Rural broadband connectivity is crucial for healthcare, education, commerce...
Rural broadband connectivity is crucial for healthcare, education, commerce and for social reasons, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said during an episode of The Broadband Beat With Shirley Bloomfield, hosted by NTCA (http://bit.ly/1oGmZMl). “If you don’t have high-speed broadband connectivity in…
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your community, you're going to be left out,” he said in the video. He called telemedicine “a powerful tool” and said distance learning is another asset. “You need a lot of capacity,” he said. Begich, a member of the Commerce Committee, said he gave the FCC “a hard time” on how it maps broadband and the challenges facing Alaska. “It’s great to have the big companies but you also have to have these smaller companies that were there before anyone else was there. They offer unique, if you think of a credit union, it’s local, homegrown, member-driven, and they are part of the equation at the end of the day.” Don’t “saddle” innovative smaller companies with huge debt due to the way technology and rules are changing, Begich said. He emphasized he not only talks to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, but also to the Republican commissioners and other Democrats. “The chairman and I have had very positive conversations,” the senator said. “He’s been to Alaska.” Such a visit is his test for commissioners, Begich added.