Posted on 06/21/2017 12:45:09 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
President Donald Trump will commit on Wednesday to improving internet access in the country’s hardest-to-reach rural areas as a part of his forthcoming push to improve the nation’s infrastructure.
Trump will outline his pledge during a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, shortly after visiting Kirkwood Community College, which specializes in fields like precision agriculture. In the eyes of the White House, farmers can’t use emerging big data tools that track crops in real time without faster, more reliable broadband internet service — so the Trump administration intends to tackle that challenge as part of its campaign to upgrade the country’s roads and bridges.
“Even in American agriculture, technology is the key to better yields and more returns,” said Ray Starling, the special assistant to the president for agriculture, trade and food assistance, on a Tuesday call with reporters. Those farmers in the coming years will have to learn “not only how to turn a wrench,” Starling said, “but also how to write code and rewire circuit boards.”
But Starling did not offer any specifics as to how Trump planned to improve broadband in the country’s agricultural heartland. For months, the White House has touted its interest in spurring internet adoption, without any detail — and on Tuesday, Starling only noted that the “conversation is relatively high-level,” as it would come down to “whatever Congress sees as the best solution there.”
Asked by Recode if that included additional federal spending, Starling acknowledged that “we know we will have to invest monetarily in this area, but we are still hoping we can leverage other dollars and other investment,” particularly from the private sector.
The announcement comes as part of Trump’s so-called “tech week,” a five-day focus on ways to modernize the federal government. After the president’s speech in Iowa, he will return to Washington, and his administration will convene another round of tech experts on Thursday to discuss emerging tech fields, like drones and the Internet of Things.
“The president will see demonstrations of how these technologies will contribute to the 21st century economy and how the government can ensure that their safe adoption leads to the best possible outcomes for the American worker and American businesses,” said press secretary Sean Spicer at his briefing Tuesday.
As with many of the items on Trump’s tech agenda, however, the president might face immense difficulty tackling broadband access as part of infrastructure reform.
Some members of Congress — many in Trump’s own party — are already skeptical of a major, high-cost federal infrastructure bill. Others have been particularly vocal about devoting more government resources to broadband projects. And many GOP lawmakers served as the sharpest critics of other federal attempts to improve the country’s internet access, including a rural-facing broadband effort at the Department of Agriculture, which repeatedly has been cited for mismanagement.
This was an Obama-program which was picked up eight years ago....with insiders hopping to get financial compensation/profits.
I do agree, in some regions....it would be beneficial. But if you tried to make this occur across 90-percent of the rural regions in the US....it would go into the tens of billions.
I'm not sure how Eisenhower worked out the planning of the Interstate Highway System, but no doubt a lot of local contractors contributed to the effort. So too can it be with the information superhighway.
They're from the govt, and they're here to help.
Only if rural electricification is fin ally complete... Sounds kind of boondogglish.
Interstate highway system, for the movement of heavy equipment and personnel in the event of attack on the the country, power grid for comms and water......those are the infrastructure....not the ability to tweet.
.02
KYPD
how in the world are they gonna run cable out to seem farm that is 15 miles off some obscure backroad that hardly anyone lives on? Satelite sucks, DSL isn’t an option- dialup is the only alternative-
Cellular. Fiber to a point, then cellular. Probably a technology beyond 4G though.
Wireless 4g and newer technologies eliminate the need for wires. Build towers and free spectrum.
how would you work cellular into a desk computer (Yes, I’m ignorant when it comes to these things) lots of folks don’t own cell phones still-
There is innovation out there, and it functions.
For instance AT&T is testing a technology they call AirGig. It is low cost 5G repeaters that sit atop power poles and propagate a waveform along (not inside) the wires from pole to pole. They get their power (to transmit/receive) via induction.
Wherever power lines go, high speed internet can as well.
Note well this is NOT the failed internet over powerline technology from a
decade ago.
This is pretty sales-y at first, but then it explains the technology.
See my post #12
thanks for that I’ll check it out- but what about lines down during storms- some areas are terrible for losing power durign storms from downed trees across the wires—
Any technology has failure points. This one does as well.
Even a HAM radio antenna can be ruined in a storm.
It’s not just about infrastructure . It’s about cost. Internet access ain’t cheap. What good is more fiber laid if the service is too expensive?
just checked it out- looks interesting- hopefully this becomes a reality- folks in the country could use a good system to conduct business online- of course most wouldn’t use it for much more than browsing the net and email- but a good number of country businesses could really benefit from online sales and conferences etc-
Check out FirstNet. It is a public-private venture to provide wireless connectivity for first responders in virtually all US geographies. While the spectrum is available to the public, it can be forcibly pre-emptied during an emergency. Most of the time it would be available to ‘us .’
PS it’s already funded and in-progress.
true- some more so than others- was just thinking about a country business that needed got be online constantly to keep profitable- when we lived in country, the liens were always going down and would be out for days in some cases- was out for over 2 weeks once- the one good thing about cable is that down times are usually very brief-
in a free democratic society we vote with our feet where to live, where to work, where to shop, where to worship.
Every place we choose has an upside and a downside.
Why should the taxpayers be forced to subsidize a person who chooses to live in the inner city? Why should the taxpayers be forced to subsidize a person who chooses to live on the farm?
What makes us think that these subsidies will not have unintended consequences? What makes us think that unintended consequences can only occur in the inner city and not in rural areas?
What makes us think that the next administration won’t use their internet subsidy power to implement their own version of “net neutrality” on the internet? What makes us think that government fingers in the internet will be limited to rural areas, and not extend to exurbia and then suburbia.
We all know that those areas had uninformed voters last November. Government bureaucrats will see it as their mission to turn those non-inner city voters into what the bureaucrats see as informed voters ... by their own version of “net neutrality”.
This is like looking at Nixon’s Revenue Sharing approach and saying “What could possibly go wrong” except turning state and local government into ho’s for federal money because the feds have unlimited borrowing power and then the states won’t have to be accountable to the taxpayers for the money.
This is like LBJ’s War on Poverty. What could possibly go wrong with such a well intentioned program?
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