[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 126 (Thursday, August 2, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1684-E1685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             SUPPORT OF THE COMMUNITY BROADBAND ACT OF 2007

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. RICK BOUCHER

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, August 1, 2007

  Mr. BOUCHER. Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Community 
Broadband Act of 2007 in which I am pleased to be joined by the 
gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Upton. I appreciate his co-authorship of 
the measure and the steps we have taken together to construct the bill.
  Our legislation will encourage the deployment of high speed networks 
by ensuring the ability of local governments to offer community 
broadband services.

[[Page E1685]]

  Broadband has changed the way that people in our Nation live, work, 
transact business and obtain information. The ways people work and play 
today are fundamentally different from a decade ago, due in significant 
part to the growth and development of the Internet, faster and more 
efficient ways to access it and the broad new range of Internet based 
services now in common use.
  But for our citizens to be able to reap the benefits of this 
transformation, they must have access to broadband, and the United 
States has fallen woefully behind other developed nations in its 
deployment. According to the most recent statistics released by the 
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United 
States has dropped from 12th in the world to 15th for broadband 
penetration. The nation that invented the Internet and today creates 
its most popular globally utilized applications can and for the sake of 
our national economy must do better than that.
  Most of the areas in the U.S. that lack broadband are lightly 
populated rural regions. Almost 20 percent of households nationwide are 
not served by a broadband provider, and others are served by a single 
provider that may charge higher rates for the service given the absence 
of competition. In my district, for example, we have a county with a 
population of 16,000 people where the most populous town has 614 
residents. That county has no broadband service. I represent dozens of 
small communities with populations measuring in the hundreds of people 
where broadband is absent. That pattern is replicated across rural 
America, and our current global standing is a reflection of it.
  It is no surprise that building out broadband to such areas is a low 
priority for cable and telephone service providers, but that reality 
does not make broadband any less essential to the lives of unserved 
rural residents. If the commercial broadband providers are not willing 
to deploy in particular areas, local governments should be able to step 
in and fill the gap.

  At the turn of the last century, when the private sector failed to 
provide electricity services to much of America, thousands of community 
leaders stepped forward to form their own electric utilities. At that 
time, opponents to municipally-operated electric utilities argued that 
local governments were not qualified to meet this task. They also 
argued that competition from the private sector would be hindered by 
the entry of municipalities into the market. Those arguments did not 
prevail because it was deemed to be in the public interest to deploy 
the then new ``essential infrastructure'' universally, and today we 
have thriving municipal electric utilities nationwide that have well 
served their localities for the past century .
  I believe that broadband today is the new essential infrastructure. 
It is every bit as necessary today as electricity service was 100 years 
ago, and just as with electricity service 100 years ago, in many 
instances, the only entity willing to provide the service today is the 
local government.
  The Community Broadband Act of 2007 ensures that local leaders can 
bring broadband technology to their communities, just as local leaders 
did with electricity a century ago. More than 14 States have passed 
laws restricting public communications services. The U.S. Supreme Court 
has upheld the power of States to enact these barriers. Our legislation 
removes the barriers. It leaves room for States to enact reasonable 
terms and conditions under which local governments can deploy 
broadband, but it overturns absolute bars to localities offering the 
service.
  The bill includes competitive safeguards to ensure that public 
providers cannot abuse governmental authority by discriminating in 
favor of a public service to the disadvantage of private competitors.
  Community broadband networks have the potential to create jobs and 
increase economic development, enhance market competition, and 
accelerate universal, affordable Internet access for all Americans. 
Let's give localities the freedom to create arrangements that work for 
them, whether they own the infrastructure and offer the service or 
whether they deploy the facilities and lease the lines to private 
service providers. The national interest requires that we harness the 
willingness of localities to elevate our world standing and to enrich 
the lives of their constituents and the economic prospects of local 
businesses that urgently need broadband services.
  I encourage our colleagues to join Congressman Upton and me in 
enacting the Community Broadband Act of 2007.

                          ____________________