Congress May Cut Wireless Out of Infrastructure Measure

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

The wireless industry is in danger of missing out on a share of the trillion-dollar infrastructure legislation currently being considered by Congress, Jonathan Adelstein, president and CEO of the Wireless Infrastructure Association, said during his keynote address at the South Wireless Summit yesterday. Data speeds defined in the broadband infrastructure package within the measure would make fiber optics the de facto option for the government-funded infrastructure plan.

The Accessible, Affordable, Internet for All Act, which provides funds to build broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved communities, is poised to be included this year as part of the infrastructure bill. However, it encourages speeds of 100 Mbps upload and 100 Mbps download, Inside Towers reported. 

“There’s a problem with that for the wireless industry,” Adelstein said. “We can often do 100 Mbps download, but we can very rarely, if ever, do 100 Mbps upload.”

The people supporting fiber were well meaning, Adelstein said, but federal officials rarely wade into the technology waters to declare one to be the winner, thus creating a statutory standard.

“It is my hope that the U.S. Senate will talk to the sensible people and switch to a flexible approach,” Adelstein said. “One of the biggest negatives is ‘today’s gigabit is yesterday’s telegraph’. The wireless industry is going to have those speeds in a few years, but Congress is already going to have that funding out of the door and we’re not going to be a part of it.”

Adelstein said the irony is the American Jobs plan talks about adding 2.9 million jobs, while the wireless industry has studies that show 5G will add 4.5 million jobs. Another irony of building fiber to rural America is it would be a return to the days of having to go back to the house to make a phone call, he added.

“Here’s what you get with wireless: mobility aligned to the cloud,” Adelstein said. “Without wireless, you don’t get agricultural precision and you don’t get communications with firefighting crews.”

Wireless can be built out at about one tenth the cost of fiber and a lot faster, as well, Adelstein noted. “What do you think can built out faster: fiber to the home or wireless?” he said. “Get us fiber to the tower and we will get wireless to the people a lot faster. It could be 10 years, maybe 20 years, until fiber gets out to every rural stretch of America.”

The move to funding fiber in rural America also flies in the face of the current trend where people are cutting the cord and relying on cell phones for their primary communications, Adelstein said. 

“So what happens if you put only a wireline connection for those people, a lot of them low income, in rural America?” Adelstein said. “They will have to buy a new fiber connection. It makes no sense to try to make broadband more affordable by making people buy something they said they don’t want. That’s not what I consider affordability.”

By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.