Nevada’s US senators urge FCC to expand rural broadband
WASHINGTON — Nevada’s two U.S. senators have joined a bipartisan effort to expand mobile broadband to rural and underserved areas.
More than two dozen senators from both political parties on Thursday asked the Federal Communications Commission to expand mobile broadband in rural areas to improve public safety and enhance education and economic opportunities in precision agriculture and health care.
U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., were among those requesting FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to “move forward” with the second phase of a so-called mobility fund to expand communications services.
“It is necessary for our constituents, living in some of the most remote and rural areas, to participate in today’s digital economy,” they said in a letter to Pai.
Nevada is the seventh-largest state in the nation, but one of the least populous. Nearly three-quarters of the state’s 2.9 million residents live in Clark County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Advances on broadband deployment in rural Nevada will make a significant difference for thousands of families,” said Cortez Masto.
Pai was named FCC chairman last month. He has identified closing the “digital divide” between urban and rural areas as a priority. But he also had criticized the mobility fund, which he called a “textbook definition of waste,” and proposed redirecting the $25 million a month that the federal government currently spends to enhance mobile broadband.
The funds are currently used to subsidize private wireless carriers that build networks in high-cost rural areas. Senators are sensitive to the shift in spending and concerned that, without government help, private carriers could reduce efforts to built out the wireless networks.
In the letter to Pai, senators agreed that closing the digital divide should be a top priority for the FCC, and urged Pai to expand broadband to underserved areas in states. But they also urged the agency to continue to provide incentives to those carriers to maintain, expand and upgrade their systems, saying the carriers need long-term certainty.
Contact Gary Martin at 202-662-7390 or gmartin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.
