Underground Construction - February 2018 - 23

Jeff Griﬃn | Senior Editor

Rural Broadband
Faces Reductions in Federal Support

N

News that one of the major telecommunication carriers or cable
companies is planning to bring a
fiber optic network to a new city
or neighborhood always attracts
the attention of cable customers,
especially those who are heavy
internet users and stream video.
The prospect of high-speed fiber
internet connected directly to
their homes is very attractive.
However, actually being connected to fiber may be a long
time coming, and even after a
new fiber network is in place, it
may be months or years before
direct fiber-to-the-home (FTTH)
is widely available throughout
a city.
While waiting for fiber to
arrive, frustrated metropolitan
area dwellers often are surprised
to learn that family and friends
living in the country already have
state-of-the-art fiber service,
comparable to or better than that
available in metropolitan areas.
Federal government support

systems have enabled small
rural telephone companies, small
town governments and others
to deploy broadband infrastructure, and provide robust and
affordable broadband services
to consumers and businesses in
rural America. Big service providers, who also utilize federal
support systems, don't always
provide the same robust service
to rural areas in their service territories because there are too few
potential customers to justify the
investment to build networks
there.
Growth
Yet, rural broadband has been
expanding at a steady pace.
Earlier this year, the NTCA-
The Rural Broadband Association released results of its most
recent annual Broadband/Internet Availability survey. Based on
2016 data,100 percent of survey respondents were offering
broadband services to some or

all of its customers, compared to
58 percent of respondents in the
2000 survey who, at that time,
offered the then lower-definition
broadband services.
However, rural broadband faces critical challenges. Deploying
broadband networks to get service in place initially is just part
of the equation. Once deployed,
these networks require maintenance by way of repairs from
natural disasters, and upgrading
of electronics to keep pace with
evolving technology and consumer demand for faster speeds.
Another NTCA report, a onetime Universal Service Fund
(USF) Budget Control Impact
Survey, came in the wake of an
announcement last summer that
the average reduction in federal
USF support for small, community-based broadband providers
due to budget control, grew from
a 4.5 percent reduction to 9.1
percent, to 12.3 percent over the
previous nine months.

Overall, NTCA says this budget control is expected to reduce
USF support for small rural network operators and the millions
of rural consumers they serve by
approximately $173 million over
12 months starting July 1, 2017.
This USF support would have
gone to recover costs that these
small businesses incur in deploying networks and delivering services in rural areas.
Harmful budget shortfalls
These budget shortfalls harm
rural communities in several
ways. According to NTCA CEO
Shirley Bloomfield, "The support
cuts translate directly into higher
broadband prices for rural consumers, and they also put at risk
the sustainability of investments
already made to serve small rural communities. In addition,
the support reductions undermine future efforts to deploy
broadband in unserved areas,
as carriers cut back on construcUConOnline.com | FEBRUARY 2018

23
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Underground Construction - February 2018

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