Starks Statement on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund
February 10, 2020
- I have zero tolerance for continuing to spend precious universal service funds based on bad data. There is bipartisan—and nearly universal—agreement that our existing broadband deployment data contains fundamental flaws. And yet today’s Report and Order presses ahead with funding decisions based on mapping data that doesn’t reflect reality, plowing the same mission-critical error into a newer, much larger program. We must do better.
- We have not done enough to ensure that once broadband is available, families can actually afford it.
- To ensure universal service funds are put to the best use, we must envision the connectivity needs of the future—and build toward them. We built to 4/1 Mbps in 2010, and it didn’t last. Do I think that the 25/3 Mbps baseline that we set out today will last 10 years from today? I do not. In my conversations with rural electric co-ops, they tell me that customers overwhelmingly want at least 100/100 Mbps networks.
- We must create real accountability for companies that receive subsidies. More than a dozen winners from our last universal service auction have already defaulted. And some providers have recently announced that they will not make their CAF II milestones, which is concerning. Communities that have already waited too long for broadband should not be delayed by providers unable to fulfill their obligations.
- I cannot support provisions of the Report and Order that penalize the many states that have made their own investments in rural broadband deployment.
Starks Statement on Rural Digital Opportunity Fund