We Need a National Rural Broadband Plan

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Since the 1930s, policymakers have known that rural communications is a “market failure” — something that happens when private companies cannot or will not provide a socially desirable good because of a lack of return on investment. At that time, electricity and telephone companies were simply unwilling to enter rural America: The population was too sparse and the geography too vast. As a result, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936 to provide loans and grants to rural electric and telephone companies. It was a tremendous success: Within 20 years, 65 percent of farmers had a telephone and 96 percent of them had electricity. We have a similar problem with rural communications today — not with telephones or electricity but with broadband internet. A national rural broadband plan would designate a single agency — preferably the Rural Utilities Service, with its century-long relationship with rural communities and offices in every state — as the primary coordinator for rural broadband.  A designated point agency is crucial to coordinate federal expenditures and to encourage more data sharing, collaboration and coordination between the FCC and the Rural Utilities Service. This plan would mandate the creation of a new national broadband map, using granular and testable data rather than what we have now, where broadband providers report advertised rather than actual speeds to the F.C.C., and where broadband deployment is calculated by census block rather than by household.

[Ali is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia -- and the Benton Faculty Research Fellow]


We Need a National Rural Broadband Plan