Questioning Federal Broadband Spending

The Pew Research Center released an analysis that highlighted 15 percent of all US adults do not use the Internet -- a fraction of the number (48 percent) in 2000, but a figure that is mainly unchanged in the past three years. Additionally, Politico published a scathing critique of one program responsible for billions of US taxpayer dollars spent to improve broadband access in the country’s hardest to serve areas.

The National Broadband Map -- completed in 2010, and updated again in 2015 -- shows that 50 percent of Americans in rural areas don’t have high-speed Internet in the way the Federal Communications Commission now defines it. In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act made up to $2.5 billion available to the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to extend broadband’s reach in rural areas. The purpose of the RUS loan program is to increase broadband deployment (that is, the number of broadband subscribers with access to new or improved broadband service) and economic opportunity in rural America through the provision of broadband services. Politico’s Tony Romm concludes that RUS’ program never found its footing in the digital age.