President Donald Trump just announced his new plan to make high-speed broadband Internet available in rural areas. Trump was speaking at the 99th annual American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Nashville, Tennessee. The President told farmers and other attendees that with the high speed Internet “you can compete on a level playing field, which you were not able to do.”
Much of the plan was as a result of new report from the President's Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity, which promised to "use all viable tools to accelerate the deployment and adoption of affordable, reliable, modern high-speed broadband connectivity in rural America, including rural homes, farms, small businesses, manufacturing and production sites, tribal communities, transportation systems, and healthcare and education facilities."
As part of his new Rural Broadband plan, the Department of the Interior will be directed to devote funding toward broadband installation in rural America. The President's plan also calls for the network installation processes to be streamlined with standardized forms. Seems that they would already have standardized forms. The plan is to also review requests to place antennas on federal buildings. The FCC has said that 53% of rural communities still can’t find high speed broadband service in their area.
For the most part, rural America supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in the election last year and if he wants to count on their support in the future he needs to come through with the promises he made on the campaign trail. Helping small rural businesses get high-speed Internet in the towns where they live would be a step in that direction.
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