Trump's Rural Broadband Order Doesn't Do Anything New

President Trump this week revealed a new executive order he claimed would dramatically improve rural broadband, but doesn't appear to actually do much of anything new. Trump unveiled the effort at the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation, promising the administration was taking giant steps toward bringing neglected rural communities into the modern era. Trump repeatedly hyped this executive order, which predominately focuses on efforts to speed up cellular tower citing on federal property.

It's worth noting that this effort, spearheaded by cellular carriers as part of a routine, ongoing attempt to improve coverage, was underway before Trump even became President.

And while speeding up cellular tower placement is a good thing, it doesn't do much of anything about the real problem in broadband: namely the lack of competition in many markets (especially rural or poor areas). Still, the President told attendees of his speech that it would quickly result in "great, great broadband" for rural Americans.

"Those towers are going to go up and you’re going to have great, great broadband,” Trump told attendees. "Farm country is God’s country," he said during the speech. "Oh, are you happy you voted for me,” he added. "You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege."

The hype surrounding Trump's executive order obfuscates the countless other Trump FCC policies that are making the broadband industry undeniably worse for American consumers, especially those in less affluent and more rural areas.

That includes gutting privacy protections for consumers, killing popular net neutrality rules, reducing nearly all federal and state oversight of telecom duopolies like Comcast, lowering the standard definition of broadband to hide deployment and competition shortcomings, dismantling broadband programs for the poor, and protecting AT&T and Verizon's monopoly over cell tower backhaul and other BDS services. Cumulatively, history repeatedly shows us that these policies will result in higher prices and worse service from some of the least-liked companies in American history.

Granted, paying empty lip service to broadband and unveiling broadband programs that don't actually do anything is a sort of tradition for both parties.

Obama for example made a promise to deliver 98% wireless broadband coverage, ignoring the fact that carriers claimed we'd already met that goal (with 2G and 3G) at the time the promise was made. A few years later Obama FCC boss Julius Genachowski issued a gigabit city challenge, with the goal of bringing at least one gigabit network to every state by 2015, another goal that was being met (in part thanks to municipal broadband) without government lifting a finger. Obama's school broadband goals have been similarly hollow.

Paying lip service to broadband tends to get a few votes, but these promises are usually quickly forgotten. And it's rare to find a politician from either party that's truly willing to stand up to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast -- and push innovative policies aimed at shoring up competition in this notably broken market.