Why Republicans Aren’t Serious About Getting Rural Areas Online

Spectrum policy isn’t the most incendiary or outlandish of the planks in the now-public Republican platform. But for pure disingenuousness, it ranks pretty near the top.

To put this as simply as possible: The U.S. is running out of the airwaves that transmit TV, radio, and phone signals. Or at least, it’s running out of the big chunks of airwaves—called spectrum—that aren’t reserved for the government or already licensed to telecom companies and other private corporations that have their own exclusive channels. Running out entirely would choke off new wireless communication, putting a serious damper on economic growth. The GOP platform derides the Obama administration’s broadband policy, saying the feds spent lots of money and still left millions of people—especially in the rural heartland—without Internet access. To fix this, Republicans propose freeing up pieces of spectrum currently occupied by federal agencies and allocating them to the private sector through auctions, which have generated $60 billion for the treasury since the government started holding them in 1994. Here’s the problem: Auctions haven’t done much to expand access in the rural areas Republicans claim to love.