Viewpoints
All indicators for more fiber to the unconnected and unserved are looking well on the infrastructure side, with substantial federal funding moving into towns and communities across the country and more being lined up for availability in the second half of the year.
By: Gary Bolton, President and CEO, Fiber Broadband Association
Projects currently underway with established federal programs include the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Department of Treasury’s $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPR), the FCC Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), U.S. Department of Agriculture’s RUS Reconnect Fund, and many state funding programs.
Most importantly, NTIA is now approving more Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Volume II Proposals, adding six states and the District of Columbia over the past 30 days.
Kansas, Nevada, and West Virginia were approved in April, with D.C., Delaware, Washington state, and Pennsylvania approved in mid-May. Louisiana was the first back in December 2023. While there has been some consternation at the initial pace of approvals once Louisiana was announced, it is understandable given that BEAD is a unique federal program delivering a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation’s telecommunication infrastructure. We expect the pace of BEAD Volume II Proposal approvals to continue to increase as NTIA staff and states gain experience in working with eachother.
Approval of BEAD Volume II Proposals opens the door for states to start accepting grant applications and get the process of moving money into network construction by the end of the year, if not sooner. But the federal government is not the only source of funding, with private investments complementing and sometimes supplementing network construction. AT&T’s Gigapower joint venture with Blackrock last year, and T-Mobile’s recent announcement with EQT to acquire Lumos Fiber and migrate it to a wholesale model, are indicative of two key factors that underline the importance of fiber in the near future and long term.
Fiber is the key component in deploying high-speed 5G services across the nation for cellular towers, enabling smartphones and fixed wireless services in towns and neighborhoods. Second, the process of building and supporting 5G provides infrastructure necessary to go beyond towers and small cells and into the realm of expanding fiber services to homes and businesses with an economic growth path to 100 Gbps and beyond.
Increasing public and private investment is moving the equipment side of the fiber ecosystem back to growth after last year’s purchasing slowdown, due to pandemic-driven stockpiling by network builders because of initial supply chain interruptions triggering caution and long-lead ordering. We expect this surge to clear existing inventory backlog and swing the equipment sector back into positive growth in the second half of this year.
Building a future-proof network requires the ability to affordably grow, with fiber the only viable alternative to provide that growth. Gigabit and multi-gigabit symmetrical services are already available to the half of America that has access to fiber broadband, enabling the fast and low-latency speeds people need for today’s entertainment, employment, education, and healthcare applications. As these applications grow and are improved over the next decade by virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, AI, and emerging spatial computing, broadband infrastructure will need to have immense scalability and durability to keep pace.
Fixed wireless and DOCSIS technologies require continuous outdoor infrastructure upgrades to increase speeds and capacity, with no clear end in sight if either expects to catch up to today’s fiber speeds. Fiber broadband to each subscriber, by contrast, is the only communications technology that will support decades of speed and capacity increases with no upgrades to the outdoor plant, unlike cable’s continued dependence upon amplifiers, splitters, and truck rolls for marginal improvements on aging coax plant. It’s no surprise that new “cable” builds are end-to-end fiber.
Earlier this year, the FCC recognized that the nation needs faster speeds for everyday usage. The revelation came after the FCC raised its broadband definition from 25 Mbps/3 Mbps – a number that has been woefully insufficient for years, as other federal agencies have recognized – to 100 Mbps/20 Mbps in March with a “long-term speed goal” of 1 Gbps/500 Mbps. Both are steps in the right direction, with fiber easily delivering the long-term goal today. With data demands increasing by 25 percent annually, fiber is the only logical and multi-generational solution for the nation’s broadband needs for today and the tomorrows to come.
Looking ahead to Fiber Connect 2024
As the nation has embraced fiber, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) has continued to grow in parallel. The FBA now has over 500 member companies on our rolls, and we continue to increase our professional staff. We expect to have over 4,000 people at our annual Fiber Connect 2024 event and meeting in Nashville, Tenn., July 28-31, and the exhibit hall sold out nearly a year in advance.
The FBA has an amazing agenda planned at Fiber Connect that has something for everyone within the fiber broadband ecosystem. There are new content programs, expanded networking opportunities, and a fresh take on some of the more traditional activities, with this year’s theme, “Accelerating Our Fiber Future,” Fiber Connect has become the premier Fiber Broadband event in the world, and we are continuing to raise the bar in terms of content and quality.
Our Regional Fiber Connect events are bringing in record attendance as communities around the nation gear up for BEAD funding. Future Regional Fiber Connect events will be in Deer Valley, Utah, in June; Des Moines, Iowa, in September; and Albuquerque, N.M., in November. But our reach is not limited to the continental U.S. We have added our first Canadian regional workshop in Alberta on October 9. Our LATAM Chapter has held the first of its three Fiber Connect LATAM conferences in Puerto Rico on April 9 and will follow with events in Peru in June and Panama in October, with each event followed by two days of training and certification programs.
Faster, future-proof infrastructure is only a part of closing the digital divide. Households who can’t afford a broadband plan need a helping hand for broadband access since it is a necessary and vital part of today’s society. COVID taught everyone the necessity of broadband as an essential element for accessing health care, employment, government resources, and education.
Unfortunately, the FCC Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) shut down this spring because its funding ran out. Over 23 million families were enrolled in the program, which provided a necessary broadband subsidy to those who needed it. Bipartisan and bicameral efforts are underway in Congress to appropriate more funding to continue ACP support through the end of 2024, but given budgetary concerns, this is likely to be an uphill battle.
But ACP may affect more than those 23 million families. It remains to be seen how the lack of an ACP-type program might affect the sustainability of new fiber networks to reach the unserved and underserved in years to come. The FBA and its partners will continue to support efforts for restarting the ACP to assist those who most need it.
As the industry’s voice, FBA continues to put a hard focus on research. Recently released studies and whitepapers include:
- “Fiber Installation Constraints Study” (FBA/RVA), a survey of 238 small to mid-sized network operators on the current concerns and challenges they face.
- “Fiber Broadband Scalability and Longevity” whitepaper (FBA Technology Committee) finds that fiber has no known expiration date, unlike the problems with copper and coax.
- “Fiber Deployment Annual Cost Study” (FBA/Cartesian) detailing fiber deployment cost elements found that costs for aerial deployments range from $4 to $9 per foot, and buried costs ranging from $11.30 to $24.13 per foot.
- “Measures to Define and Deploy Trusted Fiber” (FBA Trusted Working Group) outlined recommended supply chain and security factors to ensure the fiber service providers and government purchases get the most unswerving medium possible.
Doing fiber right the first time makes economic sense and is also a national security concern. Deploying policies and procedures for acquiring trusted fiber is a necessity to avoid difficult and expensive “rip and replace” in the future, as we are seeing in the rural cellular sector today. Fiber’s longevity has already exceeded 35 years since the first deployments, and the average lifetime is expected to be much longer based on the materials, technologies, and manufacturing processes used to produce modern, high-quality optical fiber.
Workforce development continues to be a priority for FBA, given the need for tens of thousands of new technicians over the next five years. The FBA is at 51 percent of its target this year and continues to expand availability of the OpTIC Path program to all 56 states and territories. Over 300 students have graduated from OpTIC Path™ to date, and we anticipate having nearly 1,100 graduates by year-end.
The investments of BEAD and private monies should provide fiber to nearly all U.S. households within the next five years, setting the stage for a “Rainbow Age” of better health care, economic growth in cities and rural areas alike, and creating millions of new jobs. Increased fiber availability will foster the era of mainstream quantum computing and provide new sensing capabilities we couldn’t have imagined when the first data connections came to life. Hopefully, you’ll join us in Nashville this July to discuss fiber’s growing opportunities.
