Public-private partnership for building a resilient broadband infrastructure in Puerto Rico

Highlights

• Puerto Rico is rebuilding and making more resilient its telecommunications sector, which was devastated by hurricanes in 2017.

• As it rebuilds its telecommunications sector, Puerto Rico has the opportunity to expand broadband access to the disadvantaged.

• An innovative public-private partnership (PPP) can spur resilient broadband deployment in Puerto Rico.

• This PPP and its associated courses of action are critical ingredients of the recovery plan for the telecommunications sector.

• Some aspects of this PPP may provide ideas for policy makers elsewhere.

• This article is intended to contribute to the literature on PPPs and to the literature on resilient infrastructure.

Abstract

This article will explore the use of an innovative approach to a public-private partnership (PPP) to spur the deployment of broadband and create more resilient telecommunications networks in Puerto Rico. Such a partnership is a critical ingredient of the plan for rebuilding the telecommunications sector of Puerto Rico after the island was devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. The proposed partnership also has the potential for enabling the expansion of citizen access to broadband services throughout Puerto Rico. This work was done as part of the Congressionally mandated economic and disaster recovery plan for the island.

Introduction

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been used to provide assets or services that government considers its responsibility to provide or to ensure that they are provided to its population (World Bank Group, 2014).

In a PPP project, many functions are performed by private companies: “The project functions transferred to the private party—such as design, construction, financing, operations, and maintenance—may vary from contract to contract, but in all cases the private party is accountable for project performance, and bears significant risk and management responsibility.” (World Bank Group, 2014).

PPPs have been used in a wide range of sectors, including transportation, water and waste, power, and social and government infrastructure (e.g., education, health and social housing). PPPs also have been used in the communications and information technology sector to enable broadband internet access for economically disadvantaged segments of the population; PPPs can leverage the private sector and go beyond what commercial providers would be willing to do on their own (IEG World Bank, 2011).

A recent article in Telecommunications Policy stated, “In recent years, the preference for purely private funding and ownership of telecommunications networks has given way to a ‘new wisdom’ that some form of public funding is now likely necessary if faster and more capacious next generation access (NGA) networks are to be constructed in a timely fashion for the majority of the population (Howell & Sadowski, 2018).” The article noted, however, that “the body of analysis of PPPs in NGA networks to guide policy-makers is scant (Howell & Sadowski, 2018).” This article will describe a proposed innovative partnership that would leverage the catalytic role of both the Federal government through providing funds for reconstruction of telecommunications networks in Puerto Rico and the Government of Puerto Rico (GPR) by including telecommunications providers, regulators, experts, and civil society representatives to carefully consider all aspects of a plan for broadband deployment throughout Puerto Rico.¹

Public-private partnerships have been proposed and used for the deployment of broadband internet at the municipal and state levels (e.g., United States), as well as the national level (e g., Australia, New Zealand). Government participation in those partnerships ranges from full ownership of the network and responsibility for its operation, maintenance and upgrades, to fostering private investment by providing tax incentives or facilitating permitting processes. The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has identified three general models of broadband PPPs: private sector-led, government-led and private supported, and a joint ownership model (National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA], 2015). NTIA noted that government can play a catalytic role “to garner community support, identify needs, develop innovative solutions and attract private investment through rights of way (ROW)² access, streamlined permitting processes and financial support (NTIA, 2015, p. 4).” These are key aspects of a PPP that has been proposed to create a resilient broadband infrastructure in Puerto Rico, following the destruction of Puerto Rico's telecommunications networks as a result of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

In September 2017, Puerto Rico's wireline, wireless and cable networks were rendered largely inoperable by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The island's broadband infrastructure that relies on those networks was also decimated. Puerto Rico is also prone to other natural disasters, as demonstrated by a series of earthquakes that occurred in December 2019 and January 2020.³ The largest of these earthquakes happened on January 7, 2020, and had a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale.

The events in Puerto Rico in 2017 demonstrated that a natural disaster that destroys a major portion of the telecommunications infrastructure of a particular region often leaves citizens and businesses without means to communicate with each other by phone or the internet. It can also have a major deleterious impact on the region's economy, on government communications and on the emergency response by police, fire and medical services. However, such a disaster may offer the opportunity to take a fresh look at methods to bring about a more resilient broadband infrastructure to that region and to expand broadband access to disadvantaged segments of its population.

In this article, we will describe a public-private partnership that has the potential for enabling the expansion of citizen access to broadband services throughout the island of Puerto Rico while simultaneously building a resilient broadband infrastructure. We will examine how the PPP proposed for Puerto Rico aligns with PPPs that have been used by U.S. states and countries such as New Zealand to promote the deployment of broadband. The paper will first discuss why broadband is important. By “broadband” we mean the set of technologies, networks and systems that enable the provision of broadband services.⁴ The second section will address models to spur the deployment of broadband and explain why providing the infrastructure required to service the most disadvantaged Puerto Ricans cannot be left to the market alone. The third section will describe the damage to the broadband infrastructure caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The fourth section will discuss the strategy to build a resilient broadband infrastructure in Puerto Rico. The fifth section will explain the proposed PPP for the deployment of broadband throughout Puerto Rico. The final section will describe the most recent initiative in Puerto Rico, namely, the Broadband Infrastructure Fund. and present concluding remarks.