This One Law is Throttling High-Speed Internet in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is sitting on $711 million in federal broadband funding. But a bureaucratic misclassification, buried inside a Pennsylvania law, threatens to undermine the whole effort—and now the federal government is taking notice.

Arielle Roth, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said Pennsylvania is “driving up costs” by classifying fiber-optic technicians as electrical line workers under the state’s prevailing wage law.

Prevailing wages are the minimum rates of pay required for workers on government contracts. Different job classifications, managed by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I), receive different compensation.

So, what’s the difference between electric line workers and teledata line workers? Electric line workers are typically licensed electricians working with high-voltage cables, while teledata line workers perform lower-risk work.

The difference becomes starker when factoring in compensation. Under Pennsylvania’s prevailing wage law, electric line workers qualify for $80 per hour.

Meanwhile, teledata line workers typically earn less. They earn about $30 per hour in Massachusetts and $40 per hour in New York.

Pennsylvania, however, doesn’t have an existing prevailing wage classification for teledata line workers. Instead, L&I, under the leadership of Gov. Josh Shapiro, lumps them in with electric line workers, meaning twice the pay. And despite the fundamental difference between the two, L&I and the Shapiro administration have thus far refused to create a new classification for teledata line workers.

The Shapiro administration’s self-imposed calamity becomes even more ironic considering the governor’s public comments. In January, he appeared on The View, where he criticized the Biden-Harris administration for its unsuccessful broadband deployment. “That broadband example is just one where I think there’s a real difference in approach,” says Shapiro. “I’m about concrete, get s— done, show your work and not just talking about it.”

When you artificially double the price of that labor, the costs add up. Labor typically accounts for about two-thirds of the cost of deploying fiber-optic broadband. According to Todd Eachus, president of the Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania, misclassification may raise project costs for broadband builds by 50 percent.

In the end, rural Pennsylvania gets the short end of the fiber-optic cable. L&I’s intransigence drives out local companies that are better positioned to deploy the cable but not as financially robust as bigger companies that can absorb the extra costs. Fewer bidders and higher costs mean fewer households gain access to high-speed internet. And those who do will wait years longer than necessary.

The lesson here is not subtle. When government artificially inflates costs, the people who pay the price are not bureaucrats. Instead, those who suffer are rural business owners floundering to compete online, rural students buffering in their online classes, and rural communities struggling to bridge the digital divide.