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EFF Legal Intern Emma Hagemann contributed to the corresponding comment.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has big decisions to make in its effort to implement the new federal broadband infrastructure program. If done right, and with the right state policies in place, a great number of Americans will obtain access to multi-gigabit broadband in the coming years.
EFF sent comments to the NTIA urging them to fund the deployment of open access fiber networks, properly vet all projects seeking funding, and provide assistance to motivated local and regional entities who want to build their own open-access networks. This framework should allow the NTIA to best distribute the more than $48 billion of broadband funding allotted through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), and deliver to all Americans access to reliable, affordable, high-speed broadband.
The NTIA Should Fund Open Access Fiber Networks
The law calls for establishing projects that (1) provide service that meets speed, latency, reliability, and consistency requirements, and (2) can easily scale speeds over time to meet evolving needs. As such, the NTIA must consider not what is good enough for today, but what meets the standards of 20, 30, or even 50 years into the future.
After years of technical research, and comparison to all other last mile options, EFF has concluded that open access fiber is the ideal model and transmission medium. It not only provides every American with service that is future-proofed in speed, consistency, and capacity, but does so in a cost-efficient, self-sustaining manner.
Fiber-optic cable infrastructure, unlike the coaxial cables commonly used today, or the now-obsolete copper phone lines, is the only infrastructure that can be upgraded to achieve the perfo
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Read the original article: How the NTIA Can Fund Future-Proof Open Access Fiber