This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/are-fast-internet-speeds-a-right-in-wisconsin/

When state legislative Republicans pressed the pause button on state taxpayer funding for broadband expansion, they offered an opportunity to reflect on intertwining questions.

When and why did bringing internet access to every home and business in Wisconsin become the sole province of government, rather than the marketing mission of established private internet providers? And is there a case to be made that the cost of the mission is worth the economic, educational and societal goals?

Even a cursory look will tell you the decisive tipping point from private to public was the federal funding hurricane of so-called COVID-19 emergency spending bills. The CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act have pumped $175 million into the state’s broadband program over the past three years. In the four previous years from 2014-17 the total was less than $4 million, according to data collected by the Public Service Commission.

And even without the $750 million Republicans lifted from Gov. Evers’ proposed budget, President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expected to pump somewhere between $700 million and $1.1 billion more into the state’s broadband kitty.

For the past three years and for probably at least the next three, internet companies have been and will be chasing huge sums of federal dollars rather than investing their own.

We have reported in detail on the shortcomings of the federal and state government spending for broadband expansion and that those problems are national in scope. But the legacy media’s assumption that broadband is a huge problem to be fixed only by huge spending ignores important context.

According to Federal Communications Commission mapping as of June 8, 100% of the 5,892,539 people in the state have at least some broadband internet access.

Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last year asked that the standard for broadband speed, currently 25 megabits per second for downloads and three for uploads, be increased to 100 megabits per second for download time and 20 megabits per second for upload time.

At the 100/20 speed, 85.5% of the population has access, according to the FCC.

That minimum broadband speed of 25/3, which allows for all basic internet functions, including video and audio streaming and some gaming, has not been changed.  But the higher, more expensive 100/20 speed was the base used in calculating the $42.5 billion allocated for rural broadband expansion, called the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, in the infrastructure bill.

Cost estimates for setting the higher, more expensive standard for the state and the rest of the country have varied wildly.

Despite three years of a federal cash infusion and dozens of plans for expansion projects across the state, the Public Service Commission claims 650,000 Wisconsinites have no internet access and another 650,000 cannot afford the service, access or not.

The Commission contends there are 7,000 dead zones in the state not on an FCC broadband map.

A year ago, the Commission estimated that the state could finally be connected for $1.8 billion. Rebecca Cameron Valcq, chairperson of the commission, amended that, saying “Nobody really knows. Everything is really just a very educated guess because of things like the supply chain, labor shortages, all sorts of obstacles.”

The cocktail napkin math, assuming the $1.8 billion doesn’t change and the 650,000 number is accurate (both are questionable), says the state would spend $2,769.23 per person to complete the job.

Going forward, it is estimated that it costs about $80,000 a mile to install fiber optic wire for broadband service. There aren’t nearly enough customers in rural areas to break even.

“It costs the same to build a fiber-optic route mile, whether you have 100,000 customers or 10 and so that’s one of the challenges that I think local municipal areas that are smaller, face,” Drew Peterson, senior VP of corporate affairs for TDS Telecom, says.

Meanwhile, satellite internet service is growing. Elon Musk’s Starlink, a network of 3,000 satellites launched through his SpaceX program, topped 1 million subscribers worldwide by the end of 2022 after starting the year with 145,000. China is developing a competing satellite network.

Rarely estimated is the scope of the actual need for the service. Even if you were to accept the Commission’s estimate that 11% of the population in the state has no access, there is 7% of the population that simply does not use the internet, according to a Pew Research survey.

A quarter of all adults ages 65 and older never go online and 14% of adults with a high school education or less do not use the internet, according to the survey.

Most Americans get their internet from a cellphone, whose providers boast of blanketed coverage everywhere in Wisconsin and the US. In 2021, 75% of adults in the US had a desktop or a laptop, 97% own at least one cellphone and 85% have a smartphone, according to a Pew survey.

That same year, the state Department of Natural Resources survey found that households had 9.3 million cellphones, nearly two for every man, woman and child in the state. There were an estimated 8.3 million computers, including desktops, laptops and tablets and 7.6 million televisions.

Every one of these surveys makes clear that it’s geography or topography rather than race and gender that determines internet service or technology ownership.

The same is true for how these modern information gathering tools are used to know what’s going on in the world. More than 80% of the adults surveyed by Pew last year said they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet.

In the same survey, Americans who often get news from television decreased, from 40% in 2020 to 31% in 2022. The numbers for getting radio news often dropped from 16% to 13% and from 10% to 8% for print over the same period. (There is a detailed demographic breakdown provided by Pew.)

Nearly 70% of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps or search engines; 65% on Google. Nearly 55% say they get news from social media, and 22% at least sometimes from podcasts.

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

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