Huge Infrastructure Needs Will Remain Even After BIP Funds Are Spent, Adelstein Says
The Rural Utilities Service continues to hand out grants and loans even after the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) has run its course, Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said Monday during a call with reporters. Adelstein spoke as the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $103 million in funding for 23 projects to provide broadband service to unserved and underserved rural communities.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
"We have had programs running here at RUS for 60 years and are going to continue for the future as long as we continue to get Congressional appropriations for them,” Adelstein said. “We're going to do nearly $9 billion in programs this year between electric and water and communications, including well over $700 million in the telecommunications program. We have huge needs that remain.” RUS has been funding broadband since 1995, he noted: “Not many of us we're talking about broadband back in ‘95."
Adelstein said he wanted to emphasize during the call “that we are able to meet the needs of some very hard hit and meaningful projects, that we're getting to places that need it most.” RUS will announce more awards in the fall, including for the telemedicine program, he said. “We really do want to emphasize that this work continues, that we're building on the momentum of the BIP program and we have a long way to go,” he said.
Adelstein said by RUS’s latest calculation BIP will create 30,000 jobs before it is completed. “Obviously,” BIP projects “do take time, but while they're being built they create jobs. So today there are jobs building out these systems, building the towers, building the fiber networks.” Some of the projects will be completed within the next month or so, and some will require the allowed full three years to complete, he said. “But we need jobs as much today as much as we needed them a year ago, and in the meantime broadband is getting out there.” With interest rates low, and millions looking for work, this is an ideal time to build out broadband, Adelstein said.
Among the grants highlighted by the Agriculture Department in a press release was a Community Connect program grant to the Karuk Tribe in Orleans, Calif., to provide Internet service to 570 tribal members in a mountainous region of Northern California. The department also highlighted a $480,000 grant to Wichita Online, to provide broadband to the town of Tushka, Okla., which was hit by a tornado on April 14.
"Without broadband, rural communities, agricultural producers and business owners face a substantial challenge,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “These loans and grants will bring the benefits of broadband, including new educational, business and public health and safety opportunities, to residents living in some of the most remote parts of our nation.”