There are all kinds of ways to judge whether you are getting old. I suspect few people make such an assessment based on how long they have been involved in a particular policy space. Well, to prove that I am a policy wonk, I can say I am old based on the fact that I was not only there when the Section 706 report language was adopted as part of the Telecommunications Act, but I also participated in its crafting. So when I noticed the latest installment of the 706 report had come out from the Federal Communications Commission, I was curious indeed to see not only what facts it examined but also how it judged the facts. As with all factual analyses, the facts are one thing (as the famous saying goes in part “You can’t have your own facts”) . . . but the way those facts are interpreted is even more important in many cases than the facts themselves.
Stepping back a minute and thinking back to the mid-1990’s, one of the leading coalitions at that time pushing for more connectivity for all Americans was the Alliance for Public Technology (APT). APT, led at the time by California State University Professor Barbara O’Connor and including a wide array of advocates for the disability rights community, labor unions, minority groups and academia, had been around for a number of years but in 1993 they issued a seminal report called “Connecting Each to All” that was really in many ways ahead of its time. Recall what was going on in 1993. Internet access was growing rapidly but it was virtually all dial up access. APT, to its credit, understood the value of Internet based communications. But they recognized earlier than most that dial up was not what gave the Internet its real value because these kinds of connections did not allow for the handling of higher capacity services such as two-way video which would become increasingly important for the disabled. Dial up connections also did not allow for “always on” connectivity which APT believed was vital to using the Internet as a new and iimportant communications platform. Finally, APT believed that facilities based competition and new, high capacity technologies like fiber were going to be vital in providing video and other high capacity services.
APT was founded in 1989 and spent several years pushing the notion that broadband connectivity for all was vital especially in making available such things as two-way video communications for signing, telemedicine applications and online education services. The did a number of ground breaking reports detailing how broadband connections – then a novelty and largely used to connect clinics, libraries and public centers – made a very real difference in the daily lives of those with chronic diseases or could not communicate over traditional telephones.
I worked with APT in its earliest years and found its leaders like Barbara O’Connor, Mary Gardiner Jones, Susan Hadden and Henry Geller, were visionaries with regard to communications technologies and the potential of the Internet to change lives. As a result of its work and the knowledge base it built up about broadband technology, APT was an enthusiastic and active participant in the efforts to pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996. APT worked hard to insert the language that became Section 706 and they pushed the key language that became the goal of the section:
Make available as far as possible, to all people of the United States, regardless of race, color, national origin, income, residence in rural or urban area, or disability high capacity two-way communications networks capable of enabling users to originate and receive affordable and accessible high quality voice, data, graphics, video and other types of telecommunications services.
APT knew that broadband technology would take time to deploy. They also recognized that private sector providers would provide the vast bulk of investment needed to ensure the deployment of broadband to Americans. They early on suggested that tax incentives would be useful tools to increase incentives for investment and the language in the section that suggests that a key focus must be the removal of barriers to deployment – such as policy barriers – was also language pushed by APT.
APT no longer exists but knowing APT’s vision, I think they were always focused on evidence that we are making progress in deployment. They recognized that there would likely be areas where the private sector could not justify investment but they believed that much of the job would be done by private companies. In judging success, they believed that all Americans must have access to broadband in the final analysis.
The first report from the FCC in 1999 based on Section 706 also focused on the issue of whether we were making progress on deployment. The Commission tried to establish some ways of comparing and assessing the pace of deployment and made this key observation:
While it is too early to reach definitive conclusions, aggregate data suggests that broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. The Commission based its conclusion, in part, on the actual deployment of advanced telecommunications capability in this nascent market. The Commission found that at least 375,000 residential consumers are purchasing broadband services, and that substantially more have access to broadband capability. The Commission compared broadband to other communications-related technologies, such as black-and-white and color television, and cellular services. The Commission found that, in terms of actual users, deployment broadband is exceeding the rollout of these other technologies at a similar point in their deployment. The Commission noted, however, that deployment of these other technologies accelerated after the first few years. The Commission stated that it anticipates that broadband deployment will similarly accelerate in the coming years.
I have looked at a range of technologies over the years in an effort to understand how adoption works and how rapidly information and communications technologies are adopted. I think it is important to look at such metrics because if you do not have a sense of how technology adoption in general proceeds, it is hard to answer the question “Is progress on adoption reasonable and timely?” For example, if you look at the FCC’s own report on “High-Speed Services for Internet Access” issued in December of 2005, it found that only about 2 million Americans were using broadband services with speeds faster than 10 mbps. According to the latest FCC report (with data up through only 2008), more than 11.5 million Americans are using broadband connections with such capabilities. Just based on speed alone, clearly more Americans have available faster broadband connections than ever before and more of them are taking advantage of these speeds. So based on speed alone, adoption of advanced technologies appears to be proceeding well.
If you look more broadly at the adoption of other technologies, the uptake of broadband has clearly been among the fastest technology adoption stories in history. In this blog post, for example, I provide evidence of how much faster broadband has been adopted than technologies as varied as the telephone, black and white TVs and the VCR. More recent analysis by Nicholas Felten for the New York Times suggests that the technology adoption cycle has been shortening for decades and this in part explains how dynamic the Information and Communications Technology sector is. Date from the Lichthman Group makes the case that the record for broadband adoption over the last few years has been remarkable. In their view, the glass is certainly more than half full.
APT would agree with the FCC that the remaining 7 million or so households who do not have broadband available out of the approximately 110 million or so households nationwide should be provided with access to connectivity as soon as possible. I do too. Verizon and much of the industry agrees and our recent filing on USF policy and broadband provides ideas on how to reform that program so that it can help fill the gap where private investment can’t reach. But I don’t believe APT – if it were still around – would express satisfaction with how far and fast we have come on broadband connectivity. In fact, at the celebration announcing that APT’s work was done, here is how they expressed it:
APT was founded twenty-one years ago when public policy was to lower the cost of plain old telephone service for consumers, and high speed access was limited to big business. APT envisioned a time when access by all consumers to high speed broadband networks was national policy. With the recent unveiling of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, that day has arrived. With our mission completed, the mantel of advocacy is passed to the many organizations and agencies whose goals include implementing the National Plan.
While gaps remain to be filled, I believe APT would say much of the initial work has been done and private investment has succeeded. They would certainly advocate for continuing advancement in broadband capabilities but with the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 and LTE wireless technologies, I believe they would be impressed with these advances as well. It was certainly disappointing to me in reviewing the FCC’s latest Section 706 report to note that its conclusions about broadband advancement did not look at how much progress had been made in broadband adoption nor how this progress compares with other technology adoption patterns. They simply focused on how many people still remain who have not adopted broadband or cannot get it. I think the evidence is that substantial progress has been made, progress APT would say needs to be brought to completion but is clearly moving in the right direction.