Broadband on Map in Congressional Campaigns
Broadband access is an issue in many House and Senate races this year, especially in rural areas. Candidates are responding to growing frustration from businesses and constituents that can’t get high-speed Internet service. Some longstanding businesses are failing because slow connection speeds shut them out of online commerce. Rural hospitals yearn for fast connections that could allow instant consultations with other medical experts in emergencies.
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Many candidates are promising to pursue broadband legislation next Congress, according to interviews with incumbents, candidates and Hill staff. Some think chances are better that broadband will be addressed if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wins. He’s praised for putting the issue on the map early on in his candidacy, offering a mix of proposed subsidies and other incentives to widen broadband service availability. But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also stumps for better broadband. His approach would harness public-private partnerships.
“Increasingly, people are realizing that what electrification was to the country in 1930s, broadband is to our generation,” said Rep. Zack Space, D-Ohio, seeking a second term. “It’s fundamentally an infrastructure issue.” Space’s district has large rural pockets with high unemployment rates and no high-speed services. Space, an Agriculture Committee member, pushed hard in the 2008 farm bill to get more money for a rural broadband loan program and what he billed as a more accurate definition of “rural” to get money to truly needy areas.
Broadband is the first priority that Space listed in an August report outlining economic priorities for the state. Better broadband is “pivotal to improving opportunity in the technology sector for the region,” the report said: “So too is developing a base of consumers who understand the need and importance” of the technology. Businesses without broadband are being left behind, aides to Space said. A longstanding cheese factory in Ohio founded by Swiss immigrants can’t process online orders, and the company is struggling. Broadband “is not a luxury,” Space said. “It is a necessity.”
“I'm hoping we can move on comprehensive legislation next year,” said House Commerce Committee member Rick Boucher, D-Va. He and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., introduced a bill that would promote broadband development with universal service subsidies. But it sat inactive in the 110th Congress, despite a push by Boucher and endorsements from AT&T, Qwest and rural telecom groups. House Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass., “has not shown a great deal of interest, although I've encouraged him to do that,” Boucher said. “For the sake of our economy we have to do better. The sooner all members come to that realization, the better.”
Economic Development Tool
House and Senate candidates in Maine are talking about broadband as more residents and businesses clamor for better service, according to candidate speeches and Web sites. As do many heavily rural states, Maine has urban pockets but also exurbs that providers often shun because infrastructure costs there dwarf potential revenue. That’s so in West Virginia, but that state’s situation is complicated by mountainous areas that create even more infrastructure challenges.
“I talk about it a lot,” said Chellie Pingree, former president of Common Cause, running for a seat just vacated by Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine. Allen invokes broadband in his Senate race against Maine Republican Susan Collins. Maine relies heavily on tourism, but tourists expect inns and hotels to have high-speed Internet access and an online presence, said Pingree, a bed-and-breakfast owner. “People want to download videos, they want to find your site on the Internet,” she said. Big-city types on vacation expect good broadband, even in Maine, she said.
Pingree’s daughter, Hannah, is a state legislator who two years ago championed a law that put a 1 percent tax on retail sales of communications gear. Last year the tax generated about $850,000, used as seed money to get providers to serve areas with no broadband. The state also got $2.5 million from Verizon when it sold assets to FairPoint, also to be used for broadband. “Our entire lives are online,” Pingree said. “People get really mad when they don’t have” broadband, she said.
Maine ranks 21st in the U.S. on Internet access speed, ahead of 25th-place Ohio, according to Communications Workers of America data. Rhode Island has the fastest speeds, North Dakota the slowest. Allen terms high-speed Internet access essential to boosting Maine’s economy, particularly in the state’s rural precincts, he said recently at an event in a Bucksport bookstore.
As many advocates do, Allen likens rural broadband to rural electrification, saying the U.S. needs to make it the same national priority as the New Deal made its technological predecessor. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a strong backer of better broadband, devoted a page on his website to its necessity. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii said recently: “I look upon this development as just as important as the printing press.”