Latta Wants Rural Broadband Caucus To Expose Telecom Policy to Broader Group of Lawmakers
A planned launch of the House’s bipartisan Rural Broadband Caucus Wednesday is about exposing a wider range of the chamber’s lawmakers to rural broadband policy issues and will hopefully feature private engagement with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Communications Subcommittee Vice…
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Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said in an interview Tuesday. Latta is launching the caucus this week with Reps. Peter Welch, D-Vt., Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., they said last week in a letter to colleagues (see 1601270054). Latta and Welch have co-chaired the Commerce Committee’s rural telecom working group, which has engaged privately with Wheeler. “You have to hear from the guy at the top at the FCC,” Latta told us of his hopes to continue meeting with Wheeler through the venue of the caucus setting. Latta sees room for having both the Commerce working group and the caucus, which will provide a way to reach lawmakers beyond Commerce who lack the chance to summon FCC officials under their jurisdiction to testify, he said. “It’s good to have everybody involved.” The caucus backers plan a "broadband 101" briefing Wednesday in Cannon and plan to hear from industry officials representing the Competitive Carriers Association, CoBank, NTCA and USTelecom. Latta also cited the importance of his home district, a frequent source of references in his role on the Communications Subcommittee. “We have so many people from all over,” said Latta, a fierce opponent of net neutrality regulations and at times an ally to cable providers, in the interview. “My district, I go from very very rural to a metropolitan area to an urban area. So it’s very important to us that as telecommunications law is developed, that they deal with folks that are in the rural areas, not only for giving them opportunity but also the regulations that are out there can hurt them.” Latta described the geographic challenges of broadband deployment, including “areas that other folks don’t want to go into but the smaller ones will,” he said. “So that’s one of the things that we want to emphasize, what it means to the people in rural areas that haven’t had the ability to have that access and what it means now.”