InsideSources

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its latest Notice of Inquiry last week to begin the next annual assessment of broadband deployment in the U.S., highlighting that according to the 2018 report, “advanced telecommunications capability was being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”

According to the notice, the FCC plans to maintain the 2018 standard for nationwide broadband deployment at a speed of 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.

25 Mbps/3 Mbps, which refers to download/upload speed in Megabits per second, allows four users or devices to operate without interruption at the same time.

But not everyone thinks the FCC is orchestrating the deployment of broadband in a “reasonable and timely fashion,” especially not to rural Americans.

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued a dissenting statement immediately following the release of the notice, arguing that nationwide broadband deployment is neither reasonable nor timely.

“That report found — despite clear evidence of 24 million Americans without high-speed service — that broadband deployment nationwide is both reasonable and timely,” she wrote. “It ignored too many people in too many places struggling to access high-speed service and dealing with connectivity that falls short of what is necessary for full participation in the digital age.”

According to a Pew Research Center study released in May 2017, the typical American household has at least five devices, and many households have more, which suggests a minimum standard of 25 Mbps/3Mbps may be too low.

“I believe this goal is insufficiently audacious,” Rosenworcel wrote. “It is time to be bold and move the national broadband standard from 25 Megabits to 100 Megabits per second. When you factor in price, at this speed the United States is not even close to leading the world.”

According to Community Networks, a project of the Institute for Self-Reliance, many countries are far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to broadband deployment and download/upload speeds.

Canada, for example, is shooting higher than the U.S. by pursuing a 50 Mbps/10 Mbps standard.

Sascha Meinrath, the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications for Pennsylvania State University, agrees that broadband deployment is slowly improving, but thinks it is neither “reasonable” nor “timely.”

“If I drove NASCAR and every time someone checked in with me I said I’ve driven more laps around the track, that would be true,” he told InsideSources in an interview. “They say we’re making improvements, and that is true, but we’re making improvements slower than other countries and in some places [of our country] faster than others. If you look at the gap between the current deployment speeds and costs versus other highly industrialized nations, our peers on a global scale, you’ll see the gulf is growing. Other nations are providing better, faster service for cheaper prices in more areas. So what we see over time is America falling further and further behind.”

The major sticking point is rural communities: because they’re farther from urban areas and are more sparsely populated than urban areas, telecom companies have a much lesser incentive to invest in them. Thus, rural communities are stuck with outdated broadband infrastructure — like copper wiring — that can’t handle the kinds of download/upload speeds necessary to keep up with demand.

Rural Americans rely on internet access for work as well as entertainment, and just as much as urban Americans. For there to still be so many rural Americans without high-speed internet access is considered by many to be a failure of the FCC to deploy efficient broadband infrastructure initiatives.

Meinrath said its a nonpartisan issue as well: both Democrats and Republicans have been extremely bad about deploying broadband to rural Americans.

“It’s the critical resource for a 21st century economy,” he said. “What do we think the world looks like for communities that will never be competitive until they have equitable speeds with urban environments or other countries? Rural Democrats and Republicans are being screwed equitably by both Democrats and Republicans. That’s a matter of leadership, of vision, of addressing the on-the-ground realities that we simply just haven’t done.”

Part of the problem according to Meinrath is the FCC doesn’t even realize the scope of the problem, because the FCC doesn’t collect accurate data on the state of broadband and broadband deployment, which in turn leads the FCC to release reports saying that broadband deployment is “reasonable and timely.”

“The FCC collected the advertised speed and availability [of broadband] without verifying the actual speeds and availability,” Meinrath said.

According to a study from Vantage Point Solutions, “Actual throughput capacity for wireless users is often only 15 percent of the peak data connection rate – although the peak rate is the speed that providers promote.”

Thus, Meinrath argues, using advertised download/upload speeds as the gauge for measuring whether rural — or urban — Americans have access to adequate broadband service is “laziness.”

To combat misinformation and provide the FCC with accurate data, Meinrath is working on his own national broadband map through his Measurement Lab project that measures actual speeds across America.

“We’re about halfway through our data collection and we’re already seeing the largest gaps in the poorest and most rural communities,” he said. “The cost per megabit is far higher in rural communities than in cities.”

In 2009, Meinrath helped draft the 21st Century Broadband Superhighway Act, but said it was “put on hold due to American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 supposedly incorporating funding for the same.”

In 2011, he wrote a letter to the FCC pointing out their faulty data collection methods, but told InsideSources in an email that, “The sad reality is that excruciatingly little has changed.”

Meinrath and Rosenworcel believe the U.S. will not be able to remain competitive with other nations if it continues at the current pace of broadband deployment at the current 25 Mbps/3 Mbps standard. That puts the U.S. at an economic disadvantage on the global stage, they say, but it also hurts Americans — especially rural Americans.

Even though politicians talk about broadband infrastructure being a necessary investment — just a month ago Democrats and Republicans argued over a new broadband bill — Meinrath thinks they haven’t really decided broadband is a necessary investment, which is why broadband deployment isn’t fast enough.

“We decided we needed a national road network, and so we invested in that (same with water, electricity),” Meinrath said. “And broadband is a crucial infrastructure. What’s important is we need to drive investment in this space and we’ve shied away from doing that.”

The FCC testified before the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday morning, and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) asked about the national broadband map and whether the FCC is doing anything to fix it.

“It’s my understanding that the FCC has put in place a map that is known to be flawed,” he said. “My question is, what efforts beyond the challenge process is the FCC able, willing or now doing to see that the map is righted?”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai then blamed the Obama-led FCC for the “flawed” map, and didn’t specify when the FCC expects to have an accurate broadband map.

“We inherited a mess when it comes to the map,” he said.

Given that the annual broadband deployment report continues to use the flawed broadband map, it is unclear what the actual state of broadband deployment is across America.

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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) members, senators, mobile carriers, and private sector leaders think 5G could solve the rural broadband problem and improve healthcare for rural Americans because 5G has the capacity to maximize internet speed and responsiveness and advance a new healthcare trend: telehealth.

Despite 5G’s capabilities — touted by many experts as the bringer of a digital revolution that will enable autonomous vehicles, widespread Internet of Things (IoT) adoption and remotely controlled industrial machinery — broadband infrastructure is so complicated that it may not be able to substantially advance telehealth efforts anytime soon.

Telehealth encompasses a wide range of services including doctors video-calling patients, patients sending doctors photos of injuries or ailments for prompt diagnosis, and even doctors going over X-Ray and MRI images with patients via video communication platforms like CaptureProof.

For rural patients, telehealth services can make a huge difference in their quality of life. Instead of driving a long way to visit a physical doctor’s office, remote and rural patients can converse with doctors on their laptop or smartphone.

Just a few weeks ago, FCC commissioner Brendan Carr launched a $100 million Connected Care Program with Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to evaluate how telehealth programs might benefit low-income Americans, especially veterans and those living in rural areas.

At a presentation hosted by the Hudson Institute Tuesday morning, Carr said the FCC wants to support telehealth initiatives and believes expanding 5G to empower telehealth initiatives is an opportunity for the FCC to “step in and help.”

Michael Romano, senior vice president of industry affairs and business development for the NTCA-Rural Broadband Association, described several telehealth pilot projects at a panel hosted by Health IT Now on Tuesday.

One in McKee, Kentucky allows veterans to access a Virtual Living Room/VALOR portal through the local Jackson County Library, “which provides free access for veterans to Veterans Administration telehealth.”

Sitka CEO Kelly Mellard described to panel attendees how her company Sitka can “compress the cycle of care” for getting MRI results from days or weeks to hours via video and real-time imaging communication services.

“What we think is really important — and 5G can do — is deliver the asynchronous care,” Mellard said. “It improves patient literacy and progresses the care cycle.”

But telehealth services — especially ones involving MRI images — inherently require a lot of bandwidth to handle video and images. In rural areas, this is a significant challenge, as much of the broadband infrastructure in rural America is copper wiring, which struggles to handle sharp increases in downloads by Americans increasingly watching more Netflix and cat videos.

To get an idea for how much video Americans are consuming via the internet, Cisco estimates that by 2020, internet provider (IP) video traffic will account for 82 percent of all internet traffic, according to a research paper by broadband engineering and consulting company Vantage Point Solutions.

In theory, 5G could dramatically increase data transfer speeds and substantially improve connectivity (according to Qualcomm tests), but Vantage Point Solutions pointed out in its paper that “actual throughput capacity for wireless users is often only 15 percent of the peak data connection rate — although the peak rate is the speed that providers promote.”

But telehealth advocates are convinced 5G can augment telehealth services for rural Americans.

“These lightning fast speeds are critical to telehealth because when you’re downloading images as a doctor (because you need clear, quickly-uploaded images) to make a correct diagnosis because lives are on the line,” said Health IT Now CEO Joel White at the panel on Tuesday. “We want to optimize that care.”

Lawmakers are already working to accelerate 5G adoption. Last month, senators John Thune (R-SD) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced the STREAMLINE Small Cell Deployment Act (S. 3157) which would accelerate the widespread adoption of the “small cells” necessary for 5G connectivity.

Small cells — which Romano said are about the size of a pizza box — can be attached on cell towers to provide a 5G wireless connection.

But 5G also needs deep fiber networks in order to reach its potential, and therein lies the rub.

According to Deloitte, 5G requires “greater network densification” in order to provide the maximized internet speed and responsiveness touted by mobile carriers.

“​Despite the demand and economic imperative for fiber deployment, access networks in the United States lack the fiber density to support the bandwidth advancements necessary to improve the pace of innovation and economic growth,” a Deloitte article reads. “Without more deep fiber, carriers will be unable to support the projected 4x increase in mobile data traffic between 2016 and 2021.”

But many rural areas still don’t have fiber optic cables to provide internet access, which means they may be unable to receive 5G access without an increase in infrastructure investment.

While mobile carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon may be able to dip into the broadband market with 5G in more densely populated, urban areas stocked with expansive fiber networks and cell towers, serving rural communities will take longer.

Still, companies will be making investments in these areas, and initiatives from internet service providers (ISPs) like Charter Communications, are working to overhaul current broadband infrastructure.

“5G and fiber are complementary pistons in this engine,” Romano said. “You need densification. This is going to require a lot more investment by firms like Verizon and ours. We’re going to need to make sure the fiber is there.”

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With the release of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back regulations classifying broadband internet as a utility under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, many are wondering what the future holds when it comes to both innovating and expanding wireless and broadband infrastructure to rural areas and communities, like those found in Iowa and across the U.S.

During the debates leading up to broadband’s classification under Title II, between 2011 and 2015, trends in wired and wireless infrastructure spending were down 20-30 percent, about $30-$40 billion annually, according to George Ford, chief economist of the Phoenix Center. It’s suspected this decrease is closely tied to the threat of the new regulations. Others have found a continued decline in investment since the rules came into effect.

Peter Rysavy, president of Rysavy Research, LLC, a consulting firm that has specialized in wireless technology since 1993, believes that the lack of spending has slowed growth in technological advancements when it comes to creating faster networks and the development of 5G technology.

“The last couple of years, with the ban on paid prioritization and uncertainty on being unable to limit prioritization,” Rysavy said, “innovators haven’t taken advantage of what these networks are capable of.”

While the reclassification of broadband under Title I won’t directly impact laying infrastructure for broadband in rural communities, Rysavy believes that the easing of regulatory oversight will benefit the development of 5G technology, which may be a solution to the lack of internet accessibility in these areas.

“With this new approach, there is the likelihood of 5G technology becoming more broadly realized and greatly commoditized,” Rysavy said. “The technology will be less expensive to extend, as it may improve rural markets. 5G is what we’ll have to be looking towards to what we’re seeing in the rural markets.”

Former FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy (2001-2005) states that the regulations entailed in the Title I and Title II classifications aren’t the barrier to accessible broadband internet in these specific communities.

“I spent a lot of time in a wireless company looking at investing in broadband in rural parts of the U.S.,” Abernathy said. “Net neutraility isn’t going to help in building out these markets.”

Abernathy, a senior executive at Frontier Communications in 2010, explained that lack of population density in rural America is the challenge, due to the fact that there is a low concentration of revenue to finance large projects like laying a fiber-optic line.

Instead, Abernathy says, the FCC’s efforts in Universal Service Funding (USF), specifically, the Connect America Fund (CAF) are the tools that will aid in delivering services to rural markets.

Expanding broadband access is a priority for FCC Chairman Pai, who hails from rural America himself. The commission is already in the process of examining wireless network capabilities by implementing another key universal service program in the Mobility Fund. This past February, the FCC adopted a Mobility Fund framework, allocating up to $4.53 billion over the next 10 years to advance 4G LTE services, primarily in rural areas.

According to data collected from the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) by broadbandnow.com (2016), Iowa ranks 38 in the nation for most-connected state, with 82 percent of people covered by some form of broadband, at an average statewide 23.2 Mega Bits Per Second (mbps) download speed. Conversely, 22 percent of the state is considered “underserved.”

According to Broadbandnow, there are approximately 541,000 Iowans without access to a wired connection capable of 25 mbps download speeds; approximately 517,000 Iowans have access to only one wired provider. Approximately 153,000 Iowans don’t have any wired internet providers available where they reside.

Betsy Huber, president of The National Grange — an organization that encourages families to band together to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture — and member of FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, said that she supports Pai’s proposal to rollback the Title II classification, but she also urges members to call legislators in support of the farm bill and infrastructure bills, which contain increased government funding for installing broadband in rural areas.

“The National Grange commends FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for his leadership on commonsense internet policy that will help provide critical broadband access to millions of more Americans and especially those in our rural communities,” she said in a statement when Pai released his plan.

“We really see it as an economic issue in rural areas,” Huber told InsideSources. “[Broadband] costs more to run service in sparsely populated areas. From the government standpoint, it’s important to make this happen sooner rather than later.”

The FCC has been steadily investing billions through the Connect America Fund (CAF). According to the FCC, as of 2015, $9 billion over the next six years will be used to fund infrastructure upgrades to over four million homes and businesses, and another $2 billion was dedicated over 10 years to help small ISPs. In Iowa alone, as of 2015, over $50 million in grants have been accepted (CenturyLink, Windstream, Frontier, and consolidated carriers) to expand broadband service to over 85,000 people across the state, according to Connect Iowa, a non-profit part of Connect Nation under the FCC. With an increase in funding to both lay broadband and increase cell services, the conditions could be just right for both providers and customers to take advantage of increased access to the internet.