President Trump Pledges Rural Broadband Support in Infrastructure Package

President Donald Trump said that expanded access to broadband internet service in rural areas will be part of the infrastructure plan he will submit to Congress, helping to bridge a digital divide that leaves small towns behind.

"I will be including a provision in our infrastructure proposal -- $1 trillion proposal, you’ll be seeing it very shortly -- to promote and foster, enhance broadband access for rural America also," President Trump said. Trump’s plan to use $200 billion in federal funds to leverage investment in national infrastructure improvement has prompted rural groups to fight for broadband’s inclusion, arguing that such access is a 21st-century version of the electrification and water projects that brought prosperity to sparsely populated areas in the past.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters while aboard Air Force One en route to the event that private investors haven’t found rural areas as profitable as urban ones, potentially making a greater federal role in expanding broadband appropriate. "We think we ought to have the same push to have broadband connectivity all over the country because in the 21st century it is just as important as a telephone, water, sewer, roads," Sec Perdue said. "It has become an infrastructure of necessity."