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Cell tower

President Trump has signed a pair of executive orders billed equally protecting and supporting rural populations with express access to internet services and less-sure connectivity. This, in and of itself, is a fine affair. Nosotros're strong proponents of the idea that anybody deserves affordable broadband service, including people who don't live in or near cities. The problem with President Trump's executive orders, notwithstanding, is they don't actually do much to promote his stated goal. To sympathise why, let's wait at both a little more closely.

The first order, "Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of the Interior," instructs the Secretary of the Interior to develop a plan "to support rural broadband evolution and adoption by increasing access to tower facilities and other infrastructure assets managed by the Department of the Interior."

That's a fine rule, as far as it goes, but it's but going to assistance those parts of the land where the lack of access to federal land is the reason ISPs oasis't previously built out service. It may well be this is a problem in western states, where federal ownership of land is college, or in odd corner cases in the more eastern states, but it'due south a highly targeted set up. It also focuses specifically on access to tower facilities, with a secondary mention of everything else, implying that wireless towers, not wireline installations, are the focus of the gild. The 2d EO is even more explicit in suggesting wireless service is equivalent to wireline.

The second order is the "Presidential Executive Social club on Streamlining and Expediting Requests to Locate Broadband Facilities in Rural America," and it does even less. This executive social club declares the authorities volition continue to enforce section 6409 of the Middle Form Tax Relief and Job Creation Human action of 2012. This particular section of the constabulary deals with rules governing access to wireless advice sites and mandates the employ of a common ready of forms for companies that wish to apply for permission to build on a given site, or need to change an existing site in some way.

Once again, this is a reasonable declaration to brand. Only announcing yous're going to go along enforcing an already-existing law does nothing to improve the state of rural broadband. In fact, these two executive orders could make the problem worse by giving rhetorical cover to the FCC.

The FCC Already Wants to Redefine Broadband

Both of Trump's executive orders begin with like verbiage nigh the demand for strong broadband in rural areas. This quote, from the 2d executive order, is representative of the manner both documents talk almost the topic: "It shall therefore be the policy of the executive co-operative to use all viable tools to accelerate the deployment and adoption of affordable, reliable, modern high-speed broadband connectivity in rural America."

Once again, there's goose egg intrinsically wrong with that sentence and it echoes arguments we've made at ET. But i of the goals of Ajit Pai, the current FCC chair, is to redefine what constitutes broadband. The FCC'south current broadband definition simply refers to wireline/stock-still service and mandates a 25Mbps down/3Mbps up connection. Under Ajit Pai, the FCC wants to define a new, significantly slower standard for wireless service (10Mbps down/1Mbps upwards). Having access to either type of service would now count every bit broadband, fifty-fifty though wireline/stock-still service is vastly cheaper, scales to multiple devices without additional costs beyond a Wi-Fi router, doesn't incur the aforementioned penalties for using more than one'due south allotted corporeality of bandwidth per month, and offers far faster service.

Just even if the price of service was identical, the wireless service being delivered isn't. For the purposes of this comparing, I've used PCMag's Fastest Mobile Networks wireless speed tests, with the Southwest continuing in for rural America. First, here are the measured, averaged results for the entire country:

Nationwide, the top three carriers are, on boilerplate, pretty close together. Network reliability and the percent of uploads and downloads that average above 2Mbps and 5Mbps respectively are also reasonably solid. Now compare these scores with the results for the Southwest area in detail:

Southwest

Every unmarried metric drops off compared to the nationwide values. Dart takes a hammering hither, but they aren't the only company to encounter steep reductions in various metrics. And proceed in listen, the Southwest geographical surface area all the same includes cities, interstates, and towns where connectivity volition naturally be better. Out in rural areas, cell phones just tin't be assumed to 'merely piece of work,' as anyone who has ever lived or visited ane can attest. Interstate service is typically fine, but bulldoze 10 or even five miles away from one and the drib-off is often severe. AT&T'southward 93 percent reliability rate looks pretty good, simply it still ways the company's southwest network is twice as unreliable as the balance of the country. And since the tests focus on cities, non the middle of random windswept prairies, the Southwest data gear up equally shown to a higher place could be better, on average, than what your typical rural customer will encounter in the starting time place.

When and then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed the 25/3 wireline broadband standard, ISPs threw a fit, despite the fact that their own marketing told people 10Mbps connections were merely fit for online shopping. You lot hear no such racket from wireless companies nearly a possible x/1 standard, perhaps because they're by and large delivering it anyway. Aside from Sprint, whose patented wireless stone+invisible string method of providing service has improved markedly over the years, but still lags the Big Three, everyone is pushing far above the the 10/1 standard.

That could be read equally proof that the standard isn't necessary, because everyone gets above 10/one anyway. But having lived in rural areas and fought with cellular service providers for a number of years, I encounter the state of affairs differently. The x/one standard is a giveaway to wireless companies because information technology sets the bar so depression, y'all can evangelize a miserable experience and nevertheless claim adequate service. Download and upload speeds aren't the sum total of what makes an ISP proficient or bad, either. There'south questions of reliability, latency, and sustained speeds as well, and wireline broadband tends to be more than consistent on every metric.

If the definition of broadband is lowered to include anybody who has at least a 10/1 wireless connection, information technology'll atomic number 82 to a steep driblet in the number of US citizens who lack broadband service. If the CDC defines obesity every bit "Just applicative to people weighing more 500 pounds," it'll likewise lead to a steep drop in the number of obese people in the United States. Same principle. Since the text of both executive orders refers specifically to using the powers of the federal regime to increase the number of people with access to broadband, and changing the definition of broadband makes more people have it, everyone in Washington DC can pat each other on the back for their efforts.

President Trump'southward executive orders may aid The states citizens whose access to cellular broadband has been stymied past land use issues and we support that outcome. But they aren't going to do anything to help anyone else, and they offering rhetorical embrace for the FCC and US government to eventually claim victory past definitional shift equally opposed to a real comeback in anyone's internet service.