FCC Chairman Says Rural Broadband Service Should Receive Subsidies

August 26, 2011

The head of the Federal Communications Commission says he got the message this week about the importance of internet access in Rural Alaska.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski traveled to Dillingham and New Stuyahok on Thursday, to look at Project “Terra Southwest,” which will bring broadband service to 65 communities in Western Alaska.

GCI is using a combination of grants and loans from the federal stimulus program to build the network.

Most of the system should be finished by the end of the year. Schools, clinics and hospitals will see an immediate boost in connectivity. Homes and business will have to wait another year, while GCI installs equipment to provide service.

But once the system is in place, can Rural Alaskans afford it?

That was one of the main concerns of a statewide task force on broadband access that Genachowski met with at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage on Friday.

He told the group he wants to expand the Universal Service Fund to include broadband service for remote communities like those in Rural Alaska.

The program was originally designed to help offset the high cost of providing telephone service in rural areas.

“I had been told before I came to Alaska that there was urban, rural and then there was Alaska,” says Genachowski. “And out in New Stuyahok I saw that. The challenges of getting communications infrastructure to communities like that are very real.”

The chairman also called for reforms to the Universal Service Fund. He says it not only needs to be modernized to include broadband access, but must also become more accountable.

"There is waste and inefficiencies in the overall Universal Service Fund program. You’re going to have to redirect that money from where it’s not needed, to areas where it is,” said Genachowski.

Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, who accompanied Genachowski on his tour of Alaska, says there’s one reform he’d like to see – different categories for rural, especially for communities off the road system. He says Bush Alaska definitely fits into what he calls “Extreme Rural.”

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