Racine Sun

University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus of telecommunications, Barry Orton, is speaking out against a plan that would allow major telecommunications companies like Frontier and AT&T to pocket millions in broadband expansion grants.

“My fear is that companies like Frontier, Charter and AT&T will simply use this money to substitute for their existing capital expenses,” Orton wrote in an email. “As they have multiple times in the past, they could cherry-pick service areas based on revenue expectations, leaving their less lucrative Wisconsin customers unserved and underserved yet again.”

Orton is one of several experts who argue that the same companies that have submitted applications to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission have already received tens of millions from the government to improve service locally and across the country, according to a report by the Racine County Eye.

Community Broadband Networks Initiative Director, Christopher Mitchell, said the programs were “poorly designed and poorly enforced, the report stated.

In one case, the Connect America Fund only required that projects in areas without high-speed internet provide speeds of just 10 megabits per second of download speed and 1 megabit per second of upload speed, according to the Racine County Eye.

Both Orton and Mitchell argue the high cost of burying fiberoptic lines in the ground provides companies with little to no incentives to make such investments, especially in rural areas where paying customers can be scarce, the report stated.

Frontier declared bankruptcy in 2020 and is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive business practices but is still seeking $20 million on top of the $185 million it has already secured from the government to improve local internet service, the report stated.

The company regularly finishes near the bottom of ratings surveys of telecommunications companies by Consumer Reports and the Better Business Bureau gives the company a grade of F.

Having also received $45 million from the federal government, AT&T has asked for nearly $10 million more from the state in this round of grants, while Charter/Spectrum has submitted the largest grant request of this round at $200 million, according to the Racine County Eye. The company has already received more than $160 million in federal funds for internet projects in Wisconsin.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension outreach specialist, Gail Huycke, said more must be done to bring high-speed internet to all of Wisconsin.

“Unfortunately, the infrastructure expectations were not very high when a lot of the past dollars were distributed,” she stated in an email. “Although companies met the requirements laid out at the time they received funding, that infrastructure may no longer be viable. I have worked with numerous communities where large sums of (federal funds) were utilized but the service is now failing, and it needs to be replaced.”

In 2021, Wisconsin PSC Chair, Rebecca Cameron Valcq, told the state’s legislature budget committee that nearly 400,000 households across the state, most of them rural, still lack high-speed internet and the price for changing that runs as high as $700 million, according to the report.

According to PSC spokesman Matthew Sweeney, this round of grant winners will be announced in early summer.