Administration Calls for Expanded Rural Broadband

President Trump’s infrastructure plan will include expansion of broadband internet service in rural areas.

“I will be including a provision in our infrastructure proposal—$1 trillion proposal, you’ll be seeing it very shortly—to promote and foster, enhance broadband access for rural America also,” Trump said in remarks at a community college in Iowa. “We will rebuild rural America.”

Access to high-speed internet has become a concern of farm lobbies that worry lower adoption rates in rural areas slow economic development. Only 55 percent of rural residents have access to downloads faster than 25 megabits per second, compared to 94 percent in urban areas, according to a 2016 Federal Communications Commission report.

Trump’s plan to use $200 billion in federal funds to leverage investment in national infrastructure improvement has prompted rural groups to fight for broadband’s inclusion, arguing that such access is a 21st-century version of the electrification and water projects that brought prosperity to sparsely populated areas in the past.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters that private investors haven’t found rural areas as profitable as urban ones, potentially making a greater federal role in expanding broadband appropriate.

“We think we ought to have the same push to have broadband connectivity all over the country, because in the 21st century, it is just as important as a telephone, water, sewer, roads,” Perdue said.    

Source: Prairie Farmer