“Every time infrastructure comes up before the finance committee, I’m gonna keep bringing it up. “As long as I’m the chairman of the finance committee, every infrastructure bill is going to include broadband until we get to the point in this country where broadband gets treated the way electricity came to be after the country said ‘We are just not going to stand aside and let so many people be without electricity’,” Wyden said. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, says he’s determined to see broadband passed as part of an infrastructure bill. “I think, by and large, you look to see how the people who are going to use a piece of infrastructure would be paying for it over time,” Romney says.ĭemocrats, meanwhile, are full-speed-ahead. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, supports broadband funding but is concentrating on exactly how it will get paid for. “I think we’re all frustrated that we put a lot of money into it,” she says, adding that “my state for one still has some of the lower broadband deployment figures.”Īnd U.S. But at the same time, Capito expressed reservations about the lack of progress despite billions already thrown at the problem. Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV, who co-chairs the Senate’s Broadband Caucus, says she believes “there is total bipartisan support” for broadband funding. And Republicans expressed frustration that more progress hasn’t been achieved with what’s been spent so far. Senators from both sides of the aisle told Forbes that there’s bipartisan support for funding broadband, though details remain unclear as to how that will be achieved.
The Biden proposal would be problematic in the 18 states that have restricted the building of so-called municipal broadband. While that’s more than a third less than Biden’s proposal, it’s the second most costly line item in the GOP offering, behind roads and bridges.īiden’s proposal favors funding for broadband networks that are owned by or affiliated with governments, nonprofits and electric co-ops, while the GOP version has no such limitation. POOL/AFP via Getty Imagesīroadband also shows up in the GOP’s counter-proposal at $65 billion. Biden said he was tasking Harris with the passage of $100 billion for universal broadband internet access. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi applaud. President Joe Biden addresses a joint session of Congress as Vice President Kamala Harris and. Congress should comprehensively address the affordability challenge facing low-income Americans. “And while Congress should be commended for allocating funding to build out broadband in rural America – a job that needs to continue until complete – addressing the rural broadband challenge is only part of the solution. “The federal government has never adopted a robust, permanent, and coordinated program to help more people get connected to broadband,” the letter says.
The letter, sent to the chairs and ranking members of key House and Senate committees, focused on affordability. A T-Mobile spokesperson said the company hopes to persuade legislators and regulators that mandates be “technology neutral,” meaning they would not favor wired technologies, such as fiber, over wireless ones, such as 5G.īut a diverse coalition of 47 wireless carriers, broadband providers, social advocacy groups and nonprofits signed onto a letter calling for Congress to act. None of them would make an executive available for interviews, instead pointing to blog posts or press releases on the subject. All the major carriers stand to benefit if the Biden buildout goes forward.
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