New NARUC President Seeks 'Laser Focus' on Broadband Divide
NARUC is forming a task force to find answers to close the broadband gap between rural and urban areas, said NARUC President Brandon Presley in an interview this week. Broadband's “one of the biggest challenges in rural America today” and will be a major focus of NARUC's “Bridging the Divide” theme over the next year, said Presley, elected president this month (see 1911210039). The Democratic chairman of the Mississippi Public Service Commission also seeks to tighten the working relationship between state and FCC officials, he said.
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NARUC plans to write the task force's charter after Thanksgiving, Presley said. The group will work with the Telecom Committee but have a “laser focus” on broadband, he said. Membership will be limited to state commissioners, but industry and others will be invited to meetings to share ideas, he said. “The most important qualification for me is the interest and the aggressiveness in the approach to try to get this fixed.”
Presley doesn’t want “another study for the sake of having a study,” or “a task force just for the sake of having a task force,” he said, saying he wants “innovative solutions,” which could include developing ideas for state policies and sharing “approaches that some states are taking within other services that they regulate.”
One possibility is empowering rural electric cooperatives to provide broadband, said Presley, who supported a Mississippi bill that became state law earlier this year (see 1901300026). Since August, seven cooperatives have announced they'll bring fiber-to-the-home to all their members no matter where they live, as the state law requires, Presley said. That will cover more than 152,000 co-op members, he said. The commissioner is open to municipal broadband, but it raises a more political debate over whether government should get into a privatized service, he said.
The task force should strive for an “unbiased and honest-broker report,” said NARUC First Vice President Paul Kjellander. The Idaho Republican, who’s in line to be the next NARUC president, said the task force is a good way to build state commissioners’ broadband expertise. Many states don’t have regulatory jurisdiction over broadband, but Kjellander sees increasing "activity in states as they realize that if they want to get service into those last nooks and crannies of their state, they’re going to have to figure out a way to do it on their own."
Some states are throwing more weight into broadband, such as Utah shifting state USF support to broadband or Washington state using its general fund to support internet service, Kjellander said. “Mileage may vary” from state to state as to how much commissioners can do, he said. Idaho commissioners don’t have power to set policy, taking direction instead from the governor and legislators, but they're able to share pros and cons to help those policymakers make decisions, he said.
Funding remains a big challenge for spreading broadband, the NARUC leaders agreed. “Most of it’s just money,” said Kjellander. Presley said existing broadband definitions -- 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps up in some cases and 25/3 Mbps in others -- should be more forward-looking because people’s needs are ever-increasing. Maps and data collection also need improvement, he said.
Don’t view this as states' response to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, which NARUC criticized as having low state representation, Presley said. The task force is “an avenue to talk about these issues,” and “we would welcome the opportunity to work with” BDAC, he said. “We certainly don’t want to come out guns-a-blazing without having appropriate vetting of issues,” said Kjellander, who shared state and local concerns about BDAC representation. “We could be accused of the same thing.”
Presley hopes to improve the FCC-NARUC relationship, he said. It’s not “frayed,” but interested state members should be “on a first-name basis with the FCC,” he said. “States have a vital role to play because we are the front lines for consumers,” said Presley. They get many calls from constituents about areas without broadband, and are “eager” to pass that information to the FCC, he said. Particularly with Rural Digital Opportunity Fund support “rolling out next year, it’s going to be incumbent upon us and particularly” states that give eligible telecom carrier designations “to have a very close working relationship” with the commission, he said.
States will continue to “bristle” at “any perceived infringement upon state jurisdiction,” cautioned Presley. “But that doesn’t mean that dominates our relationship” or “overshadows the good we can to do together,” he said.
Another gap Presley would like to bridge is increasing partisanship in America, said Presley, who will be the lone Democrat at his three-member commission next year after the election of two Republican commissioners (see 1911060051). “What we try to do in Mississippi is put our partisan hats aside and figure out what will actually improve the daily lives of the people we represent.”
“We congratulate Chairman Presley on his new position and look forward to working with him on important issues like closing the digital divide,” an FCC spokesperson said.