White House releases plans to deliver broadband opportunity

The White House’s Broadband Opportunity Council, launched last March to expand broadband deployment and adoption efforts across the administration, offered four recommendations to the administration. These broad recommendations suggested ways the federal government might promote investment to bring better, faster broadband to more people across the country:

• Modernize Federal programs to expand program support for broadband investments.

• Empower communities with tools and resources to attract broadband investment and promote meaningful use.

• Promote increased broadband deployment and competition through expanded access to Federal assets.

• Improve data collection, analysis and research on broadband.

In response to the Council’s recommendations, the White House released a list of actions the federal government will implement over the next 18 months to expand broadband deployment and adoption. The actions include a range of approaches, from collecting data to modernizing programs to streamlining processes to make applications simpler:

• Modernizing Federal programs valued at approximately $10 billion to include broadband as an eligible program expenditure, such as the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Community Facilities (CF) program, which will help communities around the country bring broadband to health clinics and recreation centers;

• Creating an online inventory of data on Federal assets, such as Department of the Interior (DOI) telecommunications towers, that can help support faster and more economical broadband deployments to remote areas of the country;

• Streamlining the applications for programs and broadband permitting processes to support broadband deployment and foster competition; and

• Creating a portal for information on Federal broadband funding and loan programs to help communities easily identify resources as they seek to expand access to broadband.

The Administration is calling on community organizations, the private sector, local, state, and Tribal governments to work together to bring broadband to the nearly 51 million people in this country who don’t have access to download speeds of at least 25 Mbps.

Obama names Broadband Opportunity Council (Speed Matters, Mar. 27, 2015)

Delivering on Broadband Opportunity (White House, Sept. 21, 2015)