Rural Broadband in Low Income Areas
Georgia’s 9th District Congressman Doug Collins reintroduced the Gigabit Opportunity (GO) Act, House Resolution 5082, to encourage broadband development in economically disadvantaged communities.
The GO Act allows governors to designate one-fourth of their state’s low-income communities as Gigabit Opportunities Zones. It also provides tax incentives for companies to invest in gigabit-capable broadband expansion within these zones.
The GO Act also encourages leaders of states, counties, and cities to voluntarily adopt a uniform broadband deployment plan to expedite gigabit-capable rollout.
In his reintroduction Collins said:
High-speed internet access has become a prerequisite for economic growth in America, yet many of our neighbors struggle to gain reliable access to broadband. By concentrating private investment in low-income areas, the Gigabit Opportunity Act will open the door for these communities to succeed in our 21st century economy.
About Author
IrishPat
Patrick Malone is a Business Advisor and Leadership Mentor headquartered in Blairsville, Georgia. He co-hosts Mountain Daybreak and Mountain Mornings, weekday news programs, and hosts This Week in Blairsville a weekend program on WJUL/WJRB. He is a mentor in Union County High School, serves on his church council and writes a monthly column on leadership in the animal healthcare industry.
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Rural Broadband access has been a political talking point since 2009, millions allocated.
https://speedmatters.org/blog/archive/vice-president-biden-announces-first-broadband-stimulus-grants
Why do we need yet another government program to put “Rural Broadband in Low Income Areas”?
What if any progress has been made?
If we haven’t accomplished the goal of getting broadband in rural areas since starting in 2009 we should give up. It will never happen. Then again there is no political capital in that is there?
An internet connection, let alone Broadband, isn’t a utility, and as such should be left to the free market capitalism. Regulation and subsidies are socialist.
Without having read the whole bill, it first appears that this is not necessarily a rural-based initiative, because “low-income” does not equal “rural”. How that plays out seems to depend on which areas the gov designates as zones. And it appears that “expansion” rather than first-gen installation is eligible, and what is the exact scope of investments that will trigger the tax breaks? Moreover, private investment in broadband will only be truly incentivized where there is a good chance for profit to be made, that is to say, where there already exists a critical mass of economic activity and resources (or close to it), that is to say, where there is already a measure of pre-existing incentives for private investment. It’s not just that I haven’t read the bill, it’s that I don’t see any such detail in the made-for-press information, and I doubt that such details would be front and center because it does in fact appear to be more of a pipe dream- or more accurately, a cable dream.