Answering the Call for Rural Broadband

There is simply no business case for investment in many rural areas without more effective public-private partnerships. That is why recent efforts in Washington to target funding and bridge broadband gaps in rural America are so important.  Rather than creating new programs out of whole cloth, we encourage Congress to look to existing federal programs with proven track records, like the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund, as it considers how to distribute additional direct funding resources. Most importantly, all federal agencies with a shared mission of promoting universal access to broadband must coordinate to ensure programs are working in concert, so that federal resources are used to deploy and sustain networks, and to prevent duplication of efforts. Broadband is the infrastructure challenge of the 21st century. When allocating resources to bridge our country’s digital divide, however, we have a message to Congress: Use programs that have stood the test of time to invest in technologies that can stand the test of time.

[Shirley Bloomfield is CEO of NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association. Jonathan Spalter is president and CEO of USTelecom–The Broadband Association.]