Just days before President Joe Biden signed the landmark bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, with a historic $65 billion investment in broadband, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo urged her home state to use the money wisely.
With more than 97% of Rhode Islanders already having high-speed broadband on their doorsteps, Raimondo warned that states such as Rhode Island should “not spend this money overbuilding” because their needs “will be more around affordability.”
As a fiscally savvy former governor, Raimondo knows what she’s talking about. Rhode Island officials should follow her lead as they decide how to use the state’s $108 million in broadband funds from the infrastructure program. We must not “overbuild” what we don’t need – meaning we don’t need to build duplicative broadband networks where they already exist – while underinvesting in what we urgently need – assistance for folks who can’t afford internet service.
While there’s no question we need to focus on and connect the small number of households that do not have Internet available to them, Rhode Island’s real challenge is ensuring all households are realizing and harnessing the power of the Internet that’s available to them by prioritizing affordability and adoption.
First, we need to fill the gaps left by the expiration of the infrastructure program’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which lowered broadband service costs for eligible low-income households. At the program’s peak, 83,516 households – about one in five across the state – participated.
With $108 million in federal broadband funds earmarked for Rhode Island, state officials need to keep their eyes on the prize – affordability and adoption. But the state appears poised to do what Raimondo warned against – overbuild.
Sadly, the state’s 2023 Broadband and Digital Equity Strategic Plan gets the priorities wrong. At first, it accurately acknowledges that the state has “extensive broadband infrastructure, relative to other states” and “providers have made substantial investments in their networks.”
But the plan takes a wrong turn, questioning the accuracy of current broadband speeds, despite recent speed test reporting that identified Rhode Island with the fastest speeds in the U.S. To further complicate matters, the state issued its own broadband map in May that used a methodology that varies from federal guidance and other states, for that matter, on analyzing this speed data. The result: Several areas of the state with the highest income levels, which are already able to access high-speed service, are now classified as “underserved.”
Furthermore, in the plan, Rhode Island intends to spend 100% of these valuable one-time federal funds on the buildout of duplicative broadband infrastructure to locations that are already served at the expense of those who truly lack Internet access today and those who could use the help from much-needed broadband affordability and adoption programs. Once again, varying not only from federal guidance but also making Rhode Island the only state in the country focused on using its full allotment of funding on overbuilding.
Rhode Island taxpayers – and our most hard-pressed households – cannot afford to repeat the wasteful spending that plagued previous federal broadband efforts. We need to listen to the former governor and focus on the most urgent needs – affordability and adoption. And we should put aside pie-in-the-sky schemes based on dubious claims to justify overbuilding broadband in communities that are already connected while underserving the neediest among us who need a helping hand to connect in today’s digital world.
Lindsay Mark Lewis is the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank Progressive Policy Institute.
