Democratic Lawmakers Propose $20 Billion Broadband Spend

Looking to trump President Donald Trump's trillion-dollar infrastructure spending plans, Democratic lawmakers unveiled their own plan that calls for spending big bucks to expand "high speed and affordable broadband" in both unserved and "underserved" areas, including funding for both middle-mile (backbone) and last-mile wired and wireless deployment. The Democratic plan calls for a $20 billion investment, which the Democrats say will result in 260,000 new jobs.

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) was a key co-sponsor of the spending plan. "To close the rural-urban divide, and to push toward ubiquitous access to high-speed broadband, we will invest $20 billion to fund the build out of high-speed broadband in unserved and underserved areas. This funding will be available to projects currently eligible under programs at both the Department of Commerce and the US Department of Agriculture. We also propose expanding the programs to enable grant recipients to use grant funds to deploy various types of infrastructure capable of offering, middle-mile, last-mile wired and wireless broadband access, and adding evaluation criteria in the awards process to ensure that the funding goes to the most effective and efficient uses. Finally, we propose ensuring additional funding is available to help upgrade our nation’s aging 9-1-1 system and other critical infrastructure technology."