Acting FCC chair speaks loudly for rural broadband

It is a "Rooseveltian call to arms," one writer says, but another says it does not "describe a comprehensive rural broadband strategy," which is what Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission to do. It is a 77-page report by Michael Copps, acting chair of the FCC, and it was issued last week.

"The report does, however, acknowledge the still-large deficit in rural broadband coverage (even though Copps states that nobody knows who in rural America has broadband access and who doesn’t)," writes Bill Bishop, co-editor of the Daily Yonder. "And in the ongoing discussion about who is best suited to provide rural broadband — the telcos? local government? — Copps gives his support and encouragement to government."

From his bully pulpit, Copps delivers a strong message: "For years, large parts of rural America have languished on the sidelines of the digital revolution. Home to the homesteaders, pioneers, and the rich and diverse Native American cultures that contribute so much to our national identity, rural America has for most of our history been deemed too remote, too sparsely populated, or too inaccessible to be fully connected with our nation’s infrastructures. ... As long as a grade-school child living on a farm cannot research a science project, or a high school student living on a remote Indian reservation cannot submit a college application, or an entrepreneur in a rural hamlet cannot order spare parts, or a local law enforcement officer cannot download pictures of a missing child without traveling to a city or town that has broadband Internet access, we cannot turn back from these challenges.”

"It reads like it was actually written by somebody," writes Matthew Lasar in ars technica. Maybe that's because it represents Copps' views, not those of the FCC, whose chair-designate, Julius Genachowski, has yet to get a schedule for his Senate confirmation. Lasar and Bishop wonder of the new chair will be as friendly to rural areas; the view from here is that if Obama keeps one promise to rural America, it will be this one, which he repeated most in his campaign.