PSC Director Breaks Down Fiber-Broadband Project in Nebraska

It seems the challenge of keeping up with the evolution of technology is the goal post keeps moving.

Imagine Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla making electrical current discoveries before the turn of the 20th century and soon everyone across the U.S. were in want and need of the marvel of electricity for the home and business.

Flash forward to the turn of the 21st century and the advent of the Internet and the public need for faster and faster speeds of broadband to keep up with the ever-changing technological discoveries in the age of information.

Cullen Robbins works for the Public Service Commission in Nebraska as the director of Telecommunications and he shared some similar comparisons with the membership of the Executive Club this Monday at their weekly luncheon held in downtown Lincoln at the Graduate Hotel.

Robbins offered some historical context on the development of broadband in Nebraska. He has been with the PSC since 2013 before becoming the director of Telecommunications in 2016.

“How do you get service to rural areas when there’s really no business case to do that?” Robbins pondered. “That’s where some of the stuff I work on comes into play. We manage the Nebraska Universal Service Fund which is essentially a fund to help develop rural broadband networks.”

He explained that the basic mechanism for NUSF, which is listed on your phone bill, is to collect a fee from every user as a surcharge that builds up to offset the cost to build and maintain rural networks. That’s where he said the basic issue becomes the realization of how and why to serve a lot of rural customers.

“Between 2010 and 2020 and between the state universal funds and the federal universal funds essentially were the only way that money has being directed towards broadband build out. The NUSF dedicates about $40 million per year for broadband building and maintaining of those networks almost 10 years old,” Robbins said. “Some people ask, ‘why haven’t we got these networks built.’ The basic answer is the cost. The cost is pretty extreme.”

That’s where Robbins compared building a network to provide electricity for everybody and ‘why can’t we just do that again for broadband?’ He said the comparison can also be made for providing regular phone service for everybody rurally, as well.

“We’ve tried to move that needle a little bit from providing just telephone service to making sure that we’re building networks that are more future-looking and are more able to meet the demands of the future,” said Robbins, who hales from Wheatland, Wyoming but moved to Lincoln to get his graduate degree in mapping. “In other words, we’re using public money and we want to make sure that we’re paying for networks and we want to insure that these are long-term investments and not trying to play catch up all the time.”

In reflecting back to 2020 when the pandemic hit, Robbins said that shed some light on how deficient broadband service coverage was across rural areas as compared to the more populated areas of urban cities.

“Really in 2020, that was the start of a major effort both federally and statewide to put a lot more focus on broadband and getting service built out to rural areas,” he said.

Robbins shared a broadband map of high-speed services rendered across Nebraska with how funding was being accomplished at the public website: [email protected]. It showed where fiber and broadband work is being concentrated currently. He said it reflects project funding from NTIA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Nebraska Broadband Bridge Program. He said there is still a lot of work to be done but hopes by the year of 2028 that most unserved and underserved communities will be effectively covered.