Declaring that closing the digital divide is the FCC’s top priority, chairman Ajit Pai proposed an agency order to put $500 million in funding toward high-speed internet in rural America, said ZDNet. The agency estimates that 39 percent of rural residents lack broadband, compared with just 4 percent of urban America.
“We need more deployment in sparsely populated rural areas if we’re going to extend digital opportunity to all Americans,” said Pai. “But I’ve heard from community leaders, Congress, and carriers that insufficient, unpredictable funding has kept them from reaching this goal.” Pai said he wanted to update the FCC’s universal service program “to encourage cooperatives and other small, rural carriers to expand the broadband network.”
“The proposed order hasn’t been made public, so a lot of details about the additional funding are still unknown,” said ZDNet. Last week, the Trump administration released a rural prosperity report that gave top billing to broadband as a path to economic growth. President Trump signed documents to speed up federal permits for broadband projects and to let private companies put cell towers on federal land.