FirstNet and H.R. 3994. FirstNet (Built by AT&T) is required to provide public safety broadband in rural America. Recently, AT&T accepted the challenge and committed to invest an additional $2 billion in rural build-out. Meanwhile, as I have mentioned before, there are many grants and low-cost loans available to states and counties to implement rural broadband. These include several administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), many by the United States Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and most recently the Department of Homeland Security. However, as I have also said before, these agencies do not work with each other and they have different criteria. All told, there are more than 25 separate programs administered by five different agencies so progress is really slow. Some agencies are only interested in fiber broadband but some are willing to fund a combination of fiber backhaul and wireless distribution. For many years now, I have been calling for a common organization to take charge of implementing funding for rural broadband. Perhaps H.R. 3994 will be the bill that will create such an agency.

H.R. 3994 Access Broadband Act. This bill “to establish the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth, and for other purposes” was first introduced in the House of Representatives in October of 2017, sponsored by Representative Paul Tonko, a democrat from New York. With additional sponsors, on June 13, 2018, the bill was forwarded by the subcommittee to the full Committee on Energy and Commerce for consideration prior to being presented to the full House. Congress is busy working on a number of issues that many of the Representatives and Senators will say are more important, but to be effective, this bill needs to be moved quickly through the House to the Senate and put into law.

We do have to be careful with this as I am sure some within the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will take exception to the creation of a new Internet Connectivity office since they will feel this is their purview. However, if you look at what has happened over the course of the last few years, you will see that there has not been any coordination within and between the federal agencies. As long as each agency with a broadband initiative feels this is its area of expertise, even though it has not looked at the issue as demanding a coordinated action, we will continue to lag behind in both rural and poverty-level Internet connectivity.

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