Reaching rural America with broadband internet service

[Commentary] All across the US, rural communities’ residents are being left out of modern society and the 21st century economy. I’ve traveled to Kansas, Maine, Texas and other states studying internet access and use – and I hear all the time from people with a crucial need still unmet. Rural Americans want faster, cheaper internet like their city-dwelling compatriots have, letting them work remotely and use online services, to access shopping, news, information and government data. With an upcoming Federal Communications Commission vote on whether cellphone data speeds are fast enough for work, entertainment and other online activities, Americans face a choice: Is modest-speed internet appropriate for rural areas, or do rural Americans deserve access to the far faster service options available in urban areas? My work, which most recently studies how people use rural libraries’ internet services, asks a fundamental set of questions: How are communities in rural regions actually connected? Why is service often so poor? Why do 39 percent of Americans living in rural areas lack internet access that meets even the FCC’s minimum definition of “broadband” service? What policies, beyond President Donald Trump’s new executive orders, might help fix those problems? What technologies would work best, and who should be in control of them? The question facing the FCC and Congress – and really, the US as a whole – is whether we are willing to invest in providing broadband service equitably to both urban and rural Americans. Then we need to make sure it is affordable. [Sharon Strover is Director, Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute; Professor of Communication, University of Texas at Austin]