Increasing Broadband

Access States commit state and federal dollars to address connectivity and bandwidth for the post-pandemic future

by Sean Slone

When it comes to providing broadband internet service to its residents, the state of Hawaii faces some unique challenges, but also a few that are all too common.

“Hawaii has density in its urban areas, but it also suffers the same sort of issues that rural areas (elsewhere) do in terms of large land masses, sparsely populated,” said state Rep. Aaron Ling Johanson, who represents a suburban section of Honolulu. “Added to it, we’re not one contiguous landmass, so deployment is a little bit different when you have deep Pacific Ocean channels of water in between your land masses.” Witnessing the dramatically increased demand for broadband service during the pandemic, Johanson and his colleagues took a course of action many states have turned to in recent years: establishing a broadband infrastructure grant program to facilitate projects to bring service to unserved and underserved areas of the state. Under Johanson’s House Bill 1191, internet service providers willing to foot the bill for 60% of a project can be subsidized 40% by state matching funds. “I think it was a recognition that government can’t do everything all by itself,” said Johanson. “But sometimes it’s just not feasible for the private sector to undertake something from a market perspective either.” Beyond the issue of access to broadband, Johanson heard stories from his constituents about competing with family members in the same household for bandwidth for Zoom meetings, distance learning and telehealth appointments. “Literally every segment of Hawaii was online,” he said. “It exposed our finite infrastructure capacity and, really, our ability to support that sort of technological revolution. Like many states, we found areas where we were lacking.” Johanson believes increased broadband usage and capacity needs are a pandemic trend that won’t go away once the pandemic is behind us. “Our connectivity is going to [continue to] be incredibly important in education and health care … in enabling commerce and the 21st-century economy,” he said. “It’s changing workforce patterns. It’s changing employee preferences. … If we’re going to do it well, I think we as states have to support that kind of infrastructure to ensure that there is access to these resources.”

STATE BROADBAND INITIATIVES

Before the pandemic, states had already been taking an active role in expanding access to broadband in recent years, Anna Read of the Pew Charitable Trusts told members of the CSG Healthy States National Task Force in June. Nearly all states now have some form of broadband program and 40 states have created broadband funds, she said. Many have focused on rural and unserved areas.

But few could have foreseen the 40% increase in broadband usage between spring 2020 and spring 2021, the highest annual growth rate in nearly a decade, according to the broadband network management technology provider OpenVault.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) official broadband standard of 25 megabits per second download speed and three megabits per second upload speed, which many state broadband programs have adhered to, proved woefully inadequate for the types of video conferencing that quickly became commonplace in many households. Meeting the growing broadband needs of consumers will likely require not only creating access in unserved and underserved areas, but also upgrading existing copper cabling to fiber optics. The telecom industry has long argued for lower broadband speed standards, like the FCC’s, to avoid the need for the costly upgrades. States including Maine, South Dakota and Washington have increased their internet speed requirements in anticipation of future needs, according to Pew. Minnesota requires that state funds to build broadband infrastructure only be authorized if the infrastructure can be scaled to provide symmetrical upload and download speeds of at least 100 Mbps.

FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR BROADBAND

The increased demand on the nation’s digital infrastructure has prompted significant renewed investment at the federal level as well. • The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed by Congress in 2020 allocated billions of dollars to state and local governments and allowed states to use that funding for broadband, which some states took full advantage of. Arkansas, North Carolina and Oregon were among the states that directed CARES Act funding to existing broadband programs, while seven other states established grant programs with the funding. • The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 included $350 billion for state and local governments that could be used for broadband projects. The ARP’s $10 billion Capital Projects Fund, administered by the Department of the Treasury, was set up specifically for use on broadband expansion. The Treasury’s rule for use of the funds prioritized flexibility for states, community-based solutions, unserved or underserved communities, fiber optic technology and higher upload/ download speeds. States were also able to use the funds on last-mile connection projects and building accountability into broadband business models. As of July, nine states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Vermont and Washington) had approved legislation to allocate ARP funds for broadband.

AFFORDABILITY AND COMPETITION

Policymakers face other challenges beyond the issue of getting broadband into unserved and underserved areas. Where broadband is available, cost is often a major barrier to adoption. According to a Consumer Reports study, the median monthly cost of broadband in areas with three internet service provider options is about $68 per month while the cost in areas with one provider with no competition is $75 per month. People who don’t have a home broadband subscription are more likely to be low income, older and non-white, Read noted. Municipal broadband, systems in which municipalities partner with a local internet service provider to offer their own internet plan, could aid affordability and competition. However, 22 states have telecom company-supported laws on the books that restrict the authority of local governments to build such networks and offer such plans. Broadband providers including Comcast and Charter have offered specialized low-cost options for qualifying low-income users. Federal and state policymakers have also provided subsidized broadband options. But often these subsidized plans and low-cost options can come with low speeds that fail to meet connectivity needs of the modern age. That may do a disservice by making it seem as though people are connected when they really aren’t, according to Craig Rice, a council member in Montgomery County, Maryland. Rice co-chairs the National Association of Counties’ Broadband Task Force, and he also spoke to the CSG Healthy States Task National Task Force this year. Low connectivity speeds, Rice says, reflect a need for better data mapping of what speeds people are getting with their service.

ACCOUNTABILITY

As billions of dollars are committed to addressing the nation’s broadband needs, many also point to a need for accountability measures to ensure the funds are well spent. Advocates seek not only better data collection on nationwide broadband penetration, but also service standards for broadband speeds from internet service providers, and measures of customer satisfaction.

Johanson, the sponsor of Hawaii’s broadband fund legislation, said his state has been fortunate to have service providers willing to keep policymakers up to speed on infrastructure upgrades and their impact on connectivity. Still, he sees accountability as an important key to a better-connected future after the pandemic. “We’re learning on the fly, but we have to figure out metrics for assessing how we’re spending these taxpayer dollars,” he said. “That’s, I think, one of the reasons our bill has capped the amount of money that can go into this particular grant fund. … I think everybody is trying to get to what does success look like and how do you measure it.”