It’s been a decade since we started to see the acceleration of software eating the world. It turns out, we underestimated the extent to which this would be true across work, education, commerce, and just about every facet of our economy. To be precise, what we’ve seen is software through the internet that’s taken a big bite of everything.
For most of us, it’s hard to imagine getting anything done without being connected to the internet. The pandemic ushered us into an existence where much of our work, schooling, entertainment, and even healthcare happens online. As this shift has happened, most of us stuck it out in our living rooms or home offices and mentally filed the monthly internet bill away with our other utilities.
But not everyone can take internet for granted. As 2022 comes to a close, 25% of Americans still don’t have internet. Too many families are relying on fast-food parking lots or the local library for a digital connection. As software expands its benefits to those of us lucky enough to be connected to the internet by default, it’s increasingly debilitating those of us who are not and our economic productivity.
The shape of the internet will dictate the shape of our society and the scale of our collective progress. Getting this right is a matter of both access (physical means of accessing the internet) and agency (the ability to take action). It’s time we start taking internet infrastructure seriously on the federal level.
We need a new agency devoted to tackling the particular challenges and opportunities of the internet.
This isn’t the first time in American history that we’ve stared an accelerating digital divide—and the accompanying ideological considerations—in the face. In the mid-1930s, nine out of 10 rural homes did not have electric service. Just 20 years later, more than 90% of U.S. farms had electricity (today, that number is more like 99%). Government action like the Tennessee Valley Authority Act that established a federally owned electric utility corporation and, a few years later, the Rural Electrification Act that provided federal loans to install electrical distribution systems in remote and isolated rural areas of the United States, were a boon to progress in rural areas of our country. With bills signed on the national level, the real work of quite literally stringing wires to these places began. This is why we see telephone poles with strings of cables everywhere in cities at the turn of the last century.
Nearly 100 years later, you might be surprised to learn that bringing the internet to a new region follows this same highly manual, highly capital-intensive pattern. It turns out that the term “wireless” is a real misnomer: The backbone of internet connectivity is entirely dependent on wires. When we talk about internet infrastructure, what we’re really talking about is not only laying new cables to new regions, but also managing how the data moves through this system of cables so that citizens can take full advantage of connectivity. We need to lay fiber-optic cables everywhere that comes with their own set of rules, permits, and handling needs.
I’ve seen the realities of the challenges of connecting spaces to the internet up close through the internet infrastructure company I started with my brother. We work with companies in warehouses, offices, and life sciences labs to connect them to the internet, and you wouldn’t believe the tangled mess we have to wrangle when it comes to the work: modems labeled with text you can barely make out on old and worn stickers; fibers and wires crossed and connected to servers that might call to mind a bomb from an 80s-era action movie; and cables dangling from ceilings and taped to walls going every which way. That’s just the cables inside the building. Once those are in place, then you need to integrate the internet service providers (ISPs), hardware, networks, and software required to actually get online.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is responsible for overseeing the placement, protocols, and performance of internet infrastructure for the entire country. The agency was established in the 1930s (half a century before the advent of the internet), largely to support access to radio, telephone, and broadcast television. But what works for these mediums doesn’t necessarily work for the internet. Great internet infrastructure requires wrangling not only the wires, but also the complexities of computing power, servers, applications, and technical protocols. The FCC has too broad of a mandate when it comes to this work, and we’re all paying for this gap. The digital divide begins early, including in K-12 education and the inequalities created will be even more crippling.
Our government has already made some meaningful strides in the direction of better internet infrastructure. The Biden White House earlier this year announced a $25 billion investment to bring affordable and high-speed internet to all Americans, targeting families without internet access so their children can stay on track in school. The American Rescue Plan aims to build network infrastructure and fund digital skills programming. There are indeed glimmers of progress, but we are working with neither the pace, focus, nor expertise required to take more impactful steps sooner.
As we inch toward solutions and fumble around with our approach at the federal level, there are stories of small towns so desperate for internet access that they’ve taken the problem into their own hands . . . literally. That’s right: Ordinary citizens are manually laying cable. When the organizations we work with can’t get internet, their people can’t get to work, and their businesses can’t thrive. We’ve claimed a victory in expanding “broadband” access to 80% of Americans. But under the current definition set by the FCC in 2015, the internet speed that clears the criteria for “broadband access” wouldn’t even allow for a single Zoom call.
At the same time, companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Google—whose businesses rely on internet access—are leading the charge in buying up existing cables and laying new ones. Consumer- and technology-savvy corporations are preparing for the reality of the ubiquitous internet. It’s time our government does the same for its citizens and businesses.
These are exactly the types of matters government agencies are particularly well-positioned to tackle. They can help us create the standardized, unified, and reliable system we need (like increasing the broadband standard). They can help us measure and inspect the current state and effectiveness of our internet (and use the data to identify the routes that will maximize connectivity). They can help us invest in and incentivize the right kinds of innovation and behavior (like attaching incentives to last-mile deployments, especially for new education and healthcare initiatives). They can help us establish and enforce the right set of protocols and policies that keep the internet ecosystem healthy and its users safe.
I’d love to see a goal of great internet connectivity for 95% of American households and businesses by the end of 2030.
And by great internet, I mean it should just work. Like electricity, you should expect your needs will be met wherever you are.
Better internet infrastructure is an unequivocal Archimedes lever: It can pull the economy forward by bringing more Americans into it, and getting them productive fast. The internet infrastructure that societal progress requires can only emerge from the right social and political infrastructure. With the focus, budget, and expertise of the right people, I know we can get there.
“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the world,” Archimedes said. I wonder what he could do if the place he stood was connected to the internet.
Anil Varanasi is cofounder and CEO of Meter, an internet infrastructure company.
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