A look at efforts to close the digital divide in states like Arkansas, as a Microsoft study finds around 120M Americans don't have access to high-speed internet
Austin Carr / Bloomberg : Tweets: @austincarr , @bw , @austincarr , and @bw Tweets: Austin Carr / @austincarr : But fiber-first proponents like @tewheels say fiber is better long-term investment, providing equal/future-proof broadband access. “We are pound foolish if we don't use the right technology the first go-around,” agrees @sbloomfield15. https://www.bloomberg.com/... @bw : Research group BroadbandNow estimates that 42 million Americans have no broadband access, while a depressing 120 million people in the U.S. are without any connection fast enough to even call the internet, according to an October 2020 study by Microsoft https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Austin Carr / @austincarr : “Do I spend over $1 million to get fiber to 15 people?” My @BW dispatch from rural Arkansas, where local telcos struggle to close the digital divide due to $$$ rock trenching, signal woes from pine trees, and even squirrels chewing up equipment: https://www.bloomberg.com/... @bw : The messy reality suggests a mix of physical and wireless networks would be cheaper and more practical than some one-size-fits-all solution. Now states are looking at everything from CBRS to Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to 5G home internet https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The gap between official and real-world connectivity has been widening for years: research in Missouri and Virginia found ~38% of rural homes the FCC counted as having broadband actually lacked it, and the agency moved ahead with a $16B rural plan even while conceding its coverage data lacked granularity. Microsoft's ~120 million figure — versus BroadbandNow's 42 million with no access at all — is the sharpest statement yet of how far the official map understates the problem.
Against that backdrop, the Bloomberg piece lands on states like Arkansas weighing a menu of fixes — CBRS, Elon Musk's Starlink, 5G home internet — while local telcos wrestle with trenching costs and equipment damage, and fiber-first proponents argue that anything less than fiber repeats past mistakes just as the US commits $64.5B+ that may still not cover the cost of laying fiber.
First-order effects
- Arkansas's local telcos face an immediate fork: absorb high trenching costs and signal problems to reach underserved homes, or cede those households to wireless alternatives like Starlink and 5G home internet that need no trenches.
- Microsoft's 120M estimate puts pressure on FCC coverage maps and ISP-reported data, strengthening the case from fiber-first proponents who argue subsidies should fund only future-proof builds.
Second-order effects
- Starlink and 5G home internet providers gain a subsidized market opening wherever fiber economics fail, forcing state broadband offices to choose per-household between wired and wireless technologies rather than defaulting to fiber everywhere.
- Criticism that Biden's rural-first strategy leaves 13.6M urban households behind sharpens into a funding-allocation fight, as urban gaps become harder to justify ignoring once the true national shortfall is measured at 120 million.
Third-order effects
- With an earlier analysis showing 50%+ of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund areas were already covered by prior broadband programs, repeated overlap pushes policy toward usage-verified coverage data and technology-neutral awards rather than map-based grants.
- If fiber's cost and labor constraints persist across the $64.5B effort, US broadband structurally bifurcates into fiber where density allows and satellite/wireless elsewhere — entrenching two classes of 'high-speed' access.
The trend: US broadband policy is shifting from FCC-map-driven funding toward a multi-technology race — fiber, CBRS, Starlink, and 5G home internet competing for the same underserved households — because independent measurements keep showing the official gap is far smaller than the real one.