Stay Informed

For years, Farm Bureau and its allies have been sounding the alarm about the lack of broadband connectivity in rural areas.

Then along came COVID-19, and it became obvious that broadband isn’t merely a useful tool – it’s a necessity. And it became even more obvious that significant parts of rural America and rural Indiana do not have adequate broadband connectivity.

“School districts around the country are opening virtually and health care services are operating via telehealth platforms, yet more than 19 million rural Americans do not have high-speed internet access,” said Market Intel, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s market news service.

Additionally, a quarter of rural Americans say that access to high-speed internet is a major problem, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. More than 673,000 Hoosiers do not have access to broadband internet, the Federal Communications Commission has said, and many others have only limited access to broadband.

There have been several congressional and executive actions related to rural broadband expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic:

• Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act – Signed into law March 27, the CARES Act allocates more than $500 million to help rural communities connect to broadband internet.

• Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act – The HEROES Act, passed by the House on May 15, would provide $8.8 billion for the creation of the Emergency Broadband Connectivity Fund within the FCC to be used through Sept. 30, 2021. The fund would focus primarily on subsidizing broadband connectivity for schools, libraries and low-income households, but it also provides funding for the Healthcare Connect Fund Program. While hearings have been held, the bill has not been passed by the Senate.

• Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools Act – The Senate announced the details of this package on July 27. The HEALS Act does not propose any specific allocations for broadband build-out. It does, however, provide $1 billion for a program that provides small, rural telecommunications providers with funds to offset the cost of removing prohibited equipment that poses national security risks to their networks and replacing it with more secure technology.

• Executive Order on Improving Rural Health and Telehealth Access – Signed by President Trump on Aug. 3, the order outlines the administration’s directives to expand telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic and after. Focusing on rural accessibility, the administration’s order is centered on infrastructure build-out to enable wider telehealth measures and investigating needed regulatory reform to fast-track these services.

“There’s money out there – but it’s not enough, not if we want to get broadband out ‘to the last mile,’” said Bob White, INFB director of national government relations, noting that it’s been estimated that extending broadband costs about $1 million per mile.

An extra problem in Indiana, White said, is figuring out how widespread the lack of broadband really is. The reporting system is set up so that if one person in a census tract has access to high-quality broadband, the assumption is that everyone in that census tract has similar access, and that just isn’t the case, he said. The FCC is in the process of revising its maps, he added.