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June 21, 2002 A
century ago, rural America's fight for universal mail service was barely trotting
along - literally. The inherent inefficiencies of horse drawn mail delivery limited
the reach of the U.S. mail, keeping millions of rural Americans disconnected from
the rest of society. But thanks to the automobile and the strong support of the
National Grange, America's oldest general farm and rural public interest organization,
rural Americans won the right to free mail-delivery service. Today,
the Grange is at the forefront of another battle to use technology to connect
rural America to the world. The Grange believes it is time to replace our "horse
and buggy" dial-up Internet with advanced, high-speed Internet service, known
as "broadband". Broadband
is shorthand for a series of cable, phone and wireless networks that connect millions
of Americans to the Internet at high speeds. It has the ability to improve the
quality of health care, public safety, government services, and education in rural
areas. It can also enhance the competitiveness of small rural businesses struggling
to compete with large corporations in major cities. Unfortunately,
outdated regulations create barriers to broadband competition that prevent wide-scale
deployment of new technologies to rural communities, thereby keeping rural consumers
tied to the "horse and buggy" Internet. With
broadband, a farmer can monitor the weather, check crop prices, refinance his
mortgage, and even learn about the latest farm programs, while sitting on his
tractor. His daughter can visit the Louvre from a one room school. His wife can
shop at a Fifth Avenue department store one minute and order farm supplies from
the local farm cooperative the next. The farmer's tractor will even be able to
send messages directly to its manufacturer when it needs to be repaired. Broadband
will benefit non-farm, rural families as well. Swift Internet access enables rural
Americans to enjoy a family friendly rural lifestyle without sacrificing their
access to information or technology. In short, broadband provides all rural Americans
with new choices and tools to significantly improve their lives. Ironically,
it is the lack of broadband choice that denies millions of rural Americans the
quality of life that broadband can offer. That is why the Grange is fighting for
a national policy that establishes clear and consistent rules for all of the broadband
providers. Leveling the playing field will spur true competition among all broadband
providers and encourage cable operators, telephone companies, satellite providers
and wireless businesses to accelerate the deployment of broadband networks to
rural areas. The future of rural America's small businesses, farmers and families
depends on it. Today,
broadband networks are being deployed far too slowly, especially in rural areas.
The reason is that outdated government regulations that were established to regulate
traditional voice communications services are now being applied to the Internet,
with chilling consequences. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was created to
foster competition in the market for local phone service. Now, it is being used
to force local telephone companies to share access to their networks and new broadband
customers with their competitors, like AT&T Broadband, at prices below the telephone
companies' cost of service. As a result, telephone companies have no incentive
to build new broadband networks in sparsely populated rural communities. And ill-conceived
proposals to grant special broadband "tax breaks" and "loan guarantees" to invest
in rural areas will do nothing to change the basic regulations that make the broadband
business highly unprofitable throughout most of rural America. As
such, cable companies, like AT&T Broadband, now control 70 percent of the broadband
market in the U.S. However, cable companies have generally failed to deploy their
networks in rural areas, focusing instead on lucrative urban and suburban markets.
A year 2000 report by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture showed
that nearly all U.S. families living in metropolitan areas of 1,000,000 persons
or more could receive cable broadband service. However only one-tenth of one percent
of the families living in rural communities of 1000 people or less, had access
to broadband. A Federal Communications Commission report shows that ninety-eight
percent of the most densely populated zip codes and ninety-six percent of the
wealthiest zip codes have broadband availability. For the poorest and most rural
zip codes, those figures are in the single digits. Without competition, cable
companies have little incentive to extend their broadband networks into rural
markets. Looking
at rural mail delivery as the "tipping point" for the dramatic economic growth
in the automotive and other basic industries that soon followed, we can confidently
predict that full access to broadband technologies by rural Americans will drive
increased prosperity for all Americans in the 21st Century. A host of business,
political and academic leaders agree that broadband deployment would benefit the
economy. A Brookings Institution economist estimates that universal broadband
deployment would contribute as much as $500 billion to the economy. Another study
demonstrates how building new broadband networks could create more than 1.2 million
jobs. All
Americans deserve to share in the benefits of the Internet and all Americans will
benefit if we bring broadband services to every American. But outdated regulations
create barriers to broadband competition that prevent rural Americans from having
the choices and tools to improve their lives. Its time to end the "horse and buggy"
Internet era in rural areas. Rural America needs a national policy that establishes
clear and consistent rules for all of our nation's broadband providers that will
break down the outdated government regulations that stifle investment in new infrastructure
to carry high-speed Internet traffic. By leveling the playing field, we can foster
true competition among all broadband providers and accelerate the deployment of
broadband networks to rural areas. Without strong commitment to change the current
regulations and without investment by our nation's telephone companies to build
and deploy the infrastructure that will make broadband a reality, those of us
living in rural America will be stuck with the "horse and buggy" Internet for
a long time. | 
