[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 131 (Wednesday, August 2, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4708-S4709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Rural Broadband

  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, August is Rural Broadband Month at the 
Federal Communications Commission. The Commerce Committee just today 
put forward nominees for the Commission, and the Commission does 
matter. But I want to talk today specifically about highlighting the 
importance of broadband in rural America and rural Missouri.
  In January of this year, I joined a number of my Senate colleagues on 
a bipartisan letter to President Trump regarding the importance of 
broadband and expanding its access to all of the country and, 
particularly, the parts of our country that are not currently served.
  As part of any infrastructure legislation that the Congress is 
talking about, I think we and the administration need to consider 
policies that advance infrastructure not just solely in terms of roads, 
bridges, and ports, which are important, particularly where the 
Presiding Officer and I live, in Arkansas and Missouri. That 
transportation network means so much to us, but also important is how 
people are able to communicate and compete. High speed internet access 
cannot be overlooked as we consider what our infrastructure should look 
like going forward.
  Broadband can be delivered by wireless or wireline technology. It can 
be brought to customers by traditional communications companies in 
rural areas. Often, now, rural electric co-ops show great interest and 
capacity to do this, as do others. Following the significant steps that 
Congress took to deregulate the market as part of the 1996 
Telecommunications Act, the broadband industry has really responded. 
They invested a lot of money. In fact, they invested $1.5 trillion of 
private money to deploy better and faster networks. If you have access 
to one of those networks, you know what a difference it makes.
  In 2015 alone--that is the last number I have access to--the 
investment by traditional wireline companies, wireless companies, and 
cable providers was $76 billion. All of that is really good, except 
that there is a real divide between the rural areas of my State and the 
rural areas of the country and the other more populated areas.
  Some people say: Oh, that is just a myth; there is no digital divide. 
I would have them look at any number of articles. One article in the 
Wall Street Journal in June made the point that 39 percent of the 
United States' rural population lacks access to broadband. That sounds 
like a pretty big divide to me--that 39 percent of the entire rural 
population of the country doesn't have broadband, and 61 percent of 
rural Missourians lack access to broadband. These numbers are not 
acceptable.
  Most private investment has been directed, as you would assume it 
would be, toward high populations, highly populated and easily accessed 
areas, and future customers. This is like the same problem the country 
had 100 years ago transitioning to telephones. It was hard to get a 
telephone to a house that was 5 miles away from the nearest house, as 
opposed to a house that was in the same apartment building to the 
nearest apartment. It is a lot harder to do that. The government at 
that time said that there would be a universal service fee on phone 
bills, and then use that money to ensure that everybody would have 
equal access to what was obviously seen as a really important way to 
communicate. The concept of Universal Service was enshrined in the 1996 
act. It said that rural households should have the same access to 
advanced telecommunications enjoyed by their urban counterparts. It is 
a good goal for a lot of reasons.
  I saw some figures this week. When looking at the overdose deaths and 
the opioid problems in the country, they are much greater in rural 
counties than they are in urban centers. In our State, Kansas City, our 
biggest city by population and any of the five counties that touched it 
weren't anywhere close to the top list of other areas in our State that 
had this problem. It matters when you are not connected. It matters 
when opportunities that you otherwise would have simply aren't there 
because somehow a service that is essential to our society today isn't 
available to you in the same way it is available to others. I am not 
saying it should be free to some and cost other people something, but 
it should be available to you in the same way that it is available to 
others in our society, as the 1996 Telecommunications Act stated.

  Broadband is necessary to attract and retain business for banks, 
factories, distribution centers, and small businesses. It is necessary 
to start and maintain a business, large or small. If business is going 
to compete outside the local marketplace, there has to be that 
connectivity. Frankly, in order to compete in the local marketplace and 
to have the ability to buy at the best price and to get the kind of 
products needed, the internet really matters.
  Broadband is always there. We have to have it if we are going to 
compete in the world economy. Many people in rural America are able to 
do that in ways that nobody would have dreamed about 10 years ago, but 
not everybody has that same access.
  Certainly, it is critical for schools and libraries. Just today, a 
parent was telling me that students can't do their homework anymore 
unless they can get internet access somewhere close to where they live. 
Students depend on the internet for education and opportunity where we 
live today.
  A revolution has taken place in agriculture. The great food-producing 
economy that we have produces more food all the time. It actually 
produces more food with fewer people. So that creates some displaced 
people who otherwise would have had those jobs, but

[[Page S4709]]

it also uses wireless infrastructure, data, and GPS structures to 
decide what should happen in a field at a given time in that part of 
the field. There are data centers, autonomous systems, and fiber optics 
that are a part of agriculture today. If you are linked to broadband 
and you are in your combine and have a problem, sometimes that problem 
can be solved in a couple of minutes by quickly accessing your system, 
seeing where the problem is, resetting what you need to set and moving 
on, as opposed to the other option, which is calling the repair person, 
having the technologist come out with their computer, hook it up to 
your combine, and 5 or 6 hours later, at a time when you are in the 
critical moments of your annual livelihood, suddenly you are working 
again, when you could have been working 5 or 6 minutes later if you had 
been connected like many farmers are today.
  Broadband is more than just economic opportunity. Rural hospitals and 
health clinics are able to use telemedicine to bring services at a 
level that otherwise would not be available. This is particularly 
important in mental and behavioral healthcare. A lot of people are 
every bit as comfortable or more comfortable with telehealth than they 
are with somebody in the room with them. Also, with intensive care, 
suddenly all of the resources that may be available 100 miles away can 
be right there at the point where questions are asked and that 
information is handled. Suddenly, somebody's life is saved because of 
the capacity to have that kind of communication.
  For years I have tried to lead when I could, and joined my colleagues 
when they were leading, with numerous letters to the FCC urging it to 
reform the Universal Service Program for the digital era. Most people 
who don't have a line to their phone have a way to get a phone in their 
hand now, but they don't have a way to get this important way to 
communicate and to compete. It is frustrating, when we see the limited 
resources we have--the government resources--to put into something like 
this to see limited funds go to places where you are just creating 
another provider and more competition, except that the second provider 
has government money on its side to compete with the first provider 
that went in with its own money. There is a big difference between 
unserved and any level of underserved. If you are unserved, like 69 
percent of rural Missourians, the idea that somebody else doesn't have 
enough competition in the place they live doesn't seem to make very 
much sense to you. If there is a competitive marketplace and somebody 
wants to go in there and compete and get the prices down, that is all 
fine, but I think the government focus should be just like it was with 
telephones 100 years ago--to see that people had the opportunity to 
have that phone the same as their neighbors in more densely populated 
areas.
  The President recently designated Ajit Pai to be the Chairman of the 
FCC. We are finally seeing the Commission take actions to address rural 
broadband. In February, I wrote to the Chairman and urged him to act on 
the $2 billion available for rural broadband and open this money up to 
auction so new entrants into the field, like electric co-ops, can 
competitively bid alongside everybody else. The FCC has decided to do 
that.
  Tomorrow the Commission will consider a notice to initiate the pre-
auction process for this money to deploy fiber optics in parts of 
Missouri. This will complement other initiatives underway, as the FCC 
looks at how to address rural broadband. They have launched a $4.5 
billion auction for mobile wireless service in rural areas. They are 
suspending out-of-date rules that forced small carriers to raise 
telephone rates. They are launching a proceeding to reduce costs for 
companies upgrading from copper to fiber optic networks--another FCC 
initiative. They are launching a broadband advisory committee. These 
are all steps in the right direction, where you and I live. They will 
make a difference.
  I look forward to continuing to work with the Chairman and others on 
the Commission on this issue. I think rural broadband is particularly 
leveling in creating the opportunities that we would like to see. The 
Commission will now be back up to its five-member intention of how many 
people are supposed to be there, making those decisions.

  There is still work to be done. We need to reduce the digital divide. 
Connectivity is critical. We also need policies that support efficient 
network structures that allow people to not just connect to a network 
but to connect with a network that really works.
  Let me talk about one other Missouri issue that relates here.
  I said earlier that Kansas City is now our biggest city, our most 
populous city. Still, St. Louis, I think, by region, is the bigger 
region, but the city of St. Louis is not as big as Kansas City. In 
Kansas City, they have an internet exchange called KCIX. It is a 
peering center that offers tremendous benefits to secondary educational 
institutions, to high schools, to vocational programs, and to others so 
they really maximize how they communicate with each other and have the 
availability of resources in one place much more equally available in 
others, and large amounts of bandwidth can be diverted by using this 
peering infrastructure.
  Frankly, what is happening in Kansas City this fall is that the North 
Kansas City School District will establish connections to KCIX. It is 
estimated that it may save the district almost $500,000 a year in 
bandwidth just by looking at peering. If peering helps there, maybe 
peering is one of the other things we can look at that will help solve 
the rural broadband challenge as well.
  We are going to be working on this. There will be legislation. There 
will be continuing efforts to urge the FCC to stay on point. We need to 
do what we can to make communities in rural America productive and 
competitive and as healthy as they can be.
  By the way, there are a lot of stories here to be told. I hope the 
next time I come to the floor on this topic that I will come to the 
floor with some things that are happening in my State that would not 
have happened if there had not been the access to broadband in not very 
big communities that are suddenly doing business all over the United 
States and all over the world.
  How we do that is by not letting any of our country wither away, 
where we have existing infrastructure and schools and sidewalks and 
water systems and by being sure the people who want to live there can 
live there, just like we are being sure now, as we see a revitalization 
of some of our downtowns and inner cities. People will want to move 
back to them and will have reasons and desires to want to do that. We 
are seeing an upswing there.
  I think we can see the same kind of thing happen in other parts of 
the country if we work to be sure we have an equity of opportunity. One 
of the major things that will provide that will be having access to 
broadband that works. I hope we can continue to fight that fight and 
see the progress we have made just in the last 6 months.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.