FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

Wed May 25 06:29:45 UTC 2022

> On May 23, 2022, at 17:20, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
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> Remember, this rulemaking is for 1.1 million locations with the "worst" return on investment. The end of the tail of the long tail.  Rural and tribal locations which aren't profitable to provide higher speed broadband.

Yes… Places like San Jose, California, a city of over 1 million people don’t get such protections… Nobody is looking out for or building for us.

> These locations have very low customer density, and difficult to serve.

Sure, but if you’re going to require any form of bandwidth that becomes fiber-dependent, there’s no significant cost difference to delivering a gig.

> After the Sandwich Isles Communications scandal, gold-plated proposals will be viewed with skepticism.  While a proposal may have a lower total cost of ownership over decades, the business case is the cheapest for the first 10 years of subsidies.  [massive over-simplification]

If the target is a non-fiber service, then 100/20 might make sense. If Fiber is being installed, then it’s hard to find a rationale for 1Gbps being more expensive than any lower capacity.

> Historically, these projects have lack of timely completion (abandoned, incomplete), and bad (overly optimistic?) budgeting.

Like virtually all telecom projects?

Owen