'Virtual veto' complicates broadband expansion in Pa.

Pennsylvania’s definition of broadband hasn’t changed in nearly 20 years

Everyone in Pennsylvania has access to broadband — at least, according to the definition set by lawmakers in the early 2000s. But ask residents of rural areas about their internet speeds, and you’ll likely hear about slow connections and outdated technology.

What happened?

In 1993, state lawmakers approved a sweeping measure they hoped would guarantee universal access to high-speed internet in Pennsylvania.

As a new Spotlight PA investigation reported, the legislature cut a deal with the existing landline phone companies, who agreed to make broadband available across the entire state — even in unprofitable rural areas — in exchange for less regulation and the chance to earn higher profits.

Ten years later, with the law due to expire, legislators debated whether to renew it. That involved setting themselves an impossible task: trying to predict the internet speeds of the future.

The 1993 law defined broadband as a minimum download speed of 1.544 megabits per second — blazing fast at the time. By the early 2000s, though, some industry experts warned lawmakers that the original standard would soon be obsolete.

At a hearing over the proposed renewal in 2002, consultant Lee Selwyn testified that technology was changing quickly: internet speeds considered state-of-the-art five or six years ago were now hopelessly outdated. Still, “no one was seriously talking about modifying the target,” Selwyn recalled in a recent interview with Spotlight PA. 

Some representatives of the telephone companies argued at the time that 1.544 megabits per second was already faster than what many customers wanted. The companies also had a financial incentive to oppose upping the standard, because higher minimum speeds would have required them to spend more to upgrade the infrastructure they owned. 

When the bill passed in 2004, Pennsylvania’s definition of broadband was faster than the federal government’s. In the years that followed, however, the federal standard increased twice while the state’s stayed the same. By 2015, the final deadline for companies to upgrade their networks, the federal standard for download speeds was 16 times faster than Pennsylvania’s. 

A bipartisan state report from 2020 confirmed that the phone companies complied with the law. In interviews with Spotlight PA, industry representatives said Pennsylvania’s definition of broadband is only a baseline, and pointed out that most customers can get far higher speeds. 

“Unfortunately, you can’t manage technological change in statute — it’s living and breathing,” said David Bonsick, a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Telephone Association, which represents most of the companies required by law to provide broadband. 

David Malfara, CEO of Big Bang Broadband, a Florida-based consulting firm, largely agrees. Pennsylvania should have taken a different approach, he said. Instead of locking in a standard in 2004, he argues, lawmakers should have created a more flexible definition that could have been updated. 

Malfara was one of the experts who warned lawmakers in the early 2000s that demand for faster internet speeds would keep increasing. “We saw the growth from the early 1990s,” he recently told Spotlight PA. “It was going like a house on fire.” 

Lawmakers received his testimony, he recalled in an email, with a “blank, non-expressive response.”

Today, the definition of broadband speeds in Pennsylvania law remains the same as in 2004. —Charlotte Keith, Spotlight PA

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