USDA Rural Development says it’s made a lot of progress helping improve internet service in rural areas but there is still work to do. The FCC says only 50% of rural Americans have access to the same high-speed internet as urban residents.
House Ag Committee member, Louisiana Congressman Ralph Abraham, shared his frustration about a recent event he attended along the Mississippi River, “I looked down at my cell phone and had no service. Didn’t even have a bar. And this is a city that has basically no service at all. So, that’s near and dear to my constituents that we need that and we need it very quickly.”
Brandon McBride, head of the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service, told the ag committee this week that the number-one barrier to expansion is financial, “In a lot of instances, getting into the most remote, rural, hard to reach regions is very expensive. And, so, we try to work with potential borrowers who want to do that work and give them the resources that they would need. There is a lot of work that goes into that both on the part of the provider that would go into those communities and with the agency to make sure that we’re making loans that are sustainable.”
McBride says the default rate on USDA loans for broadband have decreased from earlier highs to about 20%. He says current enrollment for the Farm Bill broadband loan program is open through the end of this month.
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