If policymakers want to retain jobs and improve the quality of li...

“Efforts to draw attention to the importance of high speed Internet access are critical,” Adelstein said at the hearing sponsored by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). Public-private partnerships such as Connect Arkansas can plan an important role, he said. “It worked well in Kentucky, and it can work well in Arkansas,” he said, referring to the Connect Kentucky project to expand broadband availability and adoption in remote areas. “We need to make broadband the dial tone of the 21st century,” he said, repeating a call for a “national broadband strategy” with benchmarks and timetables. “Spectrum-based services” using wireless and satellite technologies offer “one of the best opportunities for promoting broadband, particularly in rural areas,” he said. “Those who get access to high-speed broadband will win; those who don’t will lose,” said FCC Commissioner Michael Copps: “It’s as simple as that. I want to help make sure we all get there and that America’s rural communities get there as soon as everyone else.” The “digital gap” will grow “if high-speed broadband is permitted to be primarily an urban phenomenon,” he said. There’s no “one-size-fits-all broadband solution” but, for one thing, the country needs “a Universal Service Fund that has broadband as its core mission,” Copps said. Another solution: “Encouraging communities to develop innovative solutions to getting broadband out.” Universal service subsidies should be used to extend broadband and wireless services into rural America, said Alltel CEO Scott Ford at the hearing. Though wireless subsidies have increased, “less than 25 percent of universal service high-cost funds go to support the deployment of wireless service, even though there are now more wireless subscribers,” Ford said. Criticizing a proposal at the FCC to cap universal service subsidies to wireless carriers, he said it’s “shortsighted” to not “recognize the importance of wireless universal service” in rural areas. Universal service “support for rural wireless is not a problem -- and an anti-competitive proposal to reduce universal service funding for wireless consumers is not the answer.”