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:
“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.