Opinion: An All-Fiber America - Why That Dog Won’t Hunt

'For much of the rural U.S., most fiber costs just don’t work.'

By Jimmy Schaeffler

PHOENIX, Oct, 12, 2024 – The May 2022 Biden Administration’s decision favoring fiber optic technology in its broadband deployment grants left many people puzzled.

Policy analysts like me continue to find it odd that Biden’s Commerce Department seemingly ignored a viable, cost-efficient technology like unlicensed fixed wireless access (uFWA) to reach tens of millions of our neighbors living in rural, high-fiber-cost areas.

Both opponents and proponents of those choices continue to scratch their heads. Indeed, today, especially in and around Washington, D.C, like Halloween ghosts, thousands of these same unanswered questions haunt the halls of government and industry.

A Representative Chart, For Example

The chart below shows a random, yet I believe representative, sample of per location Northern California spending, including high and low fiber cost deployments in Oklahoma and Ohio, which are labeled “Outliers.”

The point of this random sample representative chart?

For much of the rural U.S., most fiber costs just don’t work.

Briefly, the chart below highlights a Sept. 24, 2024 Broadband Breakfast article titled “Plumas-Sierra Telecom Nabs $67 Million In Middle Mile Grants Across 4 California Counties.” The data exemplifies a dozen or so remarkable examples of unreasonably expensive-rural-fiber-deployments in Northern California.

Adding breadth, sample Oklahoma and Ohio databases further buttress this chart’s California dataset.

Important to note here, too, this data is not super-scientific, rather it is, I believe, a fair representative sample of data that makes and supports the point of this article. (Note, further: Even after law school, I was far from a math prodigy, yet increasingly I relish understanding things mathematically … which means managing data to produce better economic product and service offerings.)

In addition, dozens of this author’s calls to fiber’s rural American competitor – small-to-midsized uFWA operators – consistently confirmed nearly all uFWA equipment installs (including truck rolls and labor), measured within the $500-$1,000 range. Thus, using the numbers behind this chart, the average fiber cost is a minimum of almost eight times higher than the highest range of uFWA install and equipment costs. Worth also emphasizing is that some average comparisons are as low as only three times higher for fiber (which amazes even a former FCC commissioner The Carmel Group contacted for this article); and some are as high as 54 times higher.

The point is that on average, much of fiber is typically too expensive for Rural America.

Where Fiber Works, Where It Does Not

There are two simple concluding points here: First, especially in urban and suburban regions, fiber advantages like speed, throughput, and long-term reliability are strong.

Second, however, and way more important in more sparsely populated areas, the per-location costs for fiber take it out of competition when it comes to comparative costs, efficiencies, and the relative speed and throughput of uFWA. To say nothing of the superior uFWA capabilities when it comes to relative customer service, locality, first deployment opportunities, permitting, maintenance, and replacement.  

Additionally, compared to uFWA, today’s average fiber deployment costs question the elements of both logic and controlled spending (no matter how true the federal government’s “fiber future-proofing” argument).

Ultimately, if our country and every locale had unlimited budgets, fiber would almost always be the sole choice. Fiber would be perfect. But life –  and fiber deployment – are not perfect. Where fiber costs are astronomical, no amount of federal or state funding will make millions of installs even “reasonable.” Especially when “less perfect” uFWA solutions – in balance – are superior.   

Is that enough to mean fiber is not the right choice? Of course not. In most urban and likely a majority of suburban America, fiber might be the better balance. But that is not true in the far less populated – and rugged – points beyond.

Like many things in good management, this “All-Fiber” question comes down to balance. And compromise, and a middle ground of multiple choices or – as most in the greater wireless industry profess today – finding (and funding) – “the best tool for the job.”

Recently, Northern California’s Andy Main, a WISPA trade group member and 27-year uFWA and hybrid fiber industry veteran, rather aptly summarized: “Ease and cost of installation; reasonable reliability and longevity; locality; customer experience; network responsiveness; fiber to the ‘middle mile’: These need to be the balancing factors for Rural America’s broadband deployment.”

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About the author: Jimmy Schaeffler, The Carmel Group’s chairman and chief service officer is based in Scottsdale, Ariz. Since 1972, he has researched, analyzed, and written about telecom, focused on broadcast, pay TV, and digital media; on the industry’s software and hardware; and upon the people that make telecom happen globally ( www.carmelgroup.com).