Rural America doesn’t have good broadband — and needs it

The all-out push in Congress to pass a historic infrastructure bill offers an unprecedented opportunity to bring high-speed internet to unconnected rural areas. It’s a watershed moment for rural America, one that could turbocharge economic development and help reverse long-standing health and education challenges. It’s also one of the clearest opportunities Congress has for true bipartisan cooperation — a chance for lawmakers to demonstrate that we can still work together across party lines to do big things. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Cornyn (R-TX) have crafted a rarity in today’s political environment: a truly bipartisan package that is very likely to work. The Manchin-Cornyn bill would surgically target our limited federal dollars to build out networks in communities that don’t have broadband. It calls for a truly competitive process to ensure taxpayers get the greatest bang for their buck and requires buildout projects to be completed within three years. Transparency, competition, and accountability: it’s a common-sense approach offering the fastest pathway to universal broadband access. And one both parties should eagerly embrace. 

Congress is facing pressures to reroute a big slice of the pie to more heavily populated metro areas — even where high-speed broadband networks have already been built. Some, for example, want to divert funds so that municipal governments can build and operate their own broadband networks to compete with existing high-speed options — a gamble that has previously produced a mostly unhappy win-loss track record. Others want to redefine “broadband” to require 100 Mbps upload speeds — far in excess of what you would use. These sideshows risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.