How the Biden Administration Can Expand Rural Broadband

Population density has favored the building of Internet infrastructure in urban areas, but there has been little economic incentive to do so in many rural parts of the country. As a candidate, Joe Biden seemed to understand that appealing to rural voters was a political necessity. In his “Plan for Rural America,” Biden promised “to expand broadband, or wireless broadband via 5G, to every American.” As part of the effort, Biden promised twenty billion dollars to build rural-broadband infrastructure, as well as a tripling of the amount of money available to organizations, local governments, tribal groups, and corporations to wire rural communities through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Community Connect program. The federal covid-19 relief bill, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in December, allocated billions of dollars to expand broadband access to low-income families, a billion dollars to wire tribal lands, and millions of dollars for distance learning and telemedicine.