Solving the Rural Broadband Equation at the Local Level

• Date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0160323X20925870
• Author: Harold Feld
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Solving the Rural Broadband

Equation at the Local Level

Harold Feld

1

Keywords

rural broadband, digital divide

Broadband has become the utility service of the

twenty-first century, and closing the “digital

divide” between rural and urban America is

as important today as providing telephone ser-

vice and electric power to rural areas at the

beginning of the twentieth century. Rural

America, however, continues to suffer a sys-

temic lack of affordable broadband. According

to the most recent report from the Federal Com-

munications Commission (FCC), over 24 mil-

lion Americans lack access to broadband

(2019; defined by the FCC as a download speed

of at least 25 megabits per second (mbps) and

an upload speed of at least 3 mbps).

1

It is gen-

erally agreed, however, that this number wildly

underestimates the extent of the problem. Some

studies have put the number of Americans lack-

ing access to reliable broadband as high as 163

million Americans (Pew Charitable Trusts

[PEW] 2019c). Even where broadband is avail-

able, rural subscribers generally pay higher

prices for slower speeds and less reliable ser-

vice than do urban areas subscribers (Pach eco

and Ramachandran 2019).

As broadband has become as important as

electricity to participation in modern society,

we have collectively invested increasingly

greater attention and resources to closing the

digital divide. In addition to existing federal

programs, every state has ongoing efforts to

promote broadband deployment in unserved

and underserved areas (PEW 2019a, 2019b).

These programs largely focus on a handful of

conventional approaches: subsidizing an

existing commercial Internet service provider

(ISP), “streamlining” regulatory processes, and

building a municipally run ISP (PEW 2019c).

But states and localities have many more tools

at their disposal.

Understanding the “Rural

Broadband Equation”

While the factors that drive up cost for bringing

broadband to rural areas are generally under-

stood, it is helpful to break things down into

their component pieces. Like solving an alge-

bra equation for the missing varia ble X,asur-

vey of each locality to find the specific

bottleneck or bottlenecks to broadband deploy-

ment allows the local government to address

these specific deficiencies. Rather than trying

to solve the whole problem by what often

amounts to bribing

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an ISP or building a net-

work on its own, a locality can target policy

toward solutions that work for their specific sit-

uation far more cheaply and with a greater like-

lihood of success. Indeed, proper ly addressed,

the same policy initiative can promote multiple

desirable outcomes such as enhancing competi-

tion or building local businesses.

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Public Knowledge, Washington, DC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Harold Feld, Public Knowledge, 1818 N. Street, NW, Suite

410, Washington, DC 20036, USA.

Email: hfeld@publicknowledge.org

State and Local GovernmentReview

2019, Vol. 51(4) 242-249

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0160323X20925870

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