“Cold peace with China will require much more and faster investment”

Tribune. President Biden announced his ambitious plan on March 31 “Build Back Better” (“Better rebuilding”) with a chapter on broadband access for all and research and development (R&D). Its objective: job creation (“The American Jobs Plan”). Its target: China. But since the end of the Cold War, few stimulus plans have yielded the expected results. If the plan is passed by Congress, it will be confronted with dynamics of reality and viability which change very quickly.

The report according to the White House is that in 2021, “Over 30 million Americans still do not have high-speed Internet access,” even if, according to the cable operators, 70% to 80% of American households have physical access to maximum speeds of one gigabit per second, which is less than the speed of fiber in France. But this concerns the cities. And one in five Americans live in rural areas, 35% of whom do not have access to decent speed.

Starlink or Kuiper

For low-income households, the acceptable expense would be $ 10 per month. Unfortunately, the price is high, between 50 and 70 dollars per month, because there is little competition in the fixed networks: 85.4% of the population in rural areas have only one operator and 14.6% do not. have none.

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In the United States, broadband is defined as 25 megabits per second (Mbps) by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), counterpart of the Regulatory Authority for Electronic Communications, Posts and Newspaper Distribution (Arcep ) in France. But according to Broadband Now, the reception speed required for a family of four is at least 108 Mbps. And [l’opérateur américain] AT&T predicts that by 2025, there will be a doubling of receiving traffic.

The plan talks about new networks built to stand the test of time, which points to fiber to reduce the risk of obsolescence. To implement it, thirty-two Democratic representatives have tabled a bill: “The Leading Infrastructure For Tomorrow’s America (LIFT America) Act”. The broadband portion of LIFT includes $ 109.3 billion, including $ 80 billion for 100% broadband deployment, and $ 9.3 billion in price “affordability” subsidies. LIFT also wants to neutralize regulations that prevent municipalities in eighteen states from creating and operating networks.

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