Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) says he is on board with President Donald Trump's proposal to include rural broadband money in an infrastructure legislative package.
“President Trump understands high-speed broadband service is essential to supporting rural economies, boosting job creation, and helping farmers deploy precision agriculture technology,” Wicker said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the President to close the broadband gap in rural communities and bring American Internet infrastructure into the 21st century.”
The president, in a speech to Iowa college students, said getting broadband to rural areas was crucial for the high-tech current and future farmers of America.
This has been Technology Week for the administration, including meetings with tech leaders about next-generation wireless broadband. Wicker chaired a hearing on the Universal Service Fund this week, which is used to subsidize broadband in hard-to-reach and tough-to-make-a-business-case-for areas.
He has also introduced the Rural Wireless Access Act of 2017, which would ensure the government has good data so those dollars are spent where they are really needed.
(Photo via OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Flickr. Image taken on June 23, 2017 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)
