A Declaration of Internet
The Biden administration and the legislature have created a once in a lifetime opportunity to pivot and fix broken Internet access in the United States. The incumbent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have based their profits on our lack of knowledge about alternative solutions. New funding of #DigitalEquity will enable us to spread that knowledge and fund construction needed to shift the paradigm away from monopoly to Community control.
In 2021 the Biden administration passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) legislation including a total of $65 billion for Broadband. $42.5 billion of that is for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which will provide money to the states to expand Broadband service to unserved and underserved populations. Areas with less than 25 Mb per second down and 3 Mb per second up are considered unserved.
THE PROBLEM: While the Internet was first created in the US, our country has fallen far behind other industrialized nations in terms of accessibility, affordability, reliability, and security. The incumbent monopoly ISPs charge more in poor neighborhoods or redline them. They have avoided investing in rural areas because they have sought a one to two year return on investment, ROI, for their infrastructure investments.
THE SOLUTION: Fast, affordable Internet is a basic necessity like electricity. In order to serve everyone, the Internet, like roads, must be open access. Rather than ISPs owning the physical infrastructure, the customer service layer and content, we can separate these. #OpenAccess fiber will be funded with public/private partnerships as a public good or Commons. As it turns out, fiber optic cable, which lasts over 30 years, is a secure investment that is already attracting investors eager to diversify their portfolios. Public/private partnerships will create the foundation for a competitive ISP market that serves everyone and delivers service that doesn’t suck.
DrRon Suarez is a Latinx, quadriplegic who relies on smart devices with Internet access as “prosthetics” to live a happy life and run the Broadband Institute Foundation in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
