By Daniel Lyons

In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan estimated it would cost $24 billion to make broadband available to all Americans. From 2009 through 2017, the federal government invested over twice that—$50 billion—in broadband build-out efforts, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Despite this effort, the FCC estimates that 14.5 million Americans still lack access to fixed broadband service, and a private sector report put that figure at nearly 42 million.

As the government prepares to deploy an additional $65 billion for new and existing broadband programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), it is vital to understand how those earlier billions were spent and why we have not yet closed the digital divide. A new GAO report sheds some light on this subject and suggests concern about this next round of spending.

Federal Broadband
Efforts: Fragmented and Aimless

In 2021, several members of Congress asked the GAO to report on the status of federal efforts to promote broadband deployment. The report, published on May 31, highlighted several shortcomings of America’s scattershot approach. First and foremost, the agency noted that federal efforts were fragmented: 15 agencies administer more than 100 programs designed in some way to promote broadband. Sometimes, decentralization of authority can be beneficial—for example, by championing experimentation with multiple approaches to difficult policy problems, particularly if the optimal approach differs by location or population. But it also risks overlap and unintended, wasteful duplication of federal funding support. Different parties (such as private providers and community-based organizations) could seek funding from different sources to serve the same area when one would have been sufficient to guarantee coverage.

These concerns are more than theoretical. As an example, the report examines the overlap between the FCC High Cost funds and the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. On numerous occasions, the two agencies provided funds to two different providers to build broadband networks in overlapping service areas. The GAO is careful to note that the grants came at different times and with different minimum service requirements, meaning it is difficult to say with certainty that the two were completely duplicative. But these caveats do not negate the observation that the government spent money twice to wire an unserved area on multiple occasions.

These right-hand/left-hand issues are accentuated by the lack of a coherent national broadband strategy with clear goals, plans, and performance measures. Although various agencies attempt to coordinate activities, for example by sharing data to avoid duplication, this coordination is hampered by the fact that individual programs have different goals and often differ in their definitions of eligible service areas, eligible recipients, or minimum broadband speeds. The report recommends that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) identify key statutory limitations that hamper coordination and recommend legislation for Congress to streamline broadband deployment. It also recommends that the Executive Office of the President develop and implement a national broadband strategy. While NTIA agreed with the GAO’s proposal, the White House declined to comment.

Concerns About NTIA Leadership

The GAO’s suggestion that NTIA should play a leadership role
in coordinating America’s disparate broadband efforts makes sense, at least in
theory. NTIA’s mission is to advise the president on telecommunications and
information policy issues and to coordinate the executive branch’s messaging.
When the FCC seeks comment on various spectrum proposals, for example, the NTIA
will often file comments reflecting the views of various executive branch
agencies.

But NTIA’s recent activities in this space raise questions about its support for efficient broadband deployment. Congress selected NTIA to coordinate the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Established by the IIJA, the BEAD Program provides a whopping $42.45 billion in state broadband grants, primarily for unserved areas. The act recognized the importance of quickly deploying reliable high-speed broadband to all Americans. But NTIA’s Notice of Funding Opportunity places several artificial restrictions on applicants. For example, it prioritizes expensive fiber deployment over potentially more cost-effective coaxial or wireless solutions and favors nontraditional providers such as cooperatives, nonprofits, and public providers over more experienced private providers. It also seemingly endorses net neutrality–like restrictions and coordination with organized labor. These restrictions were not required by Congress and suggest NTIA is more interested in scoring political points than wiring unserved populations as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Ultimately, the GAO report suggests the need for greater
accountability. The digital divide remains a multifaceted problem, involving
challenges of both availability and affordability. But the federal government
cannot simply continue throwing money at the problem with the hope of solving
it. Instead, we must provide a clear plan for closing the digital divide and
clear metrics to measure performance against that plan, so that we can spend
the taxpayers’ dollars wisely in our pursuit to provide affordable broadband
for all Americans.

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