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PROMOTING BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE 

INVESTMENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 22, 2015 

Serial No. 114–68 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Chairman 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Chairman Emeritus 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

Vice Chairman 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

DAVID B. MCKINLEY, West Virginia 

MIKE POMPEO, Kansas 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

BILLY LONG, Missouri 

RENEE L. ELLMERS, North Carolina 

LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana 

BILL FLORES, Texas 

SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana 

MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma 

RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina 

CHRIS COLLINS, New York 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

Ranking Member 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

BEN RAY LUJA ́ N, New Mexico 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

KURT SCHRADER, Oregon 

JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, III, Massachusetts 

TONY CA ́ RDENAS, California7 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

Chairman 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

Vice Chairman 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

MIKE POMPEO, Kansas 

ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

BILL JOHNSON, Missouri 

BILLY LONG, Missouri 

RENEE L. ELLMERS, North Carolina 

CHRIS COLLINS, New York 

KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

FRED UPTON, Michigan (ex officio) 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

Ranking Member 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BEN RAY LUJA ́ N, New Mexico 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey (ex 

officio) 

(II) 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 87 

Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 88 

Hon. Robert E. Latta, a Representative in Congress from the State of Ohio, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 88 

Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement .................................................................................. 89 

Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of 

New Jersey, prepared statement ........................................................................ 89 

Hon. David Loebsack, a Representative in Congress from the State of Iowa, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 90 

Hon. Ben Ray Luja ́n, a Representative in Congress from the State of New 

Mexico, prepared statement ................................................................................ 90 

WITNESSES

Jonathan Adelstein, President and Chief Executive Officer, PCIA ..................... 2 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 5 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 130 

Stephen Roe Lewis, Governor, Gila River Indian Community, State of Arizona ....................................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 16 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 136 

Craig Moffett, Partner and Senior Analyst, MoffettNathanson .......................... 30 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 33 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 141 

Michael Slinger, Director, Google Fiber City Teams ............................................ 36 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 38 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 144 

Deb Socia, Executive Director, Next Century Cities ............................................ 44 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 46 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 150 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Letter of July 17, 2015, from Scott Belcher, Chief Executive Officer, Telecommunications Industry Association, to Mr. Walden and Ms. Eshoo, submitted by Mr. Walden .......................................................................................... 91 

Letter of July 22, 2015, from Chip Pickering, Chief Executive Officer, 

Comptel, to Mr. Walden, submitted by Mr. Walden ......................................... 97 

Letter of July 22, 2015, from Steven K. Berry, President and CEO, Competitive Carriers Association, to Mr. Upton, et al., submitted by Mr. Walden ..... 100 

Letter of July 22, 2015, from Berin Szoka, President, Tech Freedom, et 

al., to Mr. Upton and Mr. Walden, submitted by Mr. Walden ......................... 103 

Articles on broadband deployment, October 15, 2014, to July 28, 2015, submitted by Mr. Olson ............................................................................................. 113 

Resolution MSP–15–036 of the National Congress of American Indians, ‘‘Preserve the Universal Service Fund Lifeline & Link Up Programs for All 

Tribal Lands and All Native Peoples,’’ submitted by Mr. Luja ́n ...................... 124 

Resolution MSP–15–024 of the National Congress of American Indians, ‘‘Support for Policy on Universal Service Fund for Voice and Broadband Services 

on Tribal Lands,’’ submitted by Mr. Luja ́n ........................................................ 127 

(1) 

PROMOTING BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE 

INVESTMENT 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 12:30 p.m., in room 

2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Greg Walden 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Walden, Latta, Shimkus, 

Scalise, Lance, Guthrie, Olson, Bilirakis, Johnson, Long, Collins, 

Cramer, Eshoo, Doyle, Loebsack, Matsui, McNerney, Luja ́n, and 

Pallone (ex officio). 

Staff present: Ray Baum, Senior Policy Advisor, Communications 

and Technology; Leighton Brown, Press Assistant; Andy 

Duberstein, Deputy Press Secretary; Gene Fullano, Detailee, Communications and Technology; Kelsey Guyselman, Counsel, Communications and Technology; Grace Koh, Counsel, Communications 

and Technology; David Redl, Chief Counsel, Communications and 

Technology; Charlotte Savercool, Legislative Clerk; Christine Brennan, Democratic Press Secretary; Jeff Carroll, Democratic Staff Director; David Goldman, Democratic Chief Counsel, Communications 

and Technology; Lori Maarbjerg, Democratic FCC Detailee; Margaret McCarthy, Democratic Senior Professional Staff Member; and 

Timothy Robinson, Democratic Chief Counsel. 

Mr. WALDEN. If we could go ahead and get started, I am going 

to call to order the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, with apologies up front that with the classified briefing that 

got scheduled at the end of last week for later today on the Iranian 

agreement—that got scheduled about the same time this hearing 

was originally scheduled to start, so we moved it up to now so that 

we could hear from this distinguished panel of witnesses. 

And I have asked my colleagues—and I think this is on both 

sides, because we also now have votes scheduled prior to all of 

that—we are going to dispense with our opening statements, which 

anybody who watches Congressional hearings knows is unprecedented in the historical annals of Congress, but they will all be in 

the official record. 

So unless there is objection from either side of the aisle, I would 

like to just proceed straight to our panel of witnesses for their expert testimony. 

2 

This is an important hearing on promoting broadband infrastructure investment. You all are on the front lines of that, and we look 

to you for guidance, suggestions as we go forward. 

[Members’ prepared statements appear at the conclusion of the 

hearing.] 

So we will start right out with Jonathan Adelstein, President 

and CEO, PCIA, former distinguished Commissioner of the Federal 

Communications Commission. 

Mr. Adelstein, we are delighted to have you here. Please go 

ahead with your testimony. 

STATEMENTS OF JONATHAN ADELSTEIN, PRESIDENT AND 

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PCIA; STEPHEN ROE LEWIS, 

GOVERNOR, GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY, STATE OF ARIZONA; CRAIG MOFFETT, PARTNER AND SENIOR ANALYST, 

MOFFETTNATHANSON; MICHAEL SLINGER, DIRECTOR, 

GOOGLE FIBER CITY TEAMS; AND DEB SOCIA, EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, NEXT CENTURY CITIES 

STATEMENT OF JONATHAN ADELSTEIN 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. The committee has shown leadership on this 

issue over many years. We appreciate the opportunity to testify at 

such a critical hearing today. 

As you said, I run PCIA. We represent the companies that build, 

design, own and manage telecommunications facilities around the 

world and in the United States. The members include wireless carriers, infrastructure providers, equipment manufacturers, and professional services firms. Our mission is to expand wireless 

broadband to everywhere, helping our members provide wireless facilities to meet consumers’ growing mobile data needs any time, 

any place. 

The wireless infrastructure industry, as you know, plays an essential role in meeting that data demand that people are asking for 

so much of. Put simply, infrastructure makes wireless work. It enables the delivery of innovative applications and life-changing services like telemedicine and distance learning. Wireless infrastructure is a catalyst for economic growth and job creation. A PCIA 

study found that investments in our industry will generate $1.2 

trillion—that is trillion with a T—in economic growth and create 

1.3 million new jobs over 5 years. 

And this committee, as I said, has shown grown leadership, Mr. 

Chairman. You have done so much to try to eliminate barriers to 

infrastructure deployment. I commend you, and our industry is 

thrilled with the leadership of this committee. Most notably, section 6409(a) of the Spectrum Act of 2012 has had a real impact on 

the ground in speeding the deployment of 4G infrastructure. It 

eliminated major local regulatory barriers to upgrading existing 

wireless infrastructure, and the FCC, I might add, has done an 

outstanding job on a bipartisan basis of implementing that law 

with a clear framework of rules. 

Now, we will face major challenges. Cisco projects that demand 

for wireless data is going to increase by about 700 percent over the 

next 5 years, and the question is how we are going to meet that 

exploding demand for data. 

3 

Now, one way is more spectrum, as much as we can get as fast 

as we can get it. And again, this committee has done great work 

on that front. Spectrum, as you know, is expensive, scarce, and 

takes a long time to get into actual use by consumer, all the more 

reason to move quickly. 

Another way to increase data throughput is technological advances that foster greater spectral efficiencies like moving from 2G 

to 4G and beyond, and the networks themselves are getting smarter, directing capacity where it is needed. These advances also take 

time to develop and to implement. 

A third way to meet the exploding demand for data is through 

the rapid deployment of infrastructure. Wireless infrastructure 

driven by private capital addresses the wireless data crunch as 

soon as it is deployed. Solutions range from traditional tall towers 

that provide wide coverage and capacity to small cells and distributed antenna systems that fill gaps in capacity and target hightraffic areas, intensifications of networks reused as existing scarce 

spectrum. Deploying more antennas closer to end users allows carriers to squeeze more out of existing spectrum. 

Now, there is still resistance to siting this equipment where it is 

necessary, and Congress can help even more to remove these barriers. One way is by streamlining the process of siting wireless infrastructure on Federal lands. Despite the law enacted by Congress 

with the leadership of this committee and an Executive Order by 

the President, significant challenges remain on Federal property. 

Further legislation is needed to facilitate access to Federal lands to 

expand broadband coverage and increased deployment in rural 

areas. 

PCIA supports S. 1618, which was recently introduced in the 

Senate to address this issue, and we look forward to continuing to 

work with this committee on developing legislation as well. Additional roadblocks remain despite the assistance this committee has 

provided. For example, some State and local entities require proof 

of need before authorizing infrastructure bills. These requirements 

are both illogical and costly. Local communities shouldn’t be in the 

CTO business of deciding where services are needed. Our members 

invest their capital where it is needed to serve consumers and local 

governments aren’t in a good position to be second-guessing these 

kind of technical questions. Continued efforts to harmonize the 

rates for pole attachments would also help promote broadband investment. 

The FCC has taken important steps to provide greater access, 

timing, and fair rates. States that regulate their own poles should 

follow the FCC’s lead. 

In sum, wireless infrastructure boosts every sector of the economy. Mobile broadband is demonstrating its effectiveness in promoting economic growth, job creation, and global competitiveness 

yet challenges remain in reaching its full potential. Policymakers 

from Congress to local governments need to eliminate regulatory 

barriers so our industry can invest their capital without resistance 

and not add costs and delays that will slow the rollout of wireless 

broadband. 

4 

Our member companies are very grateful for the bipartisan recognition of the centrality of wireless infrastructure by this committee, by Congress, by the administration, and by the FCC. 

I would add that we look forward to making continued progress 

together on some of the ideas we have laid out here today and 

other panels will share, and we thank you, and thank you, Ranking 

Member Eshoo, for joining us, and thank you for holding this hearing to address these urgent issues. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Adelstein follows:] 

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Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Adelstein. We appreciate your testimony and look forward to further discussions on these matters. 

We will now go to the Honorable Stephen Roe Lewis, Governor, 

Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. Governor, we are delighted to have you here. I enjoyed the time I was in your community and toured your facilities, and we are glad you could be here 

to share your thoughts on the challenges you face. 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN ROE LEWIS 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Chairman Walden and members of the 

committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the 

Gila River Indian Community. I also want to again thank Chairman Walden and Mr. Luja ́n for visiting the community, as you just 

heard, to see firsthand the obstacles that tribes face in deploying 

broadband. And I want to thank Ranking Member Eshoo and Mr. 

Luja ́n for their request to have the Government Accounting Office, 

the GAO, look into the challenges and barriers to deployment on 

tribal lands. 

Our broadband provider is Gila River Telecommunications Incorporated, which we refer to as GRTI. It was founded in 1988 and 

is wholly owned by our community. Our reservation is approximately 372,000 acres. We have more than 20,000 members and almost 12,000 community members living on our reservation. When 

we first purchased the exchange from Mountain Bell in 1988, only 

10 percent of our residents had access to basic phone service. More, 

those looking to get connected had to pay tens of thousands of dollars before Mountain Bell would install a party line connection. 

Today, GRTI offers phone service to 100 percent of our residents, 

and 84 percent of the residents subscribe. We also offer broadband 

service across the reservation. We are very proud of GRTI’s success. 

GRTI along with the National Tribal Telecommunications Association work together to raise awareness about the unique challenges for deploying broadband on tribal lands. Tribal lands are the 

least served areas in the country. Approximately 48 percent of tribal lands in the lower 48 States lack access to speeds of 10 down, 

one up, and 68 percent lack access to 25 down, 3 up. 

There are a number of obstacles that present challenges to 

broadband deployment on tribal lands, and I have set those out 

with more detail in my written testimony, but I would like to summarize them for you here. 

First, population density is an obstacle. The Gila River, for example, is at 20 persons per square mile. Maricopa County, which is 

adjacent to the reservation, has approximately 414 persons per 

square mile. Rugged terrain, characterized by mountains and hard 

soil, is also typical of tribal lands. Low median income and high 

rates of poverty on most reservations present a severe challenge for 

the delivery of broadband. The median income on our reservation 

is $24,000 to $59,000 in Arizona. Approximately 48 percent of the 

persons living on the reservation live below the poverty level compared to 15 percent for Arizona. These economic circumstances are 

not unique to our tribal community. 

Failed Federal policies from the past continue to negatively impact many tribes. Our community and others like it continue to 

15 

struggle with the failed policy of allotment. Because of the allotment policy, obtaining rights-of-way in order to deploy broadband 

is complex and raises costs substantially and delays deployment. 

Finally, access to capital is a barrier. Tribal lands cannot be leveraged as collateral for securing loans because they are held in 

trust by the United States for the benefit of the tribe. Thus, private 

capital is often not available, meaning the only lender available is 

the Federal Government, specifically, the Rural Utilities Service. 

RUS loans were critical to GRTI when it took over its service area 

and remains critical as a Warms Springs tribe in Oregon can attest. 

The combination of these challenges has resulted in GRTI’s average cost per loop being over $2,873. Because tribal nations face 

many unique challenges, we often need unique solutions. Having 

tribes at the table and engaging in Government-to-Government 

consultation is critical. Too often, Federal policies have unintended 

consequences on tribes because we weren’t properly consulted in 

the beginning. 

The current effort to reform the Universal Service Fund is a good 

example. USF is, when properly scoped, a critically important 

source of funding that can help make it possible to deploy 

broadband to our reservations. 

Tribes have offered a proposal that will target specific support to 

tribal lands through a Tribal Broadband Factor that could be 

added to proposals for a standalone broadband fund. Inclusion of 

this Tribal Broadband Factor would promote the targeted use of 

Universal Service Funding to advance the policy objective of ensuring that broadband is made available to all Americans including 

those living on tribal lands. 

The FCC’s Office of Native American Affairs and Policy has been 

a welcome addition to the Commission’s outreach efforts to ensure 

that tribes are included in the development of proposals to deploy 

more broadband but sometimes the FCC forgets about tribes. That 

is why we appreciate the letter sent to the FCC from a broadband 

group of members of this committee, reminding the commission 

that tribal leaders need a seat at the table. 

I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and hope 

to be an ongoing resource for the committee. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lewis follows:] 

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Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Governor. You can count on that. We 

appreciate your testimony and your insights. They are very valuable. 

We will go now to Craig Moffett, Senior Research Analyst, 

Moffett Nathanson. Mr. Moffett, we are delighted to have you here 

as well. Please go ahead. 

STATEMENT OF CRAIG MOFFETT 

Mr. MOFFETT. Thank you, members of the subcommittee, for 

your kind invitation to participate in today’s hearing. 

By way of introduction, I have been a financial analyst focusing 

on the cable and telecommunications industries for the past 14 

years. Before that, I spent 11 years at the Boston Consulting Group 

advising telecommunications companies, so this is now my 25th 

year in the sector, and I have spent much of that career focused 

on issues of broadband deployment and microeconomics. 

With that in mind, I thought I would share some general observations today about the economics of broadband, particularly focusing on the economics of competitive broadband. 

First, I would start by saying the obvious. Infrastructure deployment requires the expectation of a healthy return on capital. That 

should be taken as a given but all too often in my experience, the 

issue of return on capital is either ignored or misunderstood in policy forums. It is not a matter of whether a business is or isn’t profitable; it is instead a matter of whether a business is sufficiently 

profitable to warrant the high levels of capital investment required 

for the deployment of infrastructure. 

With that in mind, in 2014, the largest companies in the cable 

industry earned a very healthy return. The physical assets of 

Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter, and Cablevision, the four 

publicly traded U.S. cable operators during 2014, all earned 

healthy returns in excess of their cost of capital with returns ranging from 13 to 33 percent. Those returns are unusually high for a 

capital-intensive industry. On the other hand, it should be noted 

that the cable industry earned returns below the cost of capital for 

decades. Any long-term return on network infrastructure has to 

earn returns well in excess of the cost of capital during the maturity of that network to offset what were typically years or even decades of losses. 

By contrast, large incumbent telephone companies do not earn 

attractive returns on their wireline businesses. For example, a decade after first undertaking their FiOS fiber to the home buildout 

to 18 million homes, Verizon has not yet come close to earning a 

return in excess of their cost of capital. In 2014, their aggregate 

wired infrastructure business earned a paltry 1.2 percent return 

against a cost of capital of 5 percent. For the nonfinancial types in 

the room, that is the equivalent of borrowing money at 5 percent 

interest in order to earn 1 percent interest. That is a good way to 

go bankrupt. No one would undertake to replicate those disastrous 

financial returns. 

AT&T, which at around the same time began deploying a much 

less robust and therefore less costly fiber to the node network has 

also earned poor returns. Their ROIC, or return on invested capital, has been declining for a decade and is like Verizon well below 

31 

the cost of capital. AT&T is committed to the FCC to make fiber 

available to a total of, I know believe it is 12 1⁄2 million homes as 

of what was reported last night to their footprint in order to make 

their acquisition of DIRECTV more palpable to policymakers, but 

it is hard to be optimistic that they will do much better this time 

around. 

That said, there have been some changes in the market that 

make deployment of competitive broadband networks less unattractive than they have been in the past. Corning has developed 

bendable fiber that has helped lower the labor cost of deployment. 

Google has popularized the concept of demand aggregation whereby 

communities pledge to subscribe to advanced network services before the network is built so that Google can target areas where the 

company has the best chance of earning an acceptable return, and 

while some critics would call that redlining as it typically means 

that broadband won’t be built to the lower-income communities, it 

has been successful in boosting overall project returns, and you can 

think of it as a way of ensuring that all the children in the class 

really are above average. 

Still, the broader takeaway here is that the returns to be had 

from overbuilding, that is, being the second or third broadband provider in a given market are generally poor. 

So let that sink in for a moment. Simply stated, it means that 

market forces are unlikely to yield a fully competitive broadband 

market. Neither, by the way, does wireless appear to offer the 

promise of imminent competition for incumbent wired broadband 

providers. Wireless networks simply aren’t engineered for the kind 

of sustained throughout required for wired broadband replacement 

services. And wireless networks, by the way, also generally earn 

relatively poor returns on capital. Returns for Verizon and AT&T 

are middling, and for Sprint and T–Mobile are very poor as a consequence of aggressive price competition in the wireless market. 

Neither is satellite broadband a compelling replacement for wired 

broadband in any but the most rural areas. Costs are high, and it 

is the nature of satellite connection that it has to travel 22,000 

miles and back such that latency is going to be a problem. 

So the simple economic reality is that overbuilding is necessarily 

going to be somewhat limited, given relatively poor financial returns that can be expected, and that alternatives are far and few 

between. That naturally gives rise to the impulse among some to 

regulate incumbent networks that are already there. That is, it is 

a not unreasonable assumption that any attempts to foster competition will ultimately be unsuccessful and that regulation of incumbents, in this case, the cable operators, is therefore required. 

The counterargument, that regulation will only stifle investment 

among incumbent providers and will therefore make the problem 

worse and will in the process generate unwelcome, unintended consequences is equally well intentioned and unfortunately is equally 

well supported by the historical evidence. That is to say there are 

no easy answers here. 

I will conclude only by adding a few additional observations 

about the cable industry. As everyone understands, the cable video 

business is facing unprecedented pressure. Cord-cutting has been 

talked about for years but is finally starting to show up in a meanVerDate Mar 15 2010 11:07 Jan 06, 2016 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\114THCONGRESS\114X68BROADBANDINVESTQFR\114X68BROADBANDINVESTPEN
32 

ingful way in the numbers, and soaring programming costs are eating away at video profit margins. From a cable operator’s perspective, the video business and the broadband business are opposite 

sides of the same coin. It is, after all, all one infrastructure. Pressure on the video profit pool will therefore naturally trigger a pricing response in broadband where cable operators have cable leverage. That may sound nefarious but it’s not intended to be so. It is 

simply an observation that cable operators have historically benefited from the fact that their infrastructure can support two separate businesses and each can be delivered at a lower cost than if 

that were not the case. The ACA, or American Cable Association, 

has made this case eloquently in arguing that absent reforms to restrain runaway programming cost growth, video will be unprofitable and broadband will be left to carry the entire burden of incremental deployment. All else being equal, that will mean that even 

new builds of broadband will become increasingly economically 

challenged and therefore will become less and less likely, or as I 

am quick to add, this is my own editorial rather than ACA’s point, 

they will simply have to sharply raise the price of broadband. As 

an analyst, I would simply observe that the pressures in the video 

business are relatively broad-based and are attributable to more 

than just programming cost inflation and that this may therefore 

be an unavoidable scenario. 

So I will leave my remarks there. If my remarks sound excessively gloomy, they are not meant to. The U.S. broadband infrastructure is the envy of the world notwithstanding my view that 

there are politicized and cherry-picked statistics that would suggest 

otherwise. It is simply the case that broadband is an infrastructure 

that is very difficult to support two of, and in some cases even one 

of, and I would submit that a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the 

microeconomics of the broadband business deserves or even demands a seat at the policy table. 

So thank you, Mr. Chairman and subcommittee members, for 

your time and the opportunity to testify today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moffett follows:] 

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Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Moffett. We appreciate 

your analysis. 

We will go now to Michael Slinger, Director, Google Fiber Cities. 

We welcome you. Thank you for being here, and the floor is yours. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SLINGER 

Mr. SLINGER. Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Eshoo, and 

members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to testify 

today about investment in broadband infrastructure. We believe a 

successful agenda for bandwidth abundance will benefit consumers, 

small businesses, and the economy. 

My name is Michael Slinger, and I currently serve as the Director of Google Fiber City Teams. In this role, I oversee the operations, business strategy, and on-the-ground outreach to bring gigabit speeds to cities where we deploy Google Fiber across the 

United States. 

We have long believed that the next chapter of the Internet 

would be built on gigabit speeds. A gig delivers enough bandwidth 

for everyone in the home or in a small business for all their devices, and we know fast connections unleash innovation and entrepreneurship. Think about it in these terms: if today we are riding 

a bike, having a gig means that we could be driving a racecar. It 

is just that much faster. 

That is why we launched Google Fiber, which provides download 

and upload connections of up to 1,000 megabits per second. Our 

goal is to make the Web faster, more affordable, more relevant and 

more useful for everyone. 

We launched the service 5 years ago, and today it is available in 

Kansas City, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Texas; and 

Provo, Utah. In addition, we are in the process of building out our 

network in six other markets and we are exploring bringing it to 

another four on top of that. 

In rolling out Google Fiber, we physically built a network from 

scratch—one street, one pole, one house at a time. This means reviewing infrastructure and working closely with cities to make sure 

we are ready to work together to design and build a brand-new network. 

This experience has given us insight into barriers to deployment. 

I will outline some thoughts on policy changes that could reduce 

delays and barriers. 

First, policymakers can ease gaining access to existing infrastructure. To construct high-speed networks, broadband providers 

need access to existing utility infrastructure such as poles, conduits 

on a consistent, cost-effective and timely basis. While the FCC has 

taken important steps to improve rules related to infrastructure access, our own experience in building new broadband networks demonstrates that more work needs to be done to reduce delays and 

barriers. 

Second, policymakers can easy rights-of-way. The expense and 

complexity of obtaining access to public rights-of-way in some jurisdictions may increase the cost and slow the pace of broadband deployment. Policies that facilitate partnerships between different entities and companies that are doing local construction can be beneficial. We also see a lot of benefit in instituting ‘‘dig once’’ policies, 

37 

which may involve the installation of an oversized conduit bank by 

any new network builder within the right-of-way. 

Third, policymakers can help resolve the challenge of high rates 

for access to video programming. This would help smaller players 

in the business negotiate fair terms for access to popular broadcasts and cable content and make it easier to attract and retain 

subscribers for broadband networks. 

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the importance 

of balanced spectrum policies that promote innovation in the wireless sector. Federal agencies should pursue a balanced approach to 

spectrum reallocation that allows for licensed and unlicensed commercial uses at a variety of frequencies. 

I will note, as we think about deploying gigabit-speed networks, 

we need to keep in mind that about 30 percent of Americans still 

don’t use the Internet at home. This means they are at a disadvantage when it comes to education, job opportunities, social and civic 

engagement, so one of our main priorities is building digital inclusion into our deployment plans from the beginning. We are guided 

by a couple of main principles: Make the Internet more affordable, 

make access a party of the community, and teach people how to get 

online. 

Just last week, as part of the Connect Home Initiative announced by President Obama and HUD Secretary Castro, we committed to bringing our Google Fiber Internet service to residents in 

select affordable housing properties across our Fiber cities for zero 

dollars per month with no installation fee. We are also partnering 

with community organizations on computer labs and digital literacy 

programming. We are grateful for the partners we get to work with 

to get more people connected and for your attention to this important topic. 

Thank you again for the invitation to speak at this hearing and 

to share our views on how we can remove barriers, give Americans 

more choices at higher speeds, and help reach the goal of nationwide broadband abundance. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Slinger follows:] 

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Mr. WALDEN. Thank you, Mr. Slinger. We appreciate your testimony. 

And now we will go to final witness today, Deb Socia, Executive 

Director, Next Century Cities. We are delighted to have you here 

as well. Thank you, and please go ahead with your comments. 

STATEMENT OF DEB SOCIA 

Ms. SOCIA. Good afternoon. Thank you for holding this hearing 

on such an important topic. 

My name is Deb Socia, and I am the Executive Director of Next 

Century Cities, a bipartisan city-to-city collaborative formed just 

last October. We have already grown to over 100 member cities, all 

of whom are dedicated to ensuring access to fast, affordable and reliable broadband. 

High-speed access is essential to America’s economic future. It is 

as simple as that. What can be complicated is making it happen 

on the ground. Cities face a range of technical, economic and political challenges including obstacles at the State and Federal levels. 

More and more, providing for this critical need has emerged as a 

core responsibility for local governments. Many cities and towns 

from around the country are taking diverse and creative steps to 

secure their Internet future. 

When it comes to providing access to high-quality Internet, everyone has a role to play. It is an issue that spans political party, 

an issue that crosses the urban-rural divide, and an issue that relies on many sectors of our society. 

There is no single pathway to next-generation broadband network, and several of the most innovative solutions have emerged 

in unexpected places. The small towns of Ammon, Idaho, and 

Mount Vernon, Washington, have each developed a gigabit open access network. These local governments are directly involved in 

building the physical infrastructure and then leasing access to competing private providers. Just outside of Baltimore, Westminster, 

Maryland, has initiated a public-private partnership with Ting, a 

provider of fiber Internet service, and with the introduction of 

Google Fiber in Kansas City, residents there can now experience 

giga-level speeds at an affordable rate. Cities like Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, have built their own networks 

and now have some of the fastest, most globally competitive access 

available. 

Next Century Cities is dedicated to helping all communities 

achieve high-quality access regardless of the path they choose to 

pursue. Our membership represents an inclusive cross-section of 

America from small, rural communities such as Winthrop, Minnesota, to large, urban areas like L.A. and Boston. 

What unites these mayors is a commitment to the imperative of 

broadband access for continued growth and an understanding that 

local governments are best situated to understand and provide for 

the needs of their residents. It is an exciting time, a time for creative local solutions to usher in a new generation of innovation as 

the Internet continues to transform all aspects of society. 

Next Century cities recently developed a policy agenda showing 

how mu stakeholders can help communities develop the crucial infrastructure needed today. Consistent with our mission, this new 

45 

resource provides guidance that will be useful to communities regardless of how they choose to pursue their broadband goals. 

Part of the policy agenda looks at steps local and State government can use to ensure high-quality access. Locally, governments 

can institute ‘‘dig-once’’ policies that minimize disruption as well as 

take other steps to ensure their cities are fiber ready. 

At the State level, the policy agenda addresses changes such as 

modernizing State regulations and making investments in the middle mile infrastructure. But we are here on Capitol Hill today, and 

I wanted to emphasize some recommendations we heard from mayors about steps the Federal Government could take to help empower local communities. First and foremost, Congress can encourage competitive local markets through national legislation and 

other avenues. In addition, you have the ability to provide a national platform for the issue of broadband as necessary infrastructure. Hearings such as this help to elevate this discussion and attract national attention to this critical issue. 

And finally, the policy agenda discusses how Congress could better require information about available Internet access including 

speed of connection, price for consumers, and areas of operation for 

service providers. 

As is clear from everything we have heard so far today, the need 

for fast, affordable and reliable broadband Internet access is undeniable. Innovative leaders in communities across the country recognize this urgent need and are developing the critical broadband infrastructure that will allow their residents and their cities to 

thrive. It is evident by the over 100 Next Century Cities I am 

speaking on behalf of today, communities that represent over 18 

million Americans. 

Thank you for providing this platform for communities to share 

their experiences and develop opportunities for collaboration with 

Federal policymakers. I look forward to working with members of 

this committee and your colleagues to ensure that communities 

across the country have the next-generation access that all Americans need and deserve. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Socia follows:] 

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Mr. WALDEN. Ms. Socia, thank you very much for your testimony 

and your insights. 

I will start off with questions. 

Mr. Adelstein, as you probably know, the Middle Class Tax Relief 

and Job Creation Act directed the GSA—Government Service Agency—to develop a master contract to simplify the placement of wireless antennas on Federal buildings and other property. Last year, 

the Administrator of the GSA told Congress that the master contract was complete and available for use by executive landholding 

agencies. In your opinion, do you believe the GSA—General Services Administration—has done everything in its power to give life 

to the siting directives embodied in section 6409, which you referenced in your testimony, of the Middle Class Tax Relief Act? 

Have they done everything they can? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Mr. Chairman, I do not believe they have. As a 

matter of fact, I am the former Administrator myself of a Federal 

agency, and if I had implemented something so poorly that Congress instructed me to do, I would be embarrassed, frankly. And it 

is worse than that because the Executive Branch as well ordered 

them. There is an Executive Order by the President of the United 

States directing GSA to move faster to try to get these master contracts together, and to date, nothing has been done, 3 years after 

Congress enacted this legislation. Progress has been slow. GSA 

hasn’t been proactive. The law required standard rates, common 

forms and applications to provide clarity to agencies in the wireless 

industry, and I think our members now are having to negotiate for 

each and every site individually, just as they have in the past. So 

GSA has not implemented the intent of Congress, and we can’t 

wait 3 more years for what is needed I think today. There is an 

urgent lack of coverage on Federal lands. The administration has 

made a priority of this, this committee has made it a priority, and 

yet GSA I think has been dragging its heels. I think there might 

be need for further legislation. 

Mr. WALDEN. Or maybe a hearing with one witness. They always 

like those. 

I appreciate that, and for the rest of the panel, if there are issues 

you are running into with Federal siting, let us know because this 

is one we raised because it is important and we don’t—we concur 

with what Commissioner Adelstein has said. I don’t think they 

have got it right yet. 

Ms. Socia, traditionally network operators were given a monopoly 

exchange for the obligation to serve anyone upon reasonable request. In the models we have been discussing, carriers only deploy 

to areas where there is an economic case for the build. How do we 

balance sound network economies with the threat of redlining, a 

practice of refusing service to areas that are deemed a poor financial risk? And as I heard about the incredible buildout that Google 

is doing, which I applaud, representing a district that is bigger 

than any State east of the Mississippi, getting access out into our 

tribal lands, getting access out into our very remote rural communities, whether it is wired or wireless, remains a big problem. And 

so I wonder how we can address that better. 

Ms. SOCIA. I think that the interesting thing about—when you 

think about profit, I think that is a problem across the board with 

75 

building out to these more rural locations and therefore requires an 

influx of capital. There just isn’t a way to do this without support. 

But I think the ways that our cities are looking at what is a profit 

are a little bit different than the ways that a company might look 

at what a profit is, right? So it is about education, it is about public 

safety, it is about economic development and transportation and all 

of these opportunities that are presented when you have access. 

And so what is that worth and how do we ensure that our tribal 

lands and our rural communities can benefit in the same ways that 

other communities are able to? 

Mr. WALDEN. Before I go to Mr. Moffett for his comments, this 

is also an issue just to get wireless phone coverage out in areas of 

Montana, upstate New York. Elise Stefanik has made this case to 

me, our new Member from up there, that just getting access, getting connectivity remains a real issue. The job is not done. 

And so Mr. Moffett, from your perspective as an analyst, what 

do we do? 

Mr. MOFFETT. Well, I would certainly agree with Ms. Socia’s comments that it is simply not realistic to think that those projects are 

going to be entirely self-funding in the more rural areas. That said, 

I think the targeting of the funds that are available, the Connect 

America funds, can be improved such that those funds are more 

carefully directed to new greenfield projects that really are bringing broadband to places that haven’t been served in the past. There 

is always some controversy around whether an area is either partially served or sufficiently served. 

Mr. WALDEN. Right. 

Mr. MOFFETT. And then secondarily, I think it is also important 

that those Connect America funds be made available to all manner 

of companies so that there can be more competition of potential 

providers of those services. 

Mr. WALDEN. I want to get a quick answer from Mr. Slinger. 

Does Google have plans to try a model out in sort of rural, remote 

areas of the country to see if you can make that work? 

Mr. SLINGER. Well, as you know, Fiber may not be the right solution technologically—— 

Mr. WALDEN. Correct. 

Mr. SLINGER [continuing]. For rural areas, and we want to make 

sure that there is sufficient spectrum available for unlicensed wireless technologies. As well, as you know, we are experimenting with 

balloon technology with Project Lune, and as well with fixed-wing 

aircraft out of New Mexico. So we think that in rural areas, it may 

be new technologies that are going to affordably bring Internet to 

those areas. 

Mr. WALDEN. I hate to cut you off, but I know we are all tight 

for time, so I will turn to my colleague from California, Ms. Eshoo. 

Ms. ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, first of all for having this 

hearing and for the high level of cooperation relative to witnesses 

and invitations. We appreciate it. 

Jonathan, it is great to see you, former Commissioner at the 

FCC, and to everyone that accepted our invitation to be here today. 

To Mr. Slinger and Ms. Socia, first of all, thank you for your important advocacy for the ‘‘dig once’’ policy. I wish that the Congress 

had passed it because I think that we would have more of that polVerDate Mar 15 2010 11:07 Jan 06, 2016 Jkt 037690 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\114THCONGRESS\114X68BROADBANDINVESTQFR\114X68BROADBANDINVESTPEN
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icy actually—excuse the expression—embedded in our Federal 

roadways, but how do you think, A, the Executive Order is working? I want to get my questions out first, OK, because the time is 

very brief, and if you think there are any additional steps that 

Congress should take to incent that deployment of conduit as part 

of the Federal highway projects and that system, which I don’t 

know, right now it doesn’t seem like the highway project system is 

going anywhere. It looks like it is being driven off the road in Congress. But anyway, here maybe we can concentrate on that. 

Mr. Moffett, I listened very carefully to what you said, and I 

think it is really highly pessimistic. It was depressing to listen to 

your description of every last sector of the telecommunications marketplace, and my question to you would be, where do you see a 

bright spot? 

To Governor Lewis, thank you for being here. You know, there 

was a report that just came in out of terms of broadband penetration in our country. We are 24th in the world. And I think that a 

good part of that number is a representation of Native Americans 

and reservations in our country. It is a shameful record. It is a 

shameful record. And I think if there is going to be something that 

moves up to the top of the list here in a bipartisan way is to see 

that we bring to the parts of the country where there are reservations that you get first-class service for first-class citizenship. You 

really do. I mean, for students to have to be driven by their parents 

65 and 75 miles away to sit in the car in order to get some kind 

of connection to do their homework, I don’t think any Member of 

Congress who is a parent here would ever put up with that. We 

shouldn’t have that in our country. And I hope that Mr. Slinger 

and Governor Lewis will form a partnership and then come back 

and report to us. I would really like to have you meet and see what 

you can come up with because you both need each other and we 

need both of you. 

To Ms. Socia, does Next Century Cities support having local municipal systems? 

Ms. SOCIA. We support whatever it is our local communities need 

to do in order to get where they are going. So—— 

Ms. ESHOO. Well, that doesn’t answer my question, though. 

Ms. SOCIA. OK. 

Ms. ESHOO. It is too broad. Excuse the—— 

Ms. SOCIA. I understand. 

Ms. ESHOO [continuing]. Term. 

Ms. SOCIA. Many, many of our mayors signed on to a letter we 

sent to the FCC in support of the preemption. The two cities that 

filed petitions, Chattanooga and Wilson, are two of our cities, and 

we have—we believe deeply in the idea that competition is important and we believe deeply in the idea that local folks should be 

able to solve their local problems in a way that makes sense to 

them. 

Ms. ESHOO. Well, I come from local government so I agree with 

you, and I think that they should have the opportunity to do that 

as well. 

Jonathan, I regularly hear from constituents who are frustrated 

with the tower siting process. Now, here is one for you. Everyone 

wants great service, the best service in the whole wide world, but 

77 

no one wants a wireless tower in their backyard or where they can 

see it anywhere near where they live. So how do you respond to 

this, you know, the people that say that reforms need to be made 

to take away local jurisdiction, say, over the placement of cell towers. It is really a—it is like trying to get socks on an octopus. I 

mean, they want it, they don’t want it. And yet there are some 

have-tos in this. So those are my questions, and you have 13 seconds to answer them. Oh, no, you don’t have any time because I 

am over time. But you can respond in writing, and that way I will 

get more meat on the bones, I think. 

So thank you for being here, and please, Mr. Slinger and Governor Lewis, come together, and if my office, other offices can help 

facilitate, let us know. 

Mr. WALDEN. The gentlelady’s time is expired. 

I will turn to the vice chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Latta, for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. LATTA. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thanks very much to our 

panel today. It is always a great discussion that we have in subcommittee. 

Mr. Adelstein, if I could go back to some of the questions that 

the chairman was posing and also I think you said about the GSA 

dragging its feet in getting some of these things done, especially 

when we are talking about streamlining the process for providers 

to obtain the necessary permitting and other approvals needed to 

build on Federal lands and protected lands. Just out of curiosity, 

on average, how long does it take for a negotiation process with the 

Federal Government compared to the private industry? Any idea? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. It takes about 4 years with the Federal Government, less than half of that with the private sector, and sometimes 

it can drag on much longer with the Federal Government for many, 

many years. And so generally private companies will just avoid 

Federal lands because it takes so long. They don’t see the return 

on investment that Craig was talking about and so the Federal 

Government is actually deprived of that revenue because it will go 

right next door if there is non-Federal land nearby. 

Mr. LATTA. OK. When you say that then, so you are saying that 

on average it is four but can drag out even longer? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. That is right. 

Mr. LATTA. And any ideas or examples of how long some of them 

have taken? Over 4 years? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Yes, I have heard from people that it has taken 

10 years and longer. I have heard sometimes they have tried and 

it never gets done. And there is never even a finality to it. There 

is on decision-making process that is in place. That is why this 

committee in its wisdom said that the GSA was supposed to take 

steps to standardize the process, and yet it hasn’t been done. 

Mr. LATTA. Let me follow up with that. Because of that, you 

know, 4 to 10 or who knows or maybe into infinity and beyond, 

what additional costs are incurred when the Federal Government 

is unable to streamline its process for the broadband infrastructure 

buildout? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Well, there is lost revenue. There is huge costs 

trying to go through that process for the individuals who are trying 

to get the site acquisition done. It is a shame. Thirty percent of all 

78 

the land mass in the United States is Federal property, especially 

in rural areas, and a lot of very valuable Federal buildings in dense 

urban which could use a facility as well to deal with the capacity 

demands. So it is a shame that these negotiations take so long, 

that they don’t lead anywhere. Not only do you lose revenue that 

you need for deficit reduction, companies lose valuable places and 

the consumers lose access to service they need. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you. 

Mr. Slinger, I think in your testimony you were talking about the 

percentage of the population out there that does not have access to 

broadband, and what percentage would that be? 

Mr. SLINGER. We are seeing now, the stats that we are seeing, 

is about 60 million Americans. In some of our cities that we are 

working in right now, 25 to 30 percent of people have never had 

an Internet connection at home. They may have access through cell 

phones but they don’t have an Internet connection at home. 

Mr. LATTA. OK. Just two quick follow-ups on that then because 

again, I represent from urban to very, very rural, and when you 

look at the numbers then or the percentages, what percentage of 

that would be urban, suburban, very rural and that percentage 

when you talk about that? Was it 60 million? 

Mr. SLINGER. Yes. 

Mr. LATTA. And how would that break down, and also, how many 

people would that include that would not want to have access to 

broadband? 

Mr. SLINGER. I don’t have a breakdown of urban versus rural 

within the numbers but again, in urban areas, I can say in many 

cities that 25 percent, 30 percent of these cities, residents don’t 

have anything at home at all, no Internet connection. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you. 

Governor, if I could turn to you, and again, thanks very much for 

being here with us today and for your testimony. Because again, 

you said that you have, you know, a very, very rural population, 

I think you said that you have 20 persons per square mile, and you 

know, it is of great concern in your area along with all the rural 

areas in the country about having that essential broadband for our 

constituents, and you talked about the USF and that that would 

help you, but are there other areas besides the USF that you could 

see that would be of benefit to you and your community? 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you for that question, and first of all, I would 

like to recognize that I have two of my council members here, 

Councilman Devin Redbird and Councilwoman Caroline Williams, 

and also from our GRTI, Gila River Telecommunications, Belinda 

Nelson and Pamela Thomas from the Gila River Community. 

Mr. LATTA. Thank you. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. And I would say that one critical issue 

is rights-of-way, and you know, rights-of-way is a challenge where 

it is a complex issue. It has to do with the nature of tribal land. 

It goes back, as I said, to the allotment policy that has a devastating effect on tribal lands, and so the short answer is that 

GRTI in regards to rights-of-way, if they do not get rights-of-ways, 

we have to build around it, and of course, that costs—it is very capital-intensive, and so we either have to move to another route or 

where we can in some cases have to build a wireless link to go over 

79 

the right-of-way, and obviously this is pretty costly as compared to 

trenching through an established right-of-way, but sometimes this 

is our only course of action. That is an issue that, you know, we 

really need to look at. 

Another is the ETC designation process, which is overly complicated, and so streamlining of that ETC designation process 

would be welcome to many tribes. 

Mr. LATTA. Well, thank you very much, and Mr. Chairman, my 

time is expired and I yield back. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

We will now recognize the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. 

Pallone, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. PALLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to get one question in to Mr. Adelstein about infrastructure during disasters like Hurricane Sandy, but then I want to get 

a question in to Governor Lewis, so I am trying to split this up. 

Three years ago, Hurricane Sandy devastated my district. The 

force of the storm knocked out some communication for days. Mr. 

Adelstein, you testified about all the wireless infrastructure that is 

being deployed and upgraded across the country, and I support all 

this deployment, but my constituents are also concerned about 

whether the equipment works in a disaster. 

So what is your industry doing to make sure people can call for 

help and reach loved ones in an emergency, and what do you think 

of the FCC’s work to improve resiliency? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Well, ensuring—— 

Mr. PALLONE. Two minutes. 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Ensuring reliable access to telecommunications 

is a real top priority for our industry. We want to make sure all 

of the customers get access when they need it most, which is in a 

disaster. You know, during Hurricane Sandy, we saw cooperation, 

for example, between T–Mobile and AT&T that agreed to share 

each other’s network in the region affected by the storm and share 

their network operations centers. I would say that in terms of the 

structures themselves, not one of them went down during the 

storm, not one. The issue was things that were beyond the control—power companies, access to roads, trees that fell. But what 

makes it difficult is that sometimes we can’t even get generators 

sited on these things. Going back to the issue of this committee, we 

find from localities that you can’t put a generator there because it 

violates a noise statute. It is only going to be used in a time of 

emergency. I don’t think anybody in the neighborhood would complain about the noise of a generator when otherwise their wouldn’t 

work, and yet localities will not allow us to put them there and 

then complain when the system doesn’t work in a disaster. We 

need more proactive thinking about having backup power and facilitating access to it. 

And one more point to add, which is the best thing you can do 

for reliability is redundancy. The more these facilities are up, the 

more likely you are going to have one that works in a time of emergency. So all the work done by this committee to promote deployment is promoting redundancy and ensuring that there will be adequate facilities in case of emergency and more likelihood that they 

80 

will survive the disaster and be available for use of public safety 

as well as for the citizens in the community. 

Mr. PALLONE. Do you want to comment on the FCC’s work? Because Chairman Wheeler committed to me that the FCC would act 

by the end of the year to complete its rulemaking on improving 

wireless network resiliency. 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. We are thrilled with what the FCC is doing. We 

have worked very closely with Chairman Wheeler and the other 

members of the Commission that are looking at a cooperative arrangement where we can try to provide incentives for industry to 

deploy this kind of equipment. I think industry is doing a lot already, making major investments in things like backup power, and 

we are working together with them in a very cooperative fashion. 

We believe that the goals are shared in making sure that these 

networks are resilient and redundant. 

Mr. PALLONE. All right. Thank you. 

Let me go to Governor Lewis, and I should say that I love the 

Gila River Reservation. I haven’t been there in a long time. It is 

about time I go back. 

But you know, on the one hand I was thinking that I guess relative to many tribes, you might have more ability than even some 

of the, you know, more remote or even poorer tribes, if you will, to 

achieve some of the goals that you mentioned. So I just wanted to 

ask about funding. You mentioned the Universal Service Fund. I 

guess the gentleman from Google talked about this Connect Home 

Initiative. I think the President was actually at the Choctaw Reservation last week or so talking about that. 

I mean, what are these sources of funding? Is the Universal 

Service Fund useful to you now? What would we have to do to improve it? You know, what could the Federal Government do in 

terms of funding for tribal infrastructure, particularly for those 

tribes that might have even more difficulty. I am thinking of like 

the Pueblos in New Mexico or the tribes at the Grand Canyon, you 

know, smaller than Gila River, less funding available. How are 

these funds helpful to you, the ones that we do have, these programs that we do have, or are they? 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Congressman Pallone, and you are always welcome at the Gila River Indian Community. 

And with USF funding, stable funding mechanisms are critical to 

businesses like GRTI and those in Indian Country where they have 

to develop deployment plans and rely on Federal funding sources 

to be there to begin with. Now, our U.S. funding is critical as well 

for providing funding for infrastructure buildout, and that is critical to the long-term sustainability of these telecommunications 

providers in Indian County. 

Mr. PALLONE. Now, are you using funds from Universal Service 

now? 

Mr. LEWIS. Yes, we are. 

Mr. PALLONE. And how is that working? What does it mean? 

How do you do it? 

Mr. LEWIS. That is critical to the overall business plan of Gila 

River Telecommunications. You know, they rely on that source of 

income moving forward. It is critical to the long-term business outlook. And also in regards to long-term capital buildout as well. 

81 

Mr. PALLONE. All right. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WALDEN. The gentleman’s time is expired. 

The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 

Shimkus, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great panel. I 

appreciate you all being here. 

I want to go to Adelstein, Commissioner, and Governor Lewis 

real quick to highlight the challenges because especially the environmental review process, especially on Federal lands, is a burden. 

So have you thought through how local municipalities and they do 

their zoning outside of Federal lands and how we could marry that 

with which goes on there and can you comment on that? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Yes. You know, some localities are great, and 

what we heard today from Google, from Ms. Socia, is that those 

communities that promote broadband make it easier to get access, 

and that is where the investment goes, and those that throw up 

roadblocks, not to name any specific parts of the country represented by folks here but there are some that aren’t seeing investment they would get if they weren’t throwing up roadblocks, and 

to the question of Congresswoman Eshoo about, you know, people 

saying not in my backyard, they are not going to have service in 

their backyard. So we work very cooperatively with local communities. I mean, we try to—every single facility that has been sited 

has been sited in cooperation with local government. But to have 

it to be dragged out, it took the work of this committee to say you 

don’t have to get another zoning hearing for something that has already been zoned to put a 4G antenna up on a tower that is already there. Why should the committee have to do that? Increasingly, communities are recognizing this. The smart ones are moving ahead. Ten States have enacted laws in the last several years 

since 2013 to streamline deployment in their States, and those 

States are seeing more investment. They are working with local 

partners, the National Association of Counties, the National 

League of Cities and others to get out word about the way the FCC 

is implementing the law that you passed. Commissioner Cliburn 

asked us to go out—— 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Let me get to Governor Lewis on the Federal properties because that is another big challenge because they have got 

to get past the Government land issue, and Governor, really, the 

question is, can’t we force a zoning issue, get you guys the zoning 

ability like we do municipalities? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Yes. You know, there is a bill that was introduced in the other body by Senator Rubio that would create a 

standard fee schedule, fee retention for the agency that the agency 

could keep the money they get from that to pay for the cost of processing it. There would be common forms and contracts, which you 

have already tried to get enacted, but there is a need for more legislation to get them to do what you asked them to do already. 

There is an expectancy of lease renewals, so when somebody invest 

there, they are not going to get cut off. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Let me get Governor Lewis to respond. 

Mr. LEWIS. Federal lands in Indian Country, that has been a 

long issue in regards to, you know, our unique situation as Indian 

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tribes and the nature of Indian land in regards to highly 

fractionated land interest that, you know, are just so critical and 

sometimes are one of the major obstacles to buildout in regarding 

to getting right-of-ways. If we can somehow streamline that process 

through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, through the Department of 

Interior, that would greatly help out tribal infrastructure buildout 

in the future. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. Slinger, let me go to you real quick. My largest community 

in my Congressional district is 33,000 people. When do you think 

Google would hit that community on your timeline? 

Mr. WALDEN. Did you want to name that community? 

Mr. SHIMKUS. But I am not the chairman of the committee so I 

don’t have as much power. 

Mr. SLINGER. Well, you know, we published this Fiber checklist 

so that we can, as Mr. Adelstein said, get cities to ready by themselves for Fiber deployment, whether it is Google Fiber or any 

other provider, by making sure that they have smooth permitting 

processes that allow for a large volume of permits to go through to 

make it easy for people to get onto telephone poles through streamlined make-ready engineering and construction. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. So it is the same type of debate as we are talking 

with the rural or the Federal lands deployment, the ease of being 

able to have access and a timely response. 

And let me finish up with Mr. Moffett. It is all about return on 

investment—I don’t care how people want to marry it—if you believe in the capital model. So if a rural area can’t make a go based 

upon the formula, then you have to be able to dip into RUS or 

other forms of low-interest loans to make the business sense. Is 

that correct? 

Mr. MOFFETT. That is exactly correct. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. And also, time is money. So any delay, as what we 

have just talked about here, affects the ability for someone to go 

to the capital markets to make a pitch that they are going to get 

their return on investment that you propose. 

Mr. MOFFETT. That is correct as well, yes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time. 

Mr. WALDEN. The gentleman yields back his time. 

The Chair now goes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. 

Doyle, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this excellent hearing and this excellent panel. 

Jonathan, welcome back. 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Thank you. 

Mr. DOYLE. Broadband infrastructure has become a critical component to almost every facet of our daily lives from students using 

Blackboard for school or watching Netflix and Amazon to stream 

movies and TV shows, and by all levels of Government to communicate with citizens and increasingly leverage the network to improve the delivery and efficiency of services. 

Pittsburgh in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and 

Google is deploying a connected platform that will integrate road 

sensors, traffic cameras and information kiosks to create a living 

laboratory at a city scale for the next-generation technologies. This 

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platform will be used to improve traffic patterns in real time, allowing city departments to efficiently predict road wear and schedule maintenance and to allow people to explore and interact with 

the city more effectively. Fast, available and ubiquitous broadband 

infrastructure provides the basis for these next-generation solutions. 

I for one am a big fan of making every tool in the toolbox available to local governments to make sure that they have access to the 

best networks and the best platforms in order to improve the lives 

of the people living there. 

Mr. Chairman, I would love to work with you on putting together 

some legislation to address some of these challenges. 

Let me start with Ms. Socia. How can localities leverage shared 

infrastructure to expand access and increase the deployment of 

broadband? As cities like Pittsburgh build this infrastructure to address our own municipal needs, how can we and other municipalities use what we are building to expand access more broadly and 

what, if anything, stands in the way of municipalities leveraging 

the infrastructure? 

Ms. SOCIA. Really interesting work has been done all over the 

country, as you suggested. Many of our cities are using smart infrastructure to do really interesting work, determine particulates in 

the air and checking asthma rates and using streetlights that also 

have cameras in them for public safety. We are seeing a lot more 

of that happen, and I think there are barriers for cities to doing 

this work as well, and some of them are the State regulations that 

prohibit their building out their own infrastructure, and in some 

case, it is, as was mentioned earlier, issues of how densely populated, the circumstances of their current financial situation. All of 

those things impact the capacity of a city to actually build out their 

own. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you. 

Mr. Slinger, I am curious. What dividends has Google Fiber 

found in communities where you have deployed your gigabit 

broadband to? Has it impacted jobs or the local economy or education or local government? What are you finding in these communities? 

Mr. SLINGER. Yes, we are seeing a great economic impact in the 

cities that we are in. There have been reports that Kansas City, 

Missouri, is not working on an economic impact analysis. Let me 

start by saying there are certain categories of employees where 

there is no unemployment, because obviously when you build a big 

network, there is a lot of demand for jobs for certain types of labor, 

and I think last week the Fiber to the Home Council released some 

research that showed that GDP growth in cities with a gig network 

rises and the average cost per home or, you know, value of a home 

goes up 3.1 percent in those cities, and that is new data from about 

a week ago. 

But we also see, and we have heard from Mayor Holland and 

Mayor James in Kansas City that they have seen it as a draw to 

regional economic development. Other companies when deciding 

where to locate in the Midwest will now look at Kansas City and 

say hey, this place has a gig network, let us join. 

84 

Mr. DOYLE. I am curious too about the discrepancies that exist 

between price and speed. In Pittsburgh, for instance, I can get 500 

megabits a second but it will cost me about $400 a month. When 

we look at cities like Chattanooga and Kansas City and Austin and 

other cities, residents can get a gig for less than $100. I am curious, maybe Mr. Moffett and Mr. Slinger and Ms. Socia, you could 

comment on why you think these discrepancies exist. 

Mr. MOFFETT. Thank you for the question. My observation would 

be, you are right, there are a very wide range of economic models, 

and it is a challenge because there is no near-term variable cost 

that dictates a cost-plus model and so you see a lot of companies 

experimenting with different prices, in part because they are trying 

to figure out what the quantity demanded will be at different 

prices. 

The challenge—but obviously you tend to have lower prices 

where you have multiple competing networks and then again it 

raises the question of whether the providers are earning a sufficient return at the market share and the prices that they are 

charging. In many cases they are not. This is a very difficult area 

to do economic research, however, because you will find that there 

are a lot of the companies who have different motives rather than 

simply profitability of the network itself. 

Mr. DOYLE. I want to give Mr. Slinger just a—because I know 

our time is up. 

Mr. WALDEN. Yes, we have go to—— 

Mr. SLINGER. Well, I would say that if you look at the cities in 

which we are already operating or cities where we have announced, 

we have seen incumbent prices drop immediately and speeds go up, 

so I think there is more room there. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WALDEN. We will now go to the gentleman from Louisiana, 

the Whip of the House, Mr. Scalise, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCALISE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you having 

this hearing. 

Mr. Adelstein, I know you talked in your opening statement 

about a lot of the work that has been done to expand spectrum, of 

course, a lot of that within this committee where we have come together to make more spectrum available. I know the chairman has 

been a great leader in that effort too. 

One part of that equation absolutely is expanding more spectrum, and then of course, the other part of that is your members— 

where you all come to actually build it out and to build that infrastructure to take advantage of the new spectrum. If you could 

maybe share with us some of the challenges or hurdles that your 

members face to make the investment that they need to make to 

take advantage of that spectrum and hopefully even make more 

spectrum available in the marketplace? 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. Yes. You know, spectrum has been quite a hurdle. You saw that $41 billion was spent for a limited amount of 

spectrum recently, basically 65 megabits. 

Mr. SCALISE. It is a little bit better than the CBO estimate, Mr. 

Chairman, wasn’t it? 

Mr. WALDEN. Which was zero, and it was $41.9 billion. 

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Mr. SCALISE. Hopefully the CBO recognizes the value of the spectrum that clearly everyone else seems to know about. 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. I think the CBO estimated zero, and it was $41.9 

billion, so they were off—— 

Mr. SCALISE. They were off by a little bit there. 

Mr. ADELSTEIN. 41.9, yes. But the fact it, that was for a 12 percent increase in the available commercial mobile spectrum. So you 

just got a 12 percent increase in the throughput and you have 700 

percent you need in the next 5 years. So we are down to 688 percent, a long way to go to build out to meet the needs of people, and 

as I said, local communities often are saying no to these facilities. 

We have—the business case has to be made in rural areas as we 

have discussed today, and overall investment is very difficult with 

those prices for spectrum. We can’t afford to have regulatory drag 

on these investments, slowing them down, making it more expensive when there is not enough capital to build out to meet these 

needs already. I like to joke, you know you are in trouble when you 

quick solution is infrastructure, but that is kind of where we are 

at in this country, and as slow as it is, it is immediately available 

when it is built if you take that same spectrum and reuse it. So 

all of these burdens on Federal lands, in urban areas, the FCC has 

done a great job, this committee has done a great job of trying to 

address that, but we need to work with our partners and State and 

local governments as well. 

Mr. SCALISE. And clearly on Federal lands too, we have been 

grappling with that here trying to remove some of those burdens, 

not just in the spectrum space but in a whole lot of other areas, 

especially as it relates to energy production where Federal lands 

and even in the local areas, some of those restrictions make it really hard to experience a lot of the economic opportunity we can. 

Thanks for that answer. 

Mr. Moffett, I want to ask you, in some of your analysis, if you 

could share with us some of the similar challenges that—you know, 

what are some actions maybe that Congress or the FCC can take 

to further expand the opportunities for WiFi, for broadband? 

Mr. MOFFETT. Well, as I said earlier, I think there are opportunities in Connect America Funds and making those available to a 

wider range of companies for bringing broadband to rural areas, 

but there is an overarching question here, and it relates to the 

question that Ranking Member Eshoo asked earlier about where 

are the bright spots. If you think about this as a larger value chain 

of microeconomics from everything from the content companies and 

the internet providers to the infrastructure providers, where the 

bright spots are is very clearly outside of infrastructure. The apps 

developers and the content companies are actually earning extraordinary returns, and there is a very knee-jerk and familiar regulatory impulse to say let’s try to protect the companies that are 

making very high returns from the ones that are making very low 

returns. As an economist, that is a very odd structure. 

Mr. SCALISE. Well, final question as I am running out of time, 

Mr. Slinger. When Google Fiber was being deployed, it has been reported you all were able to work with some local governments that 

gave some exemptions, maybe some expedited approval processes 

so that not just your but other new entrants were able to move 

86 

things a lot quicker. If you can talk in general about the ability for 

more local governments to take more of that deregulatory approach 

and how deregulation in a sense of helping expedite the expansion 

of technology has helped you and could help others to develop even 

more broadband? 

Mr. SLINGER. Sure. And I am going to go back to the Fiber checklist which we published in 2014. Some of our major barriers obviously are getting access to poles and making it easy to do the 

make-ready construction and get the poles ready. One thing that 

has been suggested, I believe by the Fiber to Home Council, was 

if municipalities took a proactive step in doing pole maintenance, 

and while they are doing pole maintenance, if they could do that 

make ready, get rid of the old wires that aren’t needed and make 

slots that would allow new entrants, Google Fiber or any other entrant, to get in quickly and attach to poles, that is one thing that 

would really help. 

And again, ‘‘dig once’’ policies and access to the right-of-way, 

there is more we can do with local communities and more we could 

do with Federal highways to make sure that if someone is ripping 

up a road to do construction or repaving, that we put in conduit 

that anyone can use. Those are just smart things. They allow new 

market entrants and ultimately more competition and choice at the 

local level. 

Mr. SCALISE. Thanks for your answers. I yield back the balance 

of my time. 

Mr. WALDEN. The gentleman yields back the balance of his time. 

Unfortunately, we are going to have to pull this to a close because we are down to about 4 minutes left in the vote. 

This is not the last hearing. We expect to continue this work 

going forward. Your testimony has just gotten us to a really good 

starting place. We have a lot more work to do, some follow-up to 

do. 

I know there are members who didn’t get a chance to ask questions. We do have information to submit for the record, including 

from TIA, Comptel, CCA, Tech Freedom. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Olson, I believe you had a document you wanted to submit, some articles on broadband deployment. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Mr. WALDEN. And with that, I am afraid we are going to—unless, 

Ms. Matsui, do you want just a minute or two? 

Ms. MATSUI. Yes, just a minute or two. 

Mr. WALDEN. Go ahead. 

Ms. MATSUI. I was curious, I wanted to ask Mr. Slinger some 

questions. I find what you are talking about very interesting because I look at this, and what you say is all very important about 

deploying broadband infrastructure, and I am from Sacramento, so 

we have wonderful areas that are doing great things. I am looking 

at a particular area in our city that is economically deprived, and 

we have a light-rail station that is going to be—a light-rail line 

that is going to be completed there with fiber and transit-oriented 

development stations. But yet we have schools and libraries that 

are just deprived and businesspeople there who just have no access. If we were to do something there, and I don’t know whether 

we can have a special project, but I’m looking at this being very, 

87 

very special for economic development. Is that something that we 

can provide the access, as you say that you need, is that something 

that you or somebody else can take on as a project working with 

us? Because I am trying very much to help this area that feels very 

deprived, looking at the rest of my district that feel like they are 

on the move and they are not on the move, and I want to get them 

on the move if there is something we could do there. 

Mr. SLINGER. Yes. There is a lot that we do really early stage 

with all the cities that we look at to make sure that they have the 

right kind of digital inclusion plans in place early, to make sure 

that the cities have a focus on it, and again, there is no silver bullet with any one company but we want to make sure that all providers and local community groups take this on, and as Fiber or 

any other technology is built out in those areas to really make sure 

people understand the relevancy of the Web, and hopefully get 

more people online. 

Ms. MATSUI. OK. Well, thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you. 

We are going to have to call it to a conclusion here. Again, we 

do have votes on the House floor followed by the Iranian briefing. 

So thank you to all of you for your testimony, your counsel. We 

look forward to being back in touch with you as we move forward 

and to others who have ideas for the Congress on how we can expand access to affordable broadband across the country, on Indian 

reservations, rural communities, urban communities, wherever it is 

not. 

And we have some tribal letters for the record as well from Mr. 

Luja ́n, which we are happy to accept. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Mr. WALDEN. And with that, we will adjourn. 

[Whereupon, at 1:41 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN

Welcome to the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology’s hearing on 

Promoting Broadband Infrastructure Investment. Broadband Internet access has become the communications and commerce tool of our time. Whether it’s renewing 

your car registration, streaming the latest episode of Silicon Valley, or video chatting with friends and family, broadband has fundamentally changed the way approach so many things. It has literally changed the old rules for how we live our 

lives. Which begs the question: why are we using old rules to regulate new networks? 

The broadband market has changed significantly from its early days, and continues to evolve to meet our society’s needs. Every city now wants to be a ‘‘Gig City,’’ 

to attract the best and brightest entrepreneurs and to galvanize their economies. 

And our rural and tribal areas want to ensure that they are not left behind their 

urban counterparts. 

Unsurprisingly, Americans are finding varied ways to meet this demand. 

Trillions of dollars—public and private—have been invested in American 

broadband networks since 1996. According to one study, the U.S. broadband sector 

invests twice as much per household as its European counterpart. And USTelecom 

estimates that in 2014 alone, broadband providers spent $78 billion in capital expenditures to continue to grow and upgrade the national broadband infrastructure. 

New entrants have also joined the picture. Although Google is one of the betterknown entrants, other start-ups have jumped in to meet demand. US Internet, a 

wild card small start-up, is taking on incumbents by stringing 1 Gigabit fiber across 

88 

the poles of Minneapolis. Dan Gilbert is backing Rocket Fiber, a startup in Detroit, 

to trench 1–Gigabit fiber throughout the town. 

In other instances, municipalities have built networks or crafted private public 

partnerships to bring 1–Gigabit networks to their town. For example, Ting has 

worked with Westminster, Maryland, and Charlottesville, Virginia, to bring highspeed broadband to those towns. Others are working to help municipalities determine the best course for accelerating broadband access. Former FCC official Blair 

Levin has launched Gig U.—an organization dedicated to facilitating buildout of 

high-speed network. And Deb Socia, our guest today, heads Next Century Cities, 

which helps cities and towns collect their experiences in attracting private investment, and—when necessary—procuring and deploying municipal networks. 

Despite the clear demand for high-speed services, investment in network infrastructure is not for the faint of heart. A staggering amount of capital is required 

to deploy fiber, antennas, routers, and switches to build a network with useful scale. 

Those who invest often won’t see returns for years; and the return comes only if 

the service satisfies enough customers to keep them coming back. There are real 

challenges to investing in broadband infrastructure, our laws shouldn’t be among 

them. 

With new players and incumbents looking to invest in infrastructure and compete 

for customers on the networks of tomorrow, the Federal Government should find 

ways to encourage deployment and eliminate barriers. Despite repeated calls to facilitate access to Federal lands and buildings, to simplify and expedite access to utility poles, and improve the process for tower and cell siting, these still present hurdles to efficient investment and deployment. Nor have we solved the issues that 

come with deploying on tribal lands, where the need to improve the communications 

network is very real. 

We hope that today’s hearing will start a discussion that reinvigorates a national 

debate on the best policies for continuing the model of private network investment 

that has made the United States a world leader in broadband. I’d like to thank our 

witnesses in advance for their testimony. We are looking forward to your insights. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRED UPTON

Communications and commerce have never been easier, thanks to the networks 

that comprise the Internet. As a world leader in broadband, we take for granted 

what an expensive and immensely challenging task it is to build, maintain, and upgrade the networks necessary to drive the modern information society. There is an 

incredible infrastructure that makes tasks that once took hours and even days as 

simple and as instant as a click or a swipe. In Michigan and across the country, 

we all are reaping the benefits. But if we, as a country, are to continue our leadership in the global technology industry, we must have policies that promote investment in the infrastructure to support it. 

This committee has always encouraged and promoted the deployment of communications facilities, and I am glad we have witnesses with such different backgrounds providing their unique insights today. My hope is that the discussion today 

will shed light on challenges to the economics of broadband networks and ideas that 

will help us replicate conditions that have already led to successful broadband deployment. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT E. LATTA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding this hearing today and I 

thank our panel of witnesses for testifying on this important issue. 

Access to broadband is essential. It is a primary driver of economic development 

and it empowers and connects communities—especially rural communities like I 

represent in Ohio. Americans are increasingly connected to networked and wireless 

devices forcing broadband networks to grow in both scale and scope to keep pace 

with consumer demands. That is why we need to seek opportunities to maximize 

buildout of broadband facilities, such as utilizing Federal lands and buildings as access points for broadband deployment of wireless antennas. 

Our Nation’s free-market, private-investment approach to broadband expansion 

has been very successful; therefore, I hope today we can identify policies that further encourage and advance investment in broadband infrastructure. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ANNA G. ESHOO

In the early 2000s, access to a broadband connection was considered a luxury. If 

you could download a music file in mere minutes, you were living the high life. In 

just a few short years, much has changed. Today, broadband access is ubiquitous 

with access to employment opportunities, education, health care and commerce. It’s 

used for advanced research among our academic elite, and it’s a conduit of democracy for a new generation of voters. 

Yet 55 million Americans lack access to the broadband speeds needed to unlock 

everything the Internet has to offer. Equally alarming is the fact that more than 

half of U.S. households have just one choice for high-speed broadband service. Despite an impressive $46 billion investment by the top four telecom and cable companies last year, the U.S. still ranks 17th globally in Internet speed. 

The fact of the matter is that there won’t be another $7 billion broadband stimulus anytime soon. So ‘‘bold’’ and ‘‘innovative’’ should be our operative words when 

discussing broadband deployment policies. This is about our collective future. So 

where should we be bold, and where can we be innovative? 

For years I’ve advocated for a ‘‘dig-once’’ policy. Quite simply, broadband conduit 

should be included during the construction of Federal highways just as gas and electric lines are. Recognizing the enormous benefits of this cost saving measure, President Obama included it as part of a 2012 Executive Order to accelerate broadband 

infrastructure deployment. 

Many new broadband entrants also face challenges in accessing utility poles and 

other rights-of-way. According to former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, the use of existing poles is nearly a tenth of the cost of having to dig underground trenches 

through streets and sidewalks. When a provider ultimately gains access to these 

rights-of-way, the terms should be fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory. 

Another barrier to broadband deployment comes from State laws, established at 

the behest of incumbent providers that restrict or ban municipal broadband networks. Earlier this year, the FCC voted in favor of bolstering 21st century 

broadband infrastructure in local communities by preempting State laws in Tennessee and North Carolina. Across the country, local communities including Palo 

Alto and Santa Cruz County in my Congressional district have demonstrated their 

desire to bring fast, affordable broadband to their residents. 

Finally, through the power of unlicensed spectrum, Wi-Fi can expand broadband 

coverage in underserved communities, including rural and tribal lands. The 600 

MHz band and its ability to penetrate walls and travel longer distances makes it 

uniquely situated to serve these and other communities on a nationwide basis. 

These aren’t by any means a cure-all prescription to what ails our Nation’s 

broadband system. But they are concrete steps I believe Democrats and Republicans 

can support. More importantly, they are steps that will bring greater access to 

broadband for millions of Americans who need it. 

I thank our distinguished witnesses for their commitment to promoting broadband 

infrastructure investment and I look forward to your testimony. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, JR. 

Thank you, Chairman Walden, for calling today’s hearing. Thanks also to our witnesses for being here today. 

This subcommittee has become an example of how real bipartisan efforts can create real results. Today we continue that tradition. Discussions about whether to invest in our Nation’s infrastructure should not have two sides—whether we are talking about roads, bridges, or communications networks. The priority in Congress 

should never be if we should invest in infrastructure; it should be only how we invest. To build a sound infrastructure, both industry and the Government must contribute. Sacrificing either will only lead to failure. 

Our focus today is on our Nation’s broadband networks in particular. The Internet 

has become integral to all of our lives. And in many ways, our broadband infrastructure is a bright spot for our economy. While the Government contributes billions of 

dollars in grants and an updated Universal Service program, private investment has 

been the primary driver behind the growth of our networks. Over the past 20 years, 

the private sector invested $1.4 trillion in their networks —a trend I expect will continue. So it is no wonder that broadband capacity has doubled about every 2 years. 

And just as important, this investment creates real jobs across the country. 

But despite this success, our work is not done. We are fortunate in New Jersey 

to be one of the most connected States in the country, but rural areas like Vermont 

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or Iowa and Tribal lands in New Mexico aren’t so lucky. The most recent data released by the FCC shows that Americans living in those areas disproportionately 

lack access to broadband—53% of rural Americans and 63% of Americans living on 

Tribal lands and in the U.S. territories do not have access to the new benchmark 

definition of broadband. We must continue to look for ways to help these communities. 

So I am interested to hear from our witnesses about what policies work and which 

ones need to be updated. I also want to hear about how to make sure our communications networks are resilient enough to withstand emergencies. 

I hope that ideas generated today will be the inspiration for more bipartisan work 

going forward. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID LOEBSACK

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Today’s hearing is a crucial part of our national dialogue about the importance 

of rebuilding our infrastructure. Access to broadband is no longer an indulgence for 

the rich-it is an indispensable part of all of our lives. That is certainly true in urban 

areas-but it is just as true in the vast rural areas we have in Iowa. 

I heard this loud and clear earlier this year during a Broadband Access Roundtable Tour that I took across my district. This is was not a short trip, either. I sat 

down to visit with my constituents in every one of the 24 counties that I represent. 

I took the time to make this trip because access to broadband is vital to survival 

in today’s economy. 

And at every stop—every one—I heard that we need to do more to expand the 

reach of high-speed Internet access. But broadband that costs hundreds of dollars 

is not good enough. Because low-income Americans deserve affordable Internet access whether they live in a city or on a farm. 

Mr. Adelstein, I appreciate your testimony regarding the importance of utilizing 

spectrum efficiently to expand wireless broadband access. I agree that this limited 

resource needs to be optimized. That is why I introduced the Rural Spectrum Accessibility Act with Rep. Kinzinger, which will encourage spectrum license holders to 

lease unused spectrum to small rural carriers to expand wireless coverage in rural 

communities. 

I’d like to thank the witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to hearing 

their suggestions on how we can move forward on this important issue. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BEN RAY LUJA ́ N

Thank you to the chairman and ranking member for scheduling this incredibly 

important hearing on promoting investments in broadband infrastructure. 

As we all know, when it comes to broadband, too many Americans have been left 

behind. 

The FCC reports that more than half of rural Americans and two-thirds of Americans living on tribal lands lack access to advanced broadband. In New Mexico, those 

numbers are 77 percent and 89 percent respectively. 

As I’ve said before, if we can have Internet access at 30,000 feet in an airplane, 

we should be able to have Internet access all across rural and tribal America, including New Mexico. 

By supporting investments in broadband, we support the entrepreneurs and 

innovators who want to build a brighter future for their people. By connecting 

schools, we can help children prepare to succeed in today’s competitive economy, 

while investments in telemedicine ensure that seniors receive the care they deserve. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on how we can scale this digital divide. And, I look forward to working with my colleagues to connect more people in rural America and on tribal lands. 

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