Rural Arkansas Ready for High Speed Internet Access

During a recent meeting in Little Rock, Federal Communications Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein and Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor joined rural advocates and educators to hail the Universal Service Fund as a route to bring high speed Internet access to rural areas.

The fund traditionally collects surcharges on phone bills to help offset the high price of rural phone service.

“That’s been a very successful approach when it comes to telephone usage, and I think we need that same approach with broadband,” Pryor said. “I think if we don’t do something like that, then rural America and smaller communities will never get high-speed Internet like the urban areas have.”

The Arkansas Delta, as well as other low-income communities are struggling with the lack of universal high speed internet access as they try to improve low economic and academic ratings.

“We have not successfully transititioned into the information age, and I would contend a lot of that is because we’re not delivering broadband to our people,” said Rex Nelson, alternate federal co-chairman of the Delta Regional Authority. “Having access to broadband in even the most rural areas of our country is as important as getting that electricity to them and air conditioning to them back in the 1940s and the 1950s.”

Extending high speed internet access to rural areas is, in itself, expensive. The problem is compounded further by the pre-existing poverty in the Delta and  surrounding rural areas. As Commissioners Copps and Adelstein and Senator Pryor emphasized during the Little Rock meeting, the Universal Service Fund is a promising avenue to further universal high speed internet access.

Advocates call for more high-speed Internet access, Arkansas Online

Commissioner Copps' Statement

Commissioner Adelstein's Statement