Thread by @doctorow

As an idea, Broadband-as-a-Human-Right has followed the familiar path (misattributed to Gandhi): "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then you win," pattern.

pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/med…

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But the pandemic has made the notion concrete and urgent for obvious reasons: during lockdown, if you have you internet, you're disconnected from the world - education, employment, health, family, romance. Lawmakers are taking notice.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/13/mal…

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America has the slowest, least available, most expensive broadband in the developed world. And when Frontier filed for bankruptcy, we learned way. Monopolists carriers deliberately choose not to roll out profitable fiber to millions of households.

eff.org/deeplinks/2020…

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That's right, Frontier chose to leave BILLIONS on the table because the investment would take 10 years to earn out, and the analysts that controlled their share prices hate >5yr investments, and Frontier's execs' mostly get paid in stocks.

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Frontier's worst-served customers are rural, with no alternative (Frontier's filing book these customers as an "asset" because they can be charged arbitrarily high sums and provided with substandard service thanks to the lack of competition.

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This isn't the first time this happened. When "electrification" was bringing prosperity to America, rural households were neglected and abused by power companies. During the New Deal, they formed electrification co-ops that worked with things like the TVA to extend service.

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These co-ops later became "telephone co-ops" that provided connectivity to America's underserved, rural populations. Today, the surviving electrification and telephone co-ops are performing techno-economic miracles.

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In the US's poorest predominantly-white county, a surviving co-op got fiber to EVERY household, using a mule called "Ol Bub" to get to the most inaccessible homes. The county was flooded with $25/h telework jobs - tech support, education and more.

newyorker.com/tech/annals-of…

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The connection between electrification and broadband was first made, AFAIK, by the brilliant @scrawford, whose " Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It" is essential reading.

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030022…

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Meanwhile, the idea continues to spread, fuelled by the revealed truths of pandemic: in a new @TechCrunch column, @KevinTFrazier (Harvard Public Policy/Berkeley Law) makes the case for a Universal Basic Internet.

techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cov…

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Frazier's proposal is explicitly based on the FDR-era Rural Electrification Administration, whose two polestars were employing and empowering community members, and teaching people "how to make the most of their newfound light."

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REA didn't create electricity users, it created electricity OWNERS. Just as the Depression "showed rural America had been left in the dark, COVID-19 has revealed the plight of the millions of Americans left offline."

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The pandemic and the Frontier bankruptcy make the private sector's inadequacy and unsuitability to provide broadband undeniable. We wouldn't let AT&T decide where our interstate highways go - your ability to get connected shouldn't be at their whim, either.

eof/