Certain Silence

Still pounding away at the “define the problem” portion of our show. Free Press has a pair of reports entitled “Broadband Reality Check: The FCC Ignores America’s Digital Divide“(pdf) and “Broadband Reality Check II: The Truth Behind America’s Digital Decline.”(pdf) These are the reports–along with the GAO’s report–that people (on one side of the debate in particular) cite to debate broadband in America.

It’s customary to offer a disclaimer prior to criticism, so here it is: I love Free Press. I’m amazed at their ability to build coalitions and make media reform a grassroots issue that matters, and the way that they draw connections between media consolidation and municipal wireless and low power FM radio. They do good work generally, and this paper is no exception: well-researched and well-written, with excellent deconstruction of apologists arguments for the poor state of American broadband. Hooray.

But let’s lay Free Press’ cards on the table: this report was produced to further an agenda, and though I generally agree with that agenda the factual analysis in the paper hues to their policy talking points pretty closely. Issues that Free Press cares about:

• Open Access to networks
• Spectrum reform (esp. white spaces, spectrum commons)
• Municipal Wireless
• Using USF to fund broadband
• Net Neutrality

Carrying this heavy load, the papers get bogged down in two different rhetorical moves/arguments, each of which has different solutions. This is characteristic of much of the debate on broadband in the US, so let’s call it out here.

Comparative Disadvantage

There may be a more appropriate way to say this, but the general gist is that the US is falling behind the rest of the world in broadband deployment, both per capita and in speed and price.

Digital Divide

We know this one by now: rural and low-income families don’t have access to broadband. Some combination of price and availability remain barriers to broadband adoption.

These are not the same problem. There are some similarities: the lack of reliable data hinder the analysis of both, and competition (and subsequent higher speeds and lower prices) is at least a partial solution to both. But we could easily have a situation where the US was globally competitive in broadband deployment, both in speed and price, and still failed to “close the digital divide.” Not all broadband adoption issues are dependent on price, and competitive solutions to close this gap in urban or suburban locales (where 80% of the US population lives) would likely still fail to solve the problems posed by low population density and the absence of anchor network tenants in rural areas. Similarly, we might close the broadband digital divide in the near term by providing globally sub-par service to rural and low-income people (see satellite broadband). There’s a risk that in conflating the two we end up ignoring one or the other . . .