PROVIDENCE – Cox Communications on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state, accusing R.I. Commerce Corp. of using “flawed data” and mismanaging the rollout of a $108 million broadband expansion plan.
The 33-page complaint filed in Providence Superior Court claims R.I. Commerce used flawed data to “build a taxpayer-subsidized and duplicative high-speed broadband internet in affluent areas of Rhode Island."
“Commerce is relying on inaccurate mapping resulting from a flawed process to support their agenda. We know their analysis is flawed because Cox provides high-speed internet access to the very locations and areas they say are underserved,” Stephanie Federico, vice president of public and government affairs for Cox Communications, said in a statement.
Rhode Island received $108 million as part of the $42 billion that Congress set aside in the 2021 federal infrastructure law to expand high-speed internet access across the nation.
In the lawsuit, Cox claims federal data shows that 99.3% of Rhode Island has access to high-speed internet, with only 0.7% of the state “unserved,” with less than 25 megabits per second for download speeds.
Cox is challenging a proposed map put out by Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s administration that shows 30,000 underserved locations that don’t have high-speed internet access, including homes in some of Rhode Island’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including in Barrington on Rumstick Road and Nayatt Point, and mansions along Ocean Drive in Newport.
Cox said the state data is wrong because some of the locations the state listed are Cox customers and individual testing showed they had high-speed internet access.
“Unfortunately, the Commerce plan and flawed mapping focus on parts of the state like Barrington, Newport and Jamestown at the expense of Central Falls, Woonsocket and Providence,” Federico said in her statement. “This program may not have gotten a lot of attention, but mayors and elected officials in urban core communities should be concerned because their constituents are getting left behind.”
Cox claims in the lawsuit that it was also asked to pay $52,000 to process an Access to Public Records request to get Rhode Island’s data used for the map.
R.I. Commerce spokesperson Matthew Touchette told Providence Business News on Monday that ”Rhode Island Commerce has not read the complaint, as we have not yet been served."
McKee spokesperson Olivia DaRocha deferred questions to R.I. Commerce when asked for a comment from the governor’s office.
The lawsuit follows a petition for a declaratory order that Cox filed against R.I. Commerce, which was detailed in a July 6 legal filing by R.I. Commerce. Cox had requested additional time to challenge the state's broadband plan, according to a letter that accompanied the filing, citing concerns with testing requirements and a public records request it filed with R.I. Commerce.
"To submit a challenge under the current Rhode Island Broadband Challenge Process, [Cox] would need to run 105,000 tests (75% of 140,000) three times, for a total of 315,000 tests," Stephen Iannazzi, director of government affairs for the broadband provider, wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Elizabeth M. Tanner, which was included in the nearly 500-page document.
The state's requirements are "significantly different and exponentially more labor intensive than every other state where Cox offers high speed internet," Iannazzi wrote. "Requiring Cox to visit thousands of locations three times and test simultaneously would be extremely expensive and burdensome even if it were possible."
In response, Brian Thorn, director of broadband strategy for R.I. Commerce, said that Cox's counter-proposal is "effectively a rewritten testing standard based on Cox's policy preferences."
Thorn added that "the provisions for which [Cox seeks] a waiver were subject to rigorous scrutiny by NTIA [National Telecommunications and Information Association], and they were approved only after Rhode Island made significant and required changes to ensure that they are fair and designed to produce the most accurate Rhode Island broadband map possible."
(UPDATE: Adds additional information and comment from Cox and R.I. Commerce in paragraphs 12-16.)