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The legislative session has endedm and Governor Newsom is expected to sign into law S.B. 4 and A.B. 14. These bills stand as the final pieces of the state’s new broadband infrastructure program. With a now-estimated $7.5 billion assembled between federal and state funds, California has the resources it needs to largely close the digital divide in the coming years. This program allows local cities and counties to access infrastructure dollars to solve problems in their own communities along with empowering local private entities, rather than depend on large, private multi-nationals who aren’t willing to make the needed generational investment into infrastructure in most areas of the state.
EFF will explain below why local communities need to take charge, and how the new law will facilitate local choice in broadband. No state has taken this approach yet and departed from the old model of handing over all the subsidies to giant corporations. That’s why it’s important for Californians to understand the opportunity before them now.
Why it Has to be a Local Public, Private, or Public/Private Entity
If the bankruptcy of Frontier Communications has taught us anything, it is the following two lessons. First, large national private ISPs will forgo 21st-century fiber infrastructure in as many places they can to pad their short-term profits. Government subsidies to build in different areas do not change this behavior. Second, the future of broadband access depends on the placement of fiber optic wires. Fiber is an investment in long-term value over short-term profits. EFF’s technical analysis has also laid out why fiber optics is future-proof infrastructure by showing that no other transmission medium for broadband even comes close, which makes its deployment essential for a long-term solution.
AT&T and cable companies, such as Comcast and Charter, are going to try to take advantage of this progra
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Read the original article: How California’s Broadband Infrastructure Law Promotes Local Choice