There's A Threat To Rural America

Across the Fence #317

This may be the most important “Across the Fence” column I ever write. I stay away from political issues in this column, but this issue could have a detrimental affect on the rural America that I write about and love. I can’t just sit on my hands and not let all of you, who live and work in rural and small town areas, know what your representatives in Washington will be voting on. There’s a serious threat to the future of a vital rural America. It comes in the form of the National Broadband Plan.

The National Broadband Plan is the FCC’s response to a congressional mandate to assure every American household has access to fast and affordable broadband service. Broadband in telecommunications, refers to data transmission, where multiple pieces of data are sent simultaneously. With wider broadband, more data can be sent faster. This affects your television and Internet service.

This plan should help rural America, but as it’s now written, it could hinder rather than advance broadband service for people in rural areas. This plan discriminates against rural customers by setting a speed standard that is 25 times slower than the speeds in city and urban areas. Support from the Universal Service Fund (USF) will only fund speeds up to 4 MB in rural areas, where it will fund speeds of 100 MB in urban areas. The FCC’s goal is to equip 100 million homes with 100 MB of service. Reaching that goal is much easier in urban areas than in rural areas. Without this support mechanism, many rural telecommunication companies will not be able to maintain service above 4 MB. Prices will be much higher for the same service in rural areas due to the lower customer densities and higher per subscriber cost of building and maintaining rural networks.

Broadband speed is vital to businesses competing nationally and internationally. Where 4 MB is adequate for most people today, tomorrow it will be as slow as a snail’s pace. It’s barely enough to download a Netflix movie or do some serious gaming on the Internet.

Let’s put what all this means to the information super-highway in another way. What if the federal government suddenly informed you that it planned to focus the majority of its transportation funds and resources on large metropolitan areas? Bigger and better roads would be built in those areas, while rural areas and small towns would have to get by with gravel and dirt roads. Urban people would be speeding along on their multi-lane, super-highways, while those of us in rural areas would be traveling slow, often bogged down, and barely moving, on the muddy, dirt roads.

Without access to the information super-highway, many rural businesses would find it hard to operate and compete. They would have to relocate those businesses to large, urban areas in order to have access to the higher speeds they need. Reliable, high-speed broadband is essential in today’s global economy in order to conduct business.

What will happen to small towns if businesses and industries had to move out of the area to stay in business? Employees would either have to move–if given the choice, or become unemployed. Unemployment is already too high in rural America. The loss of businesses and jobs will greatly impact all other businesses in those communities, including your local newspapers. It will have a domino affect. With less people and dollars to buy their products and services, other businesses will be forced out of business. Some small towns around the country could become ghost towns. This National Broadband Plan, as it is now written, is very anti-rural.

It’s time for everyone to exercise their voice and let their congressmen and U.S. Senators know they are against the National Broadband Plan. Let them know your concerns. Tell them you don’t want rural areas to be discriminated against and become second-class citizens when it comes to telecommunications. Urge them to support regulatory action that ensures equal access to broadband for all Americans, not just large urban areas.

Unless they hear from enough of us, this plan could become law and then it will be too late. The dominoes will begin to fall and who knows what will be left standing when the dust settles.

I always try to share positive stories as we visit across the fence each week. This story can still have a happy, positive ending, but it’s up to all of us in small towns and rural America to help write that ending. We can do it by exercising our right as Americans to voice our opinions. Don’t wait for someone else to write the ending for you or you may not like the way the story plays out. It’s time to stand up and be counted and not let our way of life be relegated to second-class status.