Insanity is defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a unique outcome,” as defined by Albert Einstein.
Congress is taking this to a whole new level with its latest discussions about how to “fix” broadband internet implementation across the United States.
My 10th month working as a broadband advocate is this year. Seven of those years were spent representing Missouri’s 5th , House District as express representatives.  ,  , I was working on this topic as a community activist three times before being elected to office. Why?  ,  ? Because my area of the state was blessed with eight of Missouri’s top ten worst-served regions.  ,  , Why was that the situation? Major League internet service providers didn’t care whether we lived in Northeast Missouri, with the exception of a couple exceptions.  ,
Remember those times when says were at the mercy of online providers who treated us like provinces, extracting money and giving valuable little in return? I do, and I do. Everyone at the time was aware that the federal government, to its credit, had a hand in preventing economic growth and online education because of the absence of internet access.
However, what they did was flat bad.
It threw billion at the least expensive option instead of making significant investments in promising new technology. Instead of painstakingly examining the areas where high-speed online may be required, they took the easy way out and declared through “census stop strategy” that where one person out of 1.000 had high-speed internet, everyone did.  ,  , They knew that was horseshit but kept on throwing good money after bad. They instead of completely evaluating bids, rather applying the “reverse auction” method to a company that has become a cliche in the 21st-century economy. Reverse auctions make perfect sense when you are purchasing document napkins and toilet paper in large quantities for state offices but not for the supply of something as challenging as installing high-speed online.  ,
The end result of these efforts across the United States is an evil disaster that made it impossible for the people in rural and urban America who sorely needed high-speed internet to access it. The requests for billions of dollars were literally impossible to use fixed wireless internet in the places they “won,” and yet they were so low.
Fly-by-night and quite selfish online outfits bid so small to pump up market share, but accountable providers refused to even bet. The Federal government, not your typical small town town council, may have rejected those bids as impossible to fulfill. They doubled over round after round, adding more to their mistakes. Add to that “maps” that were” supplied” by companies who were loathe to share where all of their served names were located, and you have a great storm of god-awful losses across the United States.  ,
Then a really horrible epidemic broke out. COVID disrupted the way our quite world functioned. People who had worked for years stayed at home. College courses that had once met in person ended up being “remote”. Those who were tired but not with COVID looked for a way to prevent exposure to COVID and attempted to access what had been previously a gimmick — healthcare.
What we found all over the United States was that we did not have enough bandwidth internet to make any of those functions work on a green schedule.
People who had relied on the internet to post extended, important documents now had to be done through the internet to save video games and spree watch Netflix. Virtually all changed in a matter of days, and then we sent the learners home from school.  ,  , That was when all hell broke loose.
Businesses that paid ostentatically for the fastest internet suddenly sat at their computers and watched the” spinning group of death” as their systems failed to send emails, accept payment, or maintain their home pages. Because I was” the bandwidth guy,” I started receiving invites about this and inquired about what was going on with state governments.  ,  , The reply: From the top business hours of 9 a. m. to 4 p. m., 40 to 45 percent of all the speed in the position was being soaked up by Netflix and YouTube.  ,
No single anticipated that.  ,
The CARES system, which was put up in a rush and was mess, was the first step in the federal government’s direction. Then came the ARPA programme, which demonstrated that the federal government could really get it right by listening to everyone who yell obscenities about CARES.
What was at the bottom of one’s listing? online with wide coverage.
Federalism at its best was ARPA. The federal government left the heavy lifting of bandwidth application up to the state, sending huge sums of money to the states along the lines of wall offers. Where CARES had fallen like a hammer, ARPA landed like a bird.  ,
State swung into action, standing up bandwidth offices and money where none existed weeks before. In Missouri, we are currently investing well over$ 2.2 billion in broadband deployment money. When we first started 2020, we were at zero. By the end of 2020, which included the General Assembly leaving the senate for more than a month and then coming up and passing significant broadband legislation that saw three “no” votes out of more than 190 people, we were well on our approach to solving the problems that had plagued us for a decade.
We created a fair, open, and comprehensive broadband grant process. We passed common sense “guardrail” language in 2020 and once more in 2022 to ensure that our broadband funds would be directed at the right people.  ,  , We equipped every political subdivision in the state to erect “vertical real estate” ( towers and antennae ) to help increase the reach of fixed wireless assets. We put in place strict claw-back and snap site inspection regulations to ensure that broadband providers using taxpayer funds stayed on time and on budget. COVID sharpened our focus, prompting us to act right away while keeping responsibility in mind, and the federal government stayed out of our way.
So far, so good.  ,
Then the feds made the decision to invest in America for once in a lifetime through BEAD ( Broadband Equity Access and Deployment ), a$ 42.5 billion program designed to permanently bridge the digital divide.  ,
The length of time it has taken to deploy has been one of the most vocal criticisms of BEAD. On the face of it, that is a fair criticism. Contextualized, however, the criticism does not hold water. No one is asking why it took so long.  ,
The simple answer:  ,  , Maps.  ,
Over the years, the FCC released a number of poor maps.  ,  , They depended on providers to fill in the gaps. Because they used census block methodology, the maps were horribly inaccurate and clunky to use. We showed an FCC map for a committee member’s area of the state, which was essentially entirely green, at one of my interim broadband committee hearings in 2021.
He was so upset at that depiction that he jumped up, went to the video screen, pointed at the map and yelled,” That’s a lie” ! ,
His anger was well directed. Because the federal government had not cared, states were forced to enter the mapmaking industry. After a decade of pushing billions out to providers with precious little oversight and no appreciable urgency to “get it right”, the states had to reinvent the wheel to make sure statutes like ours that mandated stewardship were obeyed.  ,
We opened the maps up for a” challenge” process where those who knew they were unknown had the chance to “poke holes” in the outdated maps and give us, for the first time, accurate depictions of reality in order to ensure that the maps were accurate.  ,  , We also rejected the deeply flawed “census block” process in favor of the eminently sensible” community standard” . ,
By the way, this takes time. It is a lot.  ,  , Because the funds were unprecedented — Missouri is in line for$ 1.7 billion, the third most in the United States and the most per capita — we released multiple maps to make double sure that the funds would go to the people who needed it the most —” Worst First” . ,  , In other words, we were finally doing what the feds were supposed to be doing all the way along and abjectly failed to do.  ,
To the critics of the lengthy BEAD process, I have one thing to say: You can’t use federal incompetence as a shield and a sword. The states are in this boat due to lack of federal foresight, faulty implementation and next to zero oversight over the last decade and more.  ,
It gets worse.
The latest “brainstorm” in Congress is to start capping how much funding can be allocated to a particular site. This is a back-handed and awkward way to trash fiber, which is widely believed to be the best method for providing high-speed internet, and give satellite technology an inside look.  ,
I have really bad news for Congress. No trustworthy provider will suggest using fiber to serve areas where there isn’t a lot of sense and who has more than one brain cell to rub together. No state broadband office populated by intelligent life will approve of fiber proposals that are absurd.  ,
There is a justification for that. We are states, and we are much more committed to the issue we are addressing than the hideous “learn nothing, forget nothing” bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., who are determined to turn BEAD into a national production of” Groundhog Day.”
Even worse is that with the dawn of AI, what we are now calling” The Need for Speed” is more acute than ever. Over the past ten years, we have already witnessed a geometric progression in speed. Do you remember when 10: 1 was all the rage? In the next three to five years, my providers are telling me that the federal minimum speed of 100/100, which is currently the preferred but not mandated standard, will be obsolete. We will zoom past 500/500 to a gig in the process.  ,
What else is aimed at us in real time? The proliferation of data centers, which are leading to something we are now calling “power poverty”. The national grid’s power has been the subject of focus in the media, but the skyrocketing demands of AI computational requirements and data center power requirements have risen to the surface in full force. We have a serious issue as a country when Microsoft decides to recommission a dormant nuclear power plant to meet its AI needs.  ,
What does the phrase” Need for Speed” mean for those who are tethered to satellite internet or struggling with$ 30 monthly data plans? Latency issues are the least of your worries. The biggest worry is that the revolution in AI will leave you completely behind — just like the people I talk to today in areas of my state who have no broadband, cannot work from home, cannot make a telehealth Zoom call from home and cannot even make a 911 call work.  ,  ,  ,
Another fact that has escaped the attention of our devoted/satellite-enamored federal bureaucrats and alleged policymakers is that ( 1 ) what goes up must come down, and ( 2 ) China is launching military satellites almost as quickly as it is constructing coal-fired power plants.
What could they possibly do with “killer satellites”? How about destroying our extraterrestrial communication capability if we militarily invade Taiwan and blind ourselves to it? I sincerely doubt that the Chinese have developed lasers that can remove buried fiber cables anywhere in the United States, but I also have no doubt that they can send us “back to the Stone Age” by annihilating our GPS-based economy.  ,
Another thing to think about is the speed of satellites: they can only do what current and developing technologies allow them to. Since those assets were first deployed, Fixed wireless has had a lot of trouble delivering higher speeds.  ,  , Satellites are similarly situated, despite their recent improvements.  ,
On the other hand, fiber is unbreakable. Dig once, bury it and forget it about for 50 years. It uses glass as its conductor, which allows for unlimited speeds and can be upgraded over the course of decades.  ,
You get what you pay for.  ,
It’s no longer necessary to short-circuit BEAD. Now is not the time to deploy broadband internet on the cheap. We’ve already been there and done that, which is exactly what caused this mess to begin with.  ,
So, federal folks, please do us a favor. Stop trying to fix things, , You have already caused more harm than enough.  ,
Respect your proclaimed love for federalism. The issues you raised have been resolved by the states.  ,  , Admit it and get on with your lives.  ,
Government is not the solution to our problem, as Ronald Reagan so famously put it. Government is the problem” . ,  ,
The key to good advice is to take it.  ,
Leave us alone. BEAD by itself, not leave. For once, get out of the way and stay away.  ,
Those who still don’t have broadband internet access can only watch Groundhog Day on a screen rather than in person.
State Representative Louis Riggs
Hannibal, Missouri ,