Promoting Broadband

USTelecom's Advocacy Priority:
Pro-investment policies and innovative partnerships that connect all Americans to the broadband future.

Encouraging Broadband Investment

Encouraging ongoing investment to extend the high-speed Internet’s capacity and reach is essential to the health and growth of our economy and to the arrival of innovative, broadband-driven advances that bring quality education, health care and more into our communities.  The availability of robust broadband services and applications across the country hinges on policies that encourage vigorous, private-sector investment in this essential modern infrastructure.  In the United States today there are nearly 1,400 broadband service providers.  In 2007 alone, companies invested $70 billion in North American communications infrastructure. USTelecom supports pro-investment policies that encourage the deployment of robust broadband infrastructure throughout our nation.

Connecting the Nation

USTelecom supports innovative public-private partnerships that seek to address the unique challenges our nation faces in ensuring that broadband’s opportunities are available to all Americans.  We favor solutions based on the Connect Kentucky model that has successfully leveraged public and private investment, community-based collaborations and technology literacy efforts to raise broadband access in the state from 60% to 94% over a three-year period.  This effort has increased broadband availability in the state by more than half a million homes and has helped create nearly 20,000 IT jobs.  Legislation has since been introduced in the U.S. Congress to “Connect the Nation,” using the Connect Kentucky model.  A recent study found that such an approach could deliver an annual estimated stimulus to the U.S. economy of $134 billion. 

Targeting Unserved Rural Areas

Our nation, with its vast geography, faces unique challenges in bringing expensive leading-edge infrastructure to more remote corners of our country.  While the majority of Americans today have access not only to broadband service but broadband choice in the marketplace, government resources are sometimes necessary to help reach pockets of the country where private investment alone cannot reach everyone.  USTelecom is working closely with rural members of Congress to support language in the current Farm Bill that would make available $1 billion annually in federal broadband loans and prioritize truly unserved areas where these resources can have the greatest impact.

No on Net Regulation

USTelecom members are united in our support of pro-investment policies that speed broadband investment and its many public benefits into our communities.  For this reason, we strongly oppose efforts to insert the government into the day-to-day management of sophisticated network infrastructure.  Government regulation of the Internet would slow the pace of innovation and pose a serious risk to our information economy.  FCC ‘net neutrality’ principles have been in place for nearly three years, protecting consumers and the marketplace.  There are simply no real-world “problems” that the government must step in and “fix.”  We believe the positive collaborations outlined above and the continued focus on broadband investment and deployment will yield the most tangible progress for our nation’s economy and consumers.