broadband technology in [00:21:00] rural communities in particular.
So that's one pot of money. Then another billion dollars went to about 200 smaller telephone companies. A lot of these were, uh, they were called rate of return companies, oftentimes were small telephone co-ops. They had stricter requirements. They had to build up to 25 3, for instance. A lot of them also used the money to deploy fiber.
So we, we had this, you. did, did did literal digital divide occurring within this funding program. Smaller companies rolling out, you know, next generation technologies, larger companies, garnering the bulk of money offering, offering kind of outdated technologies. Then we had the Connect America Fund phase two auction, which opened up the, the eligibility outside of just telephone companies included, for instance, electric cooperatives could bid for money.
This was on, this only amounted to about up. Hundred and 43 million a year and 103 providers had to share that money. So what we kind of see is the more [00:22:00] eligibility we open up to, the less money they get. And uh, and, and, and this, this was a problem, right? This was a problem because these price cap carriers were, I mean, were doing exactly what the law told them to do, but they weren't being particularly ambitious.
And moreover, we actually saw in 2018 and 20 19, 2 companies not even fulfill their mandate. Of connectivity and then we're still eligible for more money . In fact, the FCC extended the Connect America Fund by a year to give these, uh, to give these companies some more cover. So we definitely see, uh, what I call in my book with, with Connect America, the favoring of the largest and the loudest providers move ahead a couple of years.
20 20, 20 21, we have this new program. The Connect America Fund was transformed into the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, the Rolph, and this was going to, this is going to be 20.4 billion over 10 years. Huge amount of money. And uh, and again, we saw the FCC kind of drop the ball on its due diligence. The [00:23:00] large providers kept getting a lot of money, but also, We saw the FCC fund areas like parking lots and traffic circles because they just weren't paying attention to the areas, the geographic areas that companies were promising to serve.
We also saw fixed wireless companies. One fixed wireless company in particular, dramatically over exaggerate what it could do in terms of the technological delivery, and the FCC funded it without, again, doing its due diligence, and now they're trying to c. Back some of this money. So the, the FCC long story shorts had a, a problematic, to say the least track record of being, you know, good stewards of consumer funding towards broadband.
And I think this is really why Congress. Punted all of this money to the NTIA rather than keep it with the FCC.
[00:23:47] Gus Herwitz: So, uh, we are going to take a brief break and we will be back in another moment, continuing to discuss the build out of rural broadband and his research presented in his book, Farm Fresh [00:24:00] Broadband with Dr. Christopher Ali. We'll be back in just one moment.
[00:24:07] Lysandra Marquez: Hi, listeners. We're so glad you've tuned into Tech Refactored. This specific episode features one of the three speakers we posted in our 2022 virtual spring lecture series with each speaker exploring topics at the intersection of tech and society. Our last event in this series will feature Professor Anita Allen, the Henry R. Silverman, professor of law and professor of Philosophy at Penn Law.
She'll be talking about race and privacy on April 13th. For more details or to register, go to ngtc.unl.edu/lecture-series. And now back to this episode of Tech Refactored.
[00:24:59] Gus Herwitz: And we are [00:25:00] talking about rural broadband with Dr. Christopher Ali. We're going to spice things up a little bit. Uh, I'm going to start by giving you, uh, uh, Christopher a, uh, alternate version of the USF story to see how you, uh, respond to it. So the, the story that you tell in the book and the, uh, just recounted is back in 2015 ish when we were getting Connect America off the ground, we made terrible boneheaded decisions to focus on the incumbent telephone companies. Give them funding for ten one ten mega per second download speeds Way too slow by modern standards. I, I don't think that there's disagreement that ten one today wouldn't be sufficient. Um, so I'm going to give a slightly different version.
Of this history first at, at that time, folks were talking about how much it would cost to run fiber everywhere, and the, the estimates were typically around 400 billion. [00:26:00] That's what it would cost to get build out a nationwide fiber network. And today we're talking about the same thing. and the estimate is 80 billion.
Mm-hmm. , so 320 billion or so less without inflation going into account there. So if we wanted to do what we're talking about today at the time of cost much more, it also wouldn't have been able to take advantage of a range of new technologies such as Fix wireless. Something that we'll come back, uh, and talk about, uh, a bit, uh, as well.
But we also had this challenge that we were just trying to. Connectivity to as many people as possible. So who had the most households passed? At the time? It was the incumbent telephone companies. So we were trying to get them to upgrade their DSL service at the time to be able to compete with cable, because cable could offer.
10, one, uh, 16 mega per second, or 20 mega per second, even, uh, in the 2015 [00:27:00] timeframe. So we were trying to just get the incumbents as quickly as possible to dial up their speeds because we had a regulatory framework to do that, which is why we went from Connect America. Two, the Connect America phase two and the second iterations of it and the A cam ultimately to rolph.
So this isn't really a story of we made stupid decisions. Why were we so wrong? 8, 7, 7 or eight years ago? It's, we're in a transition period. Let's throw a lot of money where we can to get things going better, and then over the course of several years, we're going to transition to much more of where we are today.
What is that a fair story? Is that an unfair version of the story?
[00:27:44] Christopher Ali: It's fair, but I think. One of the things that I don't really think we had this much of a long term vision. I think what we were thinking about is let's get something out. Let's get something out the door. Right? But we never did that with [00:28:00] electricity.
We didn't say, Let's just get one kilowatt out the door and then we'll figure out how to upgrade it. We said it's not like one household got one light bulb. We said, You got electricity. At 10, one, even in 2015, that's like saying one household gets a light bulb, right? That is not, That is such a present minded policy approach and in my opinion, at like there.
Too much money at stake because the other thing about usf, of course, is that the money isn't, it's not coming from taxes. It's, well, it's coming from an, an line item on consumers bills. Anyone who still has a landline phone can look at their bill and there'll be a, a USF line item there. So I still think it was a mismanagement of, of public money to be so present minded and not think at all.
About future needs and use, and here's I, this, this FCC commissioner will remain nameless, but there was an FFC commissioner who said along the, something along the lines of rural America doesn't need Alexis, it needs a Camry. I take a lot of offense of that [00:29:00] statement because, We're not talking about the difference between a Lexus and a Camry.
We're talking about the difference between a horse and buggy and a car when it comes to connectivity and, and it exacerbates a digital divide. When we say that rural low income, remote, tribal just needs something, whereas urban can get the gold standard, right? And that's that failure of equity is, is what happened in 2015.
And now we're trying to pick up the pieces and you're absolutely right. So 2017, the FCC Chief Economist writes a report and says it's gonna cost $80 billion, 80 billion to connect the country with fiber. Interesting enough, he actually said 40 billion to connect 98% of the country, and then another 40 billion to connect a hundred percent of the country.
Yeah, that, that, I
[00:29:45] Gus Herwitz: just have to highlight, that's such an important part of the discussion that the. Traditional parade rule, 85% of the cost of the last 15% or something like that. And we, we always focus on the, the [00:30:00] 98% when most of that cost is tho those last couple of percent very frequently. Absolutely.
And I, I should say many of those are farms and ranches. Many, many of them are in Nebraska, uh, and the Dakotas,
[00:30:14] Christopher Ali: which by definition can't have. By definition we'll need fixed wireless or some sort of mobile wireless network. Um, but we spent between 2009 and 2017 47 billion. So one would think, and yes, price of fiber has gone down a lot, but we should be closer than where we actually are if we're using that number as the benchmark and we're not even close to that.
Again, to me that is a failure of imagination, of of Congress, failure of imagination at the fcc, and I'm not gonna lie, it's just a giant failure of price cap care.
[00:30:49] Gus Herwitz: that there's a, a fascinating comparison in there. I've got no idea where this goes, but this is why I do, I throw out research ideas. Love it.
The, the comparison with electricity, [00:31:00] it's one that always ranks me because with electricity, the entire electric network is carrying the, the same that you have, it's an internet connected network and literally, When you turn on a light bulb in Charlottesville, it Charlottesville, Virginia. It affects generation capacity in upstate New York.
Um, the, the volt is a volt is a volt. Um, and that's not the case with broadband. There are differences between 10 mega per second and 20 mega per second, and high latency and low latency so that the commodity being bought and sold is fundamentally different. But, and this is where the, the research question for me just came to mind.
We're in a period of changing electricity generation for early electricity. We had a couple of technologies and they were pretty static, but today we're talking about wind and solar, getting them onto the grid and how natural gas affects things [00:32:00] and energy storage options, and hopefully in my perspective, getting nuclear vision back into the mix and the possibility of nuclear fusion.
When we're having these different mixes of energy production and possibly the ability for consumers to choose some, to some extent, what mix they want, especially if you have home solar or a home battery energy storage systems. I wonder whether. There is a coming debate in the energy world that is going to mirror the discussion that we've been having in the telecom world about universal service and broadband for the last 20 years.
So, I I, that, that's a forward looking debate. I, I think that there are problems. Looking backwards at energy for the broadband perspective. And I wonder whether there are forward looking problems that we should be thinking about now. I'll just throw that out as another doctoral dissertation topic for, uh, some aspiring academic out there.
[00:32:57] Christopher Ali: I, I mean, I love it. I love it, and [00:33:00] definitely. Definitely I, I would love to see more scholarship looking at the intersection of these debates around infrastructure. I've been thinking a lot, for instance, about sewage and what's the intersection between sewage and broadband and electricity and highways.
Right? Especially again, as we're contemplating, not contemplating. Hundreds of billion as well. 1.2 trillion are gonna come down the pipes from the federal government around this larger concept of infrastructure. Where do we see the interconnections and, and where can we learn from these, you know, here to four kind of siloed debates.
I think one thing we're quickly learning is that we cannot talk about any of these, any of these technologies, any of. Items of infrastructure in isolation. Let's look at highways for instance. Actually now let's keep, keep with electricity. I mean, Oh, I'm gonna take
[00:33:50] Gus Herwitz: us back to sewers in a moment. Oh, okay.
All right.
[00:33:52] Christopher Ali: But it, with electricity, I mean, one of the reasons why we're seeing investor owned utilities and electric cooperative get into broadband is because of a [00:34:00] massive U S D A funding program about smart grids, which encouraged electric utilities to upgrade their communication systems, their substation communication to a fiber.
Um, kind of a fiber optic middle mile, uh, which can now then be marshaled to offer retail or at least, you know, be the Middle Mile provider. The, we need to be thinking about, you know, this type of infrastructure, intersectionality. I don't know, there's a dissertation topic right there, too. Look at this. You know, PhD students should just be contacting us.
[00:34:33] Gus Herwitz: Exactly. And I, I, I said I was gonna take us back to, to sewers. Yeah. I. Most that this is a, a fascinating topic, really taking us down the drains , um, that the age of America's sewer systems in most cities is well past actually the expected, useful life. So lots of sewers need to be replaced. Um, and. You think a sewer's, a sewer?
These are ba I mean it's a pipe and stuff. Stuff goes down the pipe. Um, there are [00:35:00] fundamental differences in technologies for sewers, and one of the biggest ones is whether you have a single sewer system that combines storm water and waste water, or whether separate sewer systems for storm water and waste water, because waste water requires different processing and the the costs.
Of building, those are dramatically different. But the operating expenses and the, the treatment requirements and maintenance requirements and failure modes, everything is just fundamentally different about the two, uh, different systems. So you think this stuff is really simple, but once you start looking at, look, looking under the pipes or into the pipes, you find.
Uh, it gets really complex really
[00:35:41] Christopher Ali: fast. Well, and there is absolutely a broadband analogy here, which is that not all broadband connections are equal. And that goes back to exactly what you said guess at the beginning, that there is this host, this mixture of technologies. We desperately need to phase out some technologies, just like in sewer.
We need to start phasing out [00:36:00] outdated sewer technologies, but the unified. The unified system in particular, right? Where if there's a huge storm, then then waste is running into a river. The concern I think, with both is what are we replacing them with and you know, I look at, for instance, telephone lobbying to the FCC where they're now able to abandon their DSL lines.
And what's happening to carriers of last resort and, and they're letting DSL lines or call per telephone wires just rot because they have no regulatory obligation to these networks anymore. At and t's saying they're gonna try and transition, try to transition folks into wireless. That's not, that's not gonna work, that's gonna take a while.
In the meantime, folks are gonna be without connectivity, telephone connectivity or, and, or broadband and or both. Right. Depending on the pipe you have. So there's a lot of, this is where. politics gets in the way of policy, and that is definitely something I see as. a as history repeating in the history of, of telecommunications regulation.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] Gus Herwitz: So th this is where I, I I'm going to give you another hardball sort of question, and unfortunately, we, we don't have much time to really get into this, but, uh, or as much time as it, we really deserve to give the topic. But in, in the book, you come out pretty strongly in favor. Of local and municipal broadband as a response to these issues.
And, uh, I'm going to gently push back on, on one point, but then ask a specific question. The, there's been a lot of empirical analysis and discussion about are these viable systems, uh, is this a good way to fund broadband? And I will just note, uh, you discuss, uh, in, uh, your book, a study done by, uh, University of Pennsylvania, uh, Professor Curse for You who.
In, in disclosure, he was, uh, my, uh, postdoc supervisor. Um, so I'm perhaps a little sympathetic, uh, to him, uh, a report where he found that municipal providers tend not to have a positive return on investments. That is, they [00:38:00] cost more money to operate than promised, and in the long run, they lose money. And we, we can have a, a fascinating discussion, uh, about whether, uh, that's the right way to think about, uh, municipal providers or not.
But I, I actually want to. Ask you a more specific question. One of the things that I hear talking to ISPs, internet service providers in rural areas around the country here in Nebraska in particular, is they're concerned about what's sometimes referred to as the donut hole problem. If you have a municipal provider come in and offer service to a, a city, a town, a community, um, they offer service to that c.
They don't offer service outside of the community. So those residual households, farms individuals, they still need to be served by a private provider because there is an municipality to offer them service. And we still rely on cross subsidies. So [00:39:00] if you have a municipal provider come in and take away all the customers from the municipality, Which tends to be 90% or more of the customer base from the ISPs.
The ISPs are left with the bill. For the most expensive customers, the private companies are left with the most expensive infrastructure bill. So if we're really concerned about getting the gang service to those most expensive, most rural households, I worry. Municipal providers actually make that problem significantly worse.
So I'm, I'm just curious, uh, what, what your response to that concern is.
[00:39:39] Christopher Ali: Yeah. Um, and it's a great, it's a great question. Thank you. My, the one thing I'm saying is I don't think we have a lot of examples where there is a high performance incumbent and a municipality wanting to overbuilt. municipalities want a network because the network that is there is either failing or does not exist.
And so the idea that it distorts competition, [00:40:00] I don't, I, I don't think is, is right because competition isn't there to begin with. And in fact, we know that when the network is performing poorly and a municipality does come into, for instance, builds fiber, right? That we will see a speed competition in prices drop.
So, and I don't think I, and I, I do fundamentally believe this, I don't think if there was a high performance provider in a municipality, There is no reason for the municipality to even contemplate a municipal network. There really isn't because there's their, their needs are being met. What we need to be able to do is when the needs are not being met, give the municipality the option.
Okay. But, but to the question of the donut there, there's also. And depending on state law, of course, nothing's stopping the municipality from expanding their network. And I look for instance at at greenlight in, in Wilson, North Carolina, of course, you know, Wilson is one of the classic cases of municipal broadband and the, and the debates at the FCC around around municipal provision.
But they wanted to expand their network. Moreover, [00:41:00] there was CU customers in neighboring towns and counties who were using that network. They did do it. It was the state, thanks to lobbying of the incumbent. That shut them down for me being able to do this. So they're, they're, I mean that's, that's, but one example, but it's the example I can think about right now where it isn't the donut.
It's, I don't know what's bigger than a donut. It's a pizza. Big Pete. I don't know. That's a terrible analogy. But there, there is, there are examples of the will to expand beyond the municipality, but states have been unwilling to entertain that. And you know, the sixth, the sixth circuit in the municipal broadband case is really interesting here about what is the definition, for instance of a municipality and can, does the FCC have jurisdiction over defining what a municipality is?
So there's some really interesting legal questions there, but I do think. that if we opened up the doors, we might see the expansion of these networks. The flip side is there's also nothing stopping public private partnerships here, right? So if the municipality has a really robust [00:42:00] fiber network, Why, what?
You know, why don't we think more about allowing an opportunity for public private partnerships such that a, a private ISP or a co-op can partner up there In Virginia, for instance, if you want state money, you have to have a public private partnership. Now, it doesn't mean it has to be a public network, it could just be public money, but there, but there are some in innovative examples here, and I for one, would love to see way more partnerships than just kind of these siloed either.
Either your. Or you're a private or you're a co-op. Right. I I, I I think the future of of broadband service will be much more about partnerships than it will be about kind of these individual monopoly actors.
[00:42:37] Gus Herwitz: Yeah. I, I think that's, that's exactly right. That. The comparative institutional advantages and ideas and programs like, uh, uh, Dig Once Infrastructure, right?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But finding things where it makes sense for this either to be done at a public level or through some collaboration industry group or something provides this infrastructure that then [00:43:00] all private companies are able to use here in Nebraska, actually, we. We have a statewide fiber loop that was created through private partnerships in order to, uh, get fiber deeper into the network and make it available to smaller ISBs.
And that's been a unusual but very successful. Sort of model that there's a lot to, uh, learn from. So we, we should start closing our discussion. I, I want to end kind of where you and I think ask what do we need, and in particular, uh, coming from the discussion, the talk that you just gave, I ask you at that talk basically, uh, a question along the lines.
Is it just fiber everywhere or do we need some different mix of technologies? And part of my question was also asking how has your thinking about the topic changed over the last four years from the beginning of your journey to where we are today, [00:44:00] Especially taking into account the fact that. You've finished writing into the book over a year ago and academic work takes a while to actually get published.
So wi with the benefit of that hindsight, where are you thinking public policy in this area should be going?
[00:44:15] Christopher Ali: That's a great question. It was a great question we asked me in the talk. Great question. Now I'm happy to, you know, it's a privilege to kind of reflect on it and, and reflect on how my own thinking has nuanced, particularly around technology.
I will still never endorse D- DSL or geosynchronous satellite. I mean, those need to be out the door. We need to quit funding them. Okay. But when it comes to fiber, fiber, fiber is great. Fiber is the gold standard. Fiber is future proof. All the, all the wonderful adjective we want. Um, Fiber is not going to be the right solution for every community.
It is hugely expensive, but only that there are places where it will not work, it will not work in, in agriculture, but which by definition requires a wireless solution and it will be prohibitively expensive in, in mountainous areas or I, I'm think [00:45:00] particular of Appalachia for instance. Although that being said, anytime you've got electricity, you can have fiber, but it will be very, very expensive.
So how do we. Ensure a wireless solution that still taps into a fiber middle mile. This means making sure exactly what, what you were talking about here in Nebraska, that there is a robust middle mile to be tapped into. Because one of the things that would be concerned is you can have all the fiber in the world, but if you don't have a fiber middle mile, you're gonna have a tremendous amount of back.
You're gonna have a back hole problem. California's a really interesting case here, particularly around tribal communities where you would have a tribal community that has fiber, but then using either a microwave back haul, or a DSL back. And then things get stuck, right? So California's really been pushing its Middle Mile networks and there was a billion dollars in the infrastructure act for Middle Mile.
And I love this line from, from Deb Soha, who's, who's now in, in Tennessee and was at Nex True City, is that wireless is just one wireless in that high capacity. Wireless networks depend on a fiber back backhoe, fiber mill mile. So this [00:46:00] kind of, just as I was talking about public private partnerships, we need to be thinking about technological partnerships.
It will shoot us in the foot if we. Fiber only. However, and this is something I was talking about at my talk, so I'm all for technological neutrality, but we gotta get some of these technologies out of. Out of it, DSL and, and geosynchronous in particular. But the rest needs to be about what is the best mix of techno mix of technologies that best serve American communities.
And that's where, again, going back to this local approach that I'm so fond of and that I, I, I, I argue for in my book, I think that's where that can be empowering local communities to make the right choices for themselves around connectivity needs. Not just for today, but for the next five or 10 or 20 years that I think is going to be.
Absolutely vital and fixed wireless has an important role to play in this, as does dare I say, starlink, but that, that five or middle mile I don't think is negotiable. And uh, but like that last mile definitely negotiable.
[00:46:57] Gus Herwitz: Well, uh, Christopher, this has been a great [00:47:00] discussion and I am confident that it is.
Uh, the first but not the last. And thank you as always. To our listeners, I've been your host, Gus Herwitz. We're glad that you joined us for this episode of Tech Refactored. If you want to learn more about what we're doing here at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, or you'd like to submit an idea for a future episode, you can go to our website at ngtc.unl.edu, or you can follow us on Twitter at UNL underscore NGTC.
If you enjoy this show, please don't forget to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Our show is produced by Elizabeth Magilton and Lysandra Marquez and Colin McCarthy created and recorded our theme music. This podcast is part of the Menard Governance and Technology Programming Series.
Until next time, cry havoc and let loose the bits of broadband. [00:48:00]
[00:48:12] Christopher Ali: Wow.