Following a proposal from Democrats that the federal government spend $80 billion creating a fund to deploy fast broadband — with upload/download speeds of 100Mbps — across underserved areas, AT&T is arguing that it’s not worth the money because rural people should be happy with slower internet service than cities get.
"[T]here would be significant additional cost to deploy fiber to virtually every home and small business in the country, when at present there is no compelling evidence that those expenditures are justified over the service quality of a 50/10 or 100/20Mbps product," AT&T wrote in a blog post.
The company meanwhile is planning to expand high-speed gigabit broadband to 3 million new homes and businesses in 2021, mostly in urban areas where it’s already built out significant infrastructure. It admits in its blog post that in today’s world of Zooming and remote learning, fiber is the most future-proof technology.
Digital redlining —
Subsidizing the expansion of fiber internet would result in “overbuilding” in areas that already have acceptable speeds, according to AT&T. What that really means is that it would face competition from other internet providers. Local municipalities have increasingly become interested in creating their own internet providers; those could potentially compete better on price and customer service because they would be locally run non-profits. AT&T could get some of the funds too, but it succeeds in part by being a local monopoly — it’s too expensive for many competitors to even try and enter the market.
The entire blog post serves as a good example of why broadband access should be treated like a utility akin to water or electricity. AT&T is essentially trying to decide who gets the best internet access based on what would be profitable for the company. But internet is essential and Democrats have argued that profit potential should not determine access. Think about it like the United States Postal Service — the postal agency provides mail service to all Americans, even where it’s hard to reach and therefore unprofitable. But Americans decided to collectively fund the USPS so everyone could be reachable and the country unified.
Profit motive —
AT&T did actually take money from the FCC in 2015 to bring 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds to rural homes in 18 states. The company uses VDSL for that service, a technology that piggybacks on old phone lines that have fallen apart over the years. Fiber expansion would require new infrastructure, and AT&T doesn’t think it can charge rural customers enough to make it worth the effort. "As higher speed networks get deployed to rural America, the current availability challenge could easily become an affordability one.” It shouldn’t cost rural customers more than urban ones for service, because the federal government would help defray the cost of infrastructure.
The United States ultimately needs to stop allowing for-profit internet providers to dictate what level of service is “good enough” for Americans. If America wants to, it can build out nationwide fiber and charge a reasonable price for it so everyone has access to a resource that’s absolutely essential in the 21st century. An unrelated fact is that federal taxes on corporations remain at historic lows.
