Telecommunications companies in 16 states, including Louisiana, will share more than $103 million in federal funding to help expand broadband Internet access to those areas of rural America that haven’t been reached by the high-speed service or are underserved, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today. Policymakers, public interest groups and telecom companies are seeking to bridge the digital divide by reaching even the most remote pockets of the U.S. with broadband Internet, hoping to improve economic and educational opportunities there. “There’s a big gap that remains between rural and urban areas because it’s just hard to make a business case in rural areas,” says Jonathan Adelstein, the Agriculture Department’s rural utilities service administrator. “Rural areas’ future depends upon access to broadband, and we’re not where we need to be today.”
The states that will benefit from the funding are: Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. As many as one in 10 Americans can’t get Internet connections fast enough to engage in such common online activities as watching video or teleconferencing, and two-thirds of schools have broadband connections that are too slow to meet their needs, the Commerce Department reported earlier this year. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission released a national broadband plan that set a goal of hooking up 100 million U.S. households to broadband connections of 100 megabits per second by 2020. That’s at least 20 times faster than many existing home connections.
