Tenuous rural links to the world
Economic development in rural areas has always been a challenge. It’s a challenge that has come with both new complications and new opportunities since the advent of digital technology.
The opportunities, of course, involve the Internet’s instant access to the world. The complication is that too many parts of the country still can’t really get it.
That’s been a source of frustration for U.S. lawmakers for some time now. It was reiterated in a recent letter from a bipartisan group of 56 senators, including Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., to the Federal Communications Commission calling on that agency to step up efforts to increase affordable rural broadband access.
“Standalone Internet services should be available to all Americans at this point,” the letter states, adding that dependable high-speed Internet services “are a necessity in this day and age, not a luxury.”
It’s not the first bipartisan congressional appeal to the FCC on this issue, or the second. As the letter notes, 133 members of both houses of Congress signed a similar letter in 2014, and 176 did so again the following year.
The practical financial hurdle is that the cost to providers in sparsely populated areas would result in a price to customers far higher than in cities and towns. So even if broadband were technically available, it would be unaffordable for many people most in need of it.
There’s also something called the Universal Service Fund (USF), the descendant of a Depression-era congressional act mandating that all U.S. citizens should have affordable access to dependable communications — meaning, at the time, telephones.
Today, the USF supports rural broadband services, but only if customers subscribe to standard land-line phone service. As more and more Americans opt for wireless or web-based communications, that access is lost.
The result, the letter notes, is that “rural customers who wished to ‘cut the cord’ … and opt instead to obtain only fixed broadband services could not do so.”
The lawmakers encourage the FCC to consider changes in the funding mechanism to increase USF support where it is most needed. Legislative measures such as tax incentives for broadband providers to serve rural areas, might also help alleviate the disparity.
Whatever the approach, the lawmakers are right. Internet access can no longer be considered a perk.
Risk-free rescue
Lives are being saved in Georgia thanks to a rare and precious commodity — common-sense drug policy.
The three-year-old “Georgia 911 Medical Amnesty Law” encourages people to call for help when they or others appear to be in drug-related medical distress.
“Under the amnesty law, if you call 911 to get medical treatment for yourself or for somebody who currently needs medical attention, you can’t be held criminally liable for anything on the property, anything on the premises,” Athens-Clarke County Police Officer David Ian told Georgia Health News.
Police and EMS workers, GHN reported, “say they want to save people in this life-threatening situation, not put them in jail.” Imagine that.
This story was originally published April 12, 2017 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Tenuous rural links to the world."