A National Broadband Plan Needs A National Fiber Plan

Too often broadband policy debates get caught up in attempts to be technology neutral, losing sight of the significance of individual technologies, the most significant of which is fiber.

When you think of the Internet, you should think of fiber as the vast majority of the interconnected networks that make up the Internet are fiber.

When we talk about middle mile and backhaul networks, those are most often fiber.

When remote broadband networks complain about not having affordable access to the Internet, what that really means is having affordable access to the long-haul fiber running through or near their communities.

When anyone's discussing the next generation of wireless access, that means finding a way to get fiber to every wireless tower.

The same holds true for most next generation wireline networks, which generally all rely on laying fiber ever closer to homes to deliver higher speeds.

And when you talk about the next generation of healthcare and education, those conversations presume the presence of reliable, high capacity, symmetrical access capable of handling lots of simultaneous usage, which only fiber can truly deliver.

A national fiber plan encompasses all of this. It recognizes that you can't have an effective national broadband plan without a comprehensive national fiber plan because fiber is so critical to delivering truly next generation broadband.

A national fiber plan should look at all of America's fiber assets--be they public, private, or somewhere in between--and consider them as a homogeneous pool, as America's network, as the primary veins and arteries of America's digital ecosystem.

A national fiber plan should set high standards for America's network, demanding that it be universal, reliable, and affordable. It should put aside who owns what and look at the capabilities of all the networks as one, and in so doing be able to find the holes and weak spots where access isn't universal, reliable, or affordable.

With the problem areas identified the national fiber plan can then look at who owns what and identify the best way to leverage existing resources to fill those holes in America's network.

A national fiber plan should set standards for which buildings do need fiber today. Putting aside the argument over whether homes need fiber, a national fiber plan would clearly state that all schools, hospitals, libraries, and other community anchor institutions where lots of people can be expected to be using the network simultaneously need fiber, and the plan should include a specific implementation strategy for getting them all wired.

A national fiber plan should strive to make sure that all businesses everywhere at least have the option of getting fiber, lest they end up having to move their business out of their community in order to get the connectivity they need to grow.

In facilitating this deployment of fiber to community anchor institutions, a national fiber plan should have a mechanism to ease the deployment of fiber to wireless towers, because without a robust wireline connection you can't take advantage of the all the capabilities of new wireless technologies.

A national fiber plan should also make sure that middle-mile and backhaul fiber networks are competitive enough in all areas to keep prices down, and if prices are too high then there needs to be ways to bring them down, either by inducing competition or regulating prices. Otherwise even if we get high capacity broadband networks built out to homes, they won't be able to offer up their full capacity at an affordable price to consumers.

In creating our national broadband plan, we can't afford to ignore the importance of fiber to everything that we want to accomplish. We can't allow "technology neutrality" to get in the way of sound, effective policymaking. This isn't about picking winners or losers, it's about creating the best possible national broadband plan. And to do that we need a comprehensive national fiber plan.