- Broadband can’t be classified as a utility if the country wants money to keep flowing, said TIA’s CEO
- TIA is working with Google on global data center quality standards
- Workforce shortages, permitting and security are still big broadband issues
BROADBAND NATION EXPO, ORLANDO – Whether it’s private equity, corporate capital or government funding, there's a healthy stream of money flowing into broadband networks. TIA CEO Dave Stehlin argued that while broadband is “critical,” it’s not a utility – and it can’t ever be considered so if the country wants funding to keep rolling.
He noted 2024 alone saw U.S. operators spend over $90 billion on capital expenditures and network buildouts. Should regulators decide to classify broadband as a utility, “I expect the investment is going to drop significantly,” he warned during Tuesday’s opening keynote.
Stehlin drummed down that point harder by drawing a parallel to the electrical industry. The average consumer cost for a kilowatt hour of electricity has “almost double[d]” in the last 30 years from about $0.085 to $0.16, he said. In contrast, the cost of a megabit per second of broadband bandwidth has “dropped by 98%” in the same time period, from roughly $28/hour to $0.64.
The broadband industry has long fought against the utility designation. But there's a bit of fuel in its fiery rhetoric: the idea that continued broadband investment will be critical to support all the data centers that have to be built for AI workloads.
Data centers are “the new nerve centers of our networks,” Stehlin stated.
Stehlin announced TIA has teamed up with Google to work on a global data center quality initiative that will “establish minimum requirements and drive for continuous improvement using total quality management processes and best practices.”
These standards will be applied to “all the parts that make a data center operate,” he explained, from networking gear to IT equipment, security, cooling towers, generators, etc.
Potential for data center connectivity aside, Stehlin said there’s still “a lot to fix” in the broadband industry. The big issues are – no surprise – an ongoing workforce shortage and permitting.
“Most locales around the country still use paper to approve permits. That slows things down dramatically…then causes the people that are building a network to have a real issue with getting the workforce ready to be deployed,” he said.
He also touched upon the need to improve security, particularly for subsea cables that process the majority of global internet traffic.
“Trillions of dollars every single minute go through subsea cable systems,” Stehlin noted. “It is, without a doubt, one of the most insecure and most prominent issues that are out there when it comes to networks.”
Catch all of our coverage from Broadband Nation Expo this week right here.