House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) has no plans to influence the Federal Communications Commission's development of a national broadband plan. But speaking Thursday morning at the Pike and Fischer Broadband Policy Summit, he made clear his experience representing a rural district informs his ideas on how the FCC should assist the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Rural Utilities Service in defining unserved and underserved markets. Chairman Boucher reiterated his belief in broadband as the "new essential American infrastructure," which he said is of equal importance to this century as rural electrification and universal telephone service was to the last. In the new economy, the "corridors of commercial opportunity" will be defined more and more by broadband, he said.
