NTCA Asks Governors to Urge Trump Team for Rural Broadband Funding

Rural stakeholders are hoping state governors can help in obtaining additional federal rural broadband funding. Just before the winter holiday break, Shirley Bloomfield, chief executive officer of NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association, sent a letter to the National Governors Association asking them to highlight broadband as a critical infrastructure initiative in their communications with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.

In the letter, Bloomfield also made two specific recommendations for boosting rural broadband deployment, including closing a budget gap in the Universal Service Fund program and creating a new capital infusion program. NTCA sent the letter when staffers learned that the Trump transition team had asked governors for input on critical infrastructure initiatives and had given the governors just a few days to respond. “Placing a priority on deployment of such networks makes sense when one considers the economic payback of such investments for individual consumers and businesses and for the States more broadly,” wrote Bloomfield in the letter. She cited a recent Hudson Institute study which found that companies investing in and operating rural broadband networks contributed $24.1 billion to the economies of the states in which they operated in 2015. A particularly notable finding was that two-thirds of the economic output actually accrued to urban areas.