DC Must Help Close Rural Digital Divide

In a recent spending bill, Congress made $600 million available for additional broadband deployment to America’s rural areas. The US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) has been tapped to administer these funds through a new pilot program. Without question, this funding is a welcome and needed addition to the growing arsenal now aimed squarely at closing the digital divide to rural Americans once and for all. Private investment, paired with dedicated federal programs, will connect millions more in the coming years. That’s why great care must be taken to maximize the RUS program’s effectiveness. The smart coordination of RUS with existing programs we know already work, such as the Universal Service Fund, can best help providers extend and sustain broadband into our most rural communities. If this coordination doesn’t happen, projects selected by RUS could risk hollowing out the “Main Streets” of small communities, leaving another program, such as USF, to pick up the surrounding portions at much greater costs. New RUS funding should instead focus on areas not already reached, or not likely to be reached through programs such as the Federal Communications Commission’s High Cost and Remote Areas Funds, intended to bring service to many of the hardest-to-reach portions of the United States.