Washington Did Something Right: Rural Broadband Funding

Every once in a while, Washington does something right. On January 28, the Federal Communications Commission announced they would be authorizing 1.2 billion (the sixth round of funding) for a rural accountability plan. To date, more than 4 billion has been awarded to winning bidders but they’re not necessarily doing all the things they should be doing.

With this new proposal, audits and verifications will double and accountability will be increased to support the delivery of broadband to rural areas.

Why should this matter to the adult industry?

The reason this matters is that if speeds are too slow in rural areas to consume content, you’ve just likely lost the ability to sell that content to millions of Americans. The adult industry relies heavily on streaming. In that light it’s one of the businesses that is most hit by the lack of broadband internet access across the country. Currently 27.6 million US households are underserved – that’s a lot of lost opportunity.

For us city dwellers, the FCC announcement may not seem like a big deal. We’re used to enjoying high internet speeds at low cost and don’t think twice about streaming content or googling for hours on end. A bad day for us is when the internet goes down for twenty minutes (not days or even weeks like rural areas), and who even remembers the dark days of trying to watch a movie that won’t load?

But for many Americans who live in rural areas, these are everyday problems. And by rural, it doesn’t necessarily mean people that live in the boondocks. Case in point, one friend of mine lives only one mile from town and still has zero access to high-speed internet.

Over the years, he tried everything other than flat out moving. Frustrated with the old dial-up system which was costing $200 a month with excruciatingly slow speeds, he switched to HughesNet. Not only was the satellite provider nearly as expensive ($140 a month), but it also came with a data cap of 75GBs (you need about 3GB per hour just to stream one HD TV show). Even worse, if the dish got snow on it, the internet would shut down and he’d have to wait until it melted for it to work again. Fun!

Luckily, AT&T put up a tower close by and he was able to switch. The new service is affordable and reliable but still delivers only 25Mbps – in comparison, the lowest no frills Spectrum plan in Los Angeles cashes in at 200Mbps. America can do better.

Some taxpayers could argue that people who live in out the country should just suck it up and move to town. Why is it our problem?

For one, do you really want an influx of new people coming to overpacked cities and driving rents up? Two, do you believe in the freedom to live anywhere in the USA, or do you vote for everyone being corralled into cities because utilities aren’t available to all? Further, we already provide plenty of services without discrimination to where people live – paved roads, telephone lines, water, garbage pickup, school buses for kids and more.

Ultimately, it makes fiscal sense to solve this problem because most business is now done primarily over the internet. It’s time we brought affordable access to all, and the new FCC plan is a step in the right direction.

Header image by Vlad Chetan – Pexels