On November 12, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 into law. This includes an historic investment of $65 billion for new US Broadband Infrastructure funding to help close the digital divide. One recent survey which manually checked thousands of locations has estimated that 42 million Americans don’t have access to broadband¹.

Map of US showing broadband coverage ahead of the investments from the Broadband Infrastructure Law.

The Internet as Essential Infrastructure

With this law, Congress is recognizing access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to “full participation in modern life in the United States”². This puts broadband access on par with access to running water or electricity. It is “essential infrastructure, the lack of which is a barrier to economic competitiveness and the equitable distribution of essential public services, including health care and education.”³

No better illustration of this could have been provided than the images of teachers in school parking lots and students outside fast-food restaurants, trying to connect to the Internet for remote classes during the Covid pandemic lock downs.

A school teacher accessing the Internet from her car in the school parking lot due to insufficient broadband access at home during the Covid pandemic.

Photo Credit: Credit: Justin Trombly/VTDigger

The largest block of this funding will go directly to states to expand broadband networks and provide new broadband infrastructure. The law respects state laws while signalling a shift in favour of alternative models of network deployment and service provision.

The Need For Innovative Solutions

Having funding for broadband and having access to broadband are not the same thing. For example, labour shortages and global component shortages are causing long lead times. Upgrading networks to ‘full’ fibre or the latest cable standards will take years. The shift towards technology neutral legislation signals that the US government is looking for innovative solutions. In Europe, tier one operators in many countries with incomplete fibre roll-outs have opted for Hybrid networks by combining existing wireline and wireless networks. Using hybrid access, KPN, Telia, Proximus, Deutsche Telekom and A1 offer speeds in excess of the EU minimum of 30 Mbps in rural areas where a fibre rollout would not have been economically viable.

Tessares’ solution combines existing broadband and cellular assets with a cloud based application to enable hybrid networks. Moreover, the speed you get will be the sum of the speed of the wireline and wireless networks. If you operate fixed line and mobile network resources, get in touch with us for more information.

¹https://broadbandnow.com/research/fcc-broadband-overreporting-by-state

²https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLS/117/1/s/BILLS-117s2071is.xml

³https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLS/117/1/s/BILLS-117s2071is.xml