Report Emphasizes Need For Robust Wired and Wireless Networks

“Broadband deployment is a critical part of restoring our economy, improving educational opportunity, reducing health care costs, and saving energy, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions through implementation of smart grid technology.”

So says a new and comprehensive report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), authored by Nathan Newman, director of Economic and Technology Strategies LLC and founder of Tech-Progress.org. Newman’s paper is “an analysis of the broadband ecosystem, the strategic importance of broadband deployment and the role that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger could play in closing the broadband gaps in the United States.”

The report details the inequalities American consumers often face when trying to access high-speed wired and wireless networks. As Newman writes:

“Widespread broadband deployment has the potential to yield benefits to tens of millions of Americans. However, the United States—which largely invented the technologies undergirding the Internet—has fallen behind many other nations in both access to and the speed of our broadband connections, and there is no clear path to bridging the current digital divide.”

One route toward greater access, and economic growth, is the still-possible AT&T/T-Mobile merger. “Policymakers in the U.S. have a limited number of tools at their disposal to influence broadband deployment ... They could use the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile to put private capital to work to achieve a public objective ...to build out next-generation advanced wireless networks to 55 million more people than under the current projection.

As Newman says:

“An AT&T/T-Mobile combination could allow AT&T to spread the costs of rural wireless infrastructure over a larger asset base and use cost reductions from a more efficient use of spectrum to build out its next-generation 4G LTE network to 97 percent of the country.”

With the rise of smartphones, tablets, and other devices, wireless traffic has exploded and is expected to grow by 2000 percent in the coming years. Newman outlines a number of ways that wireless companies and policymakers can respond to the imminent spectrum crunch, including building more robust wired networks for wireless backhaul and offloading more traffic onto unlicensed Wi-Fi networks and wired networks. Newman emphasizes the interrelationship between robust wired and wireless networks in the 21st century communications system.

He also presents a dynamic view of the wireless ecosystem that includes not only network operators but also wireless application and service providers. In addition to the telecom carriers, new technologies like Skype and Google Voice, plus smartphones and their applications shift the locus of market power in the wireless industry.

Public policy plays in a critical role in strengthening our communications systems. Policymakers “need a better understanding of an emerging spectrum crisis in which excessive congestion in use of wireless services effectively could deny all communities full ability to access the benefits of wireless technology.”

The benefits of robust wired and wireless networks (Nathan Newman, EPI, Nov. 30, 2011)

EPI releases The Benefits of Robust Wired and Wireless Networks (press release, EPI, Nov. 30, 2011)

The jobs impact of telecom investment (Ethan Pollack, EPI, May 31, 2011)