Biden's $65B broadband boost is popular but won't be shelled out in time to help Democrats in 2022
Story on the Washington Examiner website here: Biden's $65B broadband boost won't be shelled out in time to help Democrats in 2022
President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill contains nearly $65 billion to spend on broadband, the largest such sum for internet deployment ever, but the money will likely not be deployed and put to use by states until after the 2022 midterm elections.
The bulk of the money, $42.5 billion, will be allocated for a grant program that states use to expand internet access in underserved and rural communities, while another $14.2 billion will go to a broadband subsidy for low-income households.
The $42 billion in broadband grants to states will be administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the Department of Commerce.
In order to get the broadband funding, states will have to apply to the NTIA, outlining their current resources as well as how and when they plan to spend the internet infrastructure money they receive.
Each state will receive at least $100 million in funding, while the remaining $37 billion will be distributed to states using a formula concerning a state’s percentage of nationally unserved locations.
Both the NTIA and the states will need to staff up in the coming months to handle the application process and then the deployment of billions of funds, which will take many months more.
Broadband industry insiders say the money is not expected to start flowing till after the 2022 midterm elections, a cause for worry among Democrats because it will be too late for them to benefit politically.
“My best guess is it will take at least a year or more for dollars to actually flow,” a former top Republican Federal Communications Commission staffer told the Washington Examiner.
“To implement the broadband program, you have to take applications, review them and then send money to the states. It’s not a slow process by federal standards but it’s not fast either,” said the former official, who now represents telecom companies.
However, some liberals who are supporters of Biden’s broadband agenda say that they expect at least some of the funding to be deployed before the 2022 midterm elections despite the time and efforts needed for the government to put the money into action.
“I’m optimistic some of the money will flow by the fourth quarter of 2022 because the program will build on the NTIA program they had during the Great Recession, so they’ve done this before,” said Harold Feld, a telecom policy expert and lawyer at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
He said that the primary challenge that could delay the implementation of the broadband program is the time it could take states to pass new laws and increase their staffing capacities in order to appropriately apply for and receive the grants.
“The nature of this state application system is that some states will get internet access sooner than others based on internal state politics. There’s gonna be a bunch of states that do well and others that take ages to get the money out the door,” Feld added.
The broadband provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure bill were intentionally crafted by senators to give the states a significant say in how those funds would be spent. This process takes longer but allows the money to be more effectively and efficiently spent, broadband policy scholars say.
“Unlike previous attempts by the government to improve the internet, this one has a long-term focus to it so it makes sense to involve the states rather than have the federal government run it,” said Ernesto Falcon, senior legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group that advocates for greater broadband access and competition.
Initially, conservatives were also worried about the large influx of federal government funding could crowd out private industry spending, but those concerns appear to have been largely mitigated by amendments to the bipartisan legislation.
“The concerns with overcrowding are not as valid anymore because of the new safeguards will help a lot,” the former Republican FCC staffer said.
“Also, most of the government spending will happen in areas where it makes less economic sense for the private industry to spend and build networks,” he added.
Falcon, instead, said his biggest worry for the broadband program was that states could waste the funding given to them on short-term broadband projects, such as investing in expensive and slow satellite internet, that could cause issues for people in the long run, even if politicians benefit from positive news in the short run.
Spending the broadband funding on fiber-optic internet, which can send data as fast as about 70% the speed of light, or fixed wireless internet, which involves fiber cables and short-range wireless towers, would be the best ways for states to spend the money, Falcon said.
Countries that lead the world in internet connectivity and speeds, such as South Korea and China, have shifted to fiber-optic internet networks in the past decade, along with many advanced European countries, because it will provide high-speed internet that can continually get faster for a few generations.
It will take approximately five years for the average American city to completely build out fiber internet in their region, with 20% of the city becoming covered each year.
There are, however, concerns that the supply chain crisis and labor shortage could cause delays in the implementation of the broadband expansion program.
There is currently a 12-18 month delay for the raw materials needed to create fiber-optic networks as well as a shortage of technicians and workers who can actually help to build them, Falcon said.