NTCA CEO Bloomfield Sees “Rural Renaissance”

America is in the midst of a “rural renaissance,” thanks to unprecedented investment in broadband, said Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association. Every dollar invested in broadband yields four dollars in benefits, said Kathryn de Wit, project director for the Broadband Access Initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts which has been closely following state broadband initiatives for several years and was instrumental in reshaping federal policy to give more autonomy to individual states in determining broadband needs and how to address them. States were spending money not just to get everyone online but because if they didn’t, entire towns would die, de Wit observed. As the US begins to roll out the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program, de Wit encouraged NTCA’s rural broadband provider members to meet with their state broadband offices to help in shaping the five-year plans that each state’s broadband office must submit. Another important benefit of broadband is that it can help motivate young people to remain in the community. When young people have high-speed broadband, they can have the same experiences with Tik Tok, Instagram and other social media as people in urban areas do and will feel less need to leave their home community, noted Will McIntee, White House senior advisor for public engagement.