In Omnibus Bill, Congress Delivers $600M for Rural Broadband
Fremont County, Wyoming Shutterstock
Connecting state and local government leaders
The news may come late to dial-up country, but it will be something to celebrate.
Americans living in the vast stretches of the country where dial-up modems still provide intermittent and sluggish internet may have something special to celebrate in the $1.3 trillion federal spending bill approved by the House on Thursday and Senate early Friday morning.
The 2,000-page omnibus measure includes $600 million to expand rural broadband service through a pilot program run by the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service. The $600 million would be dispersed in grants and loans.
The NTCA-Rural Broadband Association hailed the news, commending lawmakers and celebrating what the funding might mean for the roughly 850 small telecommunications companies that belong to the association and that work remote areas of the country large telecoms have avoided as unprofitable.
“Small telcos have a proven track record in overcoming challenges in rural areas to provide robust, sustainable broadband,” said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield in a press release. She added that the pilot program outlined in the bill would foster “precisely the kinds of public-private partnerships the nation should be leveraging to tackle such challenges in the future.”
According to BroadbandNow, nearly 40 million Americans lacked access to broadband internet service, as of June 2016. The Federal Communications Commission defines broadband as internet that downloads at a minimum of 25 megabits per second and uploads at a minimum 3 megabits per second. Residents of Wyoming suffer the slowest internet among the states. Their average download speed clocks in at 15.5 Mbps. New Jersey residents enjoy the fastest internet, with average download speeds of 41.8 Mbps.
Burying cable over vast and often challenging terrain to serve relatively few customers makes little sense to corporate executives who have to answer to shareholders. For decades, rural leaders have called for a government solution akin to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which provided federal loans to electric power companies to extend their distribution systems across the country, to hidden mountain hollows and island-like prairie farms.
Even in the absence of a major broadband act, however, the federal government has been a key source of broadband infrastructure funding.
The Government Accountability Office last year reported that over the last 14 years, the Rural Utilities Service has delivered nearly $8.6 billion in loans and $144.8 million in grants to pay for more than 700 broadband projects.
The Trump administration’s infrastructure bill and this year’s Farm Bill are also likely to include funding for rural broadband.
The FCC earlier this year completed work on its “reverse auction” of $2 billion in broadband development subsidies. Companies will begin proposing projects in July to win funding.
Of course, even as federal, state and local governments seek ways to extend broadband, communications technology continues to advance. Stringing cable across a mountainside might not be the best way to use resources. Wireless technology can now deliver broadband-speed internet, from tower networks and from satellites.
This article has been updated to note the Senate's passage of the spending legislation on early Friday morning.
John Tomasic is a journalist who lives in Seattle.
NEXT STORY: The New Federal Spending Bill Is Flush With Money for Waterworks