Professor Concerned About Non-Deployment Funds, Rural Connectivity
The uncertainty around the fate of BEAD non-deployment funds keeps Penn State telecommunications professor Chris Ali up at night, he said Wednesday during an online Q&A with Fiber Broadband Association CEO Gary Bolton. “I don’t like it that these funds are being used, a little bit, as ransom in certain situations,” Ali said. Those funds are needed to “fill the gaps” in BEAD funding and should be used for affordability programs and workforce training, he said. “I love, love, love to see more states, more entities fight tooth and nail to keep a hold on this money that is legally and morally theirs.” A host of state legislators from all over the U.S. urged NTIA to release the funds in a letter Tuesday (see 2512090057).
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Ali also said that government leaders shouldn’t forecast specific dates for closing the digital divide, because it involves complex issues such as poverty and racism. “These are the communities that are constantly marginalized, and so I would love for state leaders to speak with a little bit more nuance.” Broadband maps are notoriously inaccurate, so leaders should stay away from making claims about universal connectivity, Ali said. The idea of providing underserved communities with services that don’t provide sufficient connectivity, just to give them something, is how the digital divide is maintained, he argued. “Smart technology, smart rural town technology, smart infrastructure requires that crucial fiber-optic component." Rural and indigenous communities are getting “bottlenecked” in many areas by the lack of fiber offerings, he added. That “replicates a very colonial way of thinking about infrastructure, which has been one of the one of the plagues of telecommunications in this country.”