The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council urged the FCC to...
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council urged the FCC to address broadband issues in Puerto Rico, President David Honig said, citing the most recent FCC broadband report. The entire population of Puerto Rico lacks access to the advanced broadband services…
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available to other Americans (4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up), he said. Data from the report shows that 3,954,000 of the 24,042,000 Americans that don’t have access to broadband live in Puerto Rico, he said. The report shows that Puerto Rico has “dramatically lower income levels,” is “dramatically higher in population density than other unserved areas” and isn’t rural in nature, Honig said. MMTC is concerned about the FCC’s “historic disregard of the unique conditions in Puerto Rico,” he said. So far, the agency hasn’t proposed a plan to address the digital divide in Puerto Rico, he noted. The commission’s National Broadband Plan doesn’t address the situation in Puerto Rico or provide a strategy for remedying it, he said. The FCC’s NOI and NPRM concerning a new Connect America Fund also doesn’t address the unique needs of Puerto Rico, he said. The Broadband Report doesn’t mention Puerto Rico once in the text of the report -- the text focuses instead on rural and tribal areas, he said. The commission’s recent Seventh Broadband Deployment Report NOI doesn’t mention Puerto Rico. Additionally, interactive broadband maps posted recently on the FCC website don’t contain data for Puerto Rico -- instead depicting the island like Cuba and Mexico, he said.