Center for Rural Strategies meeting discusses rural broadband

The newly-founded Center for Rural Strategies (CRS) held their first meeting in Whitesburg. Kentucky.  People from California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington D.C. gathered to discuss the problems and possible solutions in providing access to broadband services to rural areas in America.

Several policy solutions were discussed.  One involved having government investment in the form of grants.

The participants believed the grants would encourage investment from the private sector to finish bringing high speed broadband services into the sparsely populated rural areas.

There are some rural areas will never be financially attractive for private businesses to extend high speed broadband infrastructure to them.

The Center for Rural Strategies suggested that the USF (Universal Service Fund), that the FCC is considering changing, be modified to bring broadband services to remote areas just as utilities have done with electricity and in some cases, water.

Tim Marema, CRS’ Vice President supported this idea: “When there’s a low customer base, when people are spread out, when the competition is much less than in urban areas, the market doesn’t behave the same way. So, there’s a role for government and the community in making sure we’re all connected through broadband.”

I have an alternative to this dilemma of bringing broadband to rural communities.  Just give a micro-grant to an enterprising individual and have them do what this mom and pop ISP did for their community.  And they do not even limit the data bandwidth to their customers!