The Satellite Industry Association wants Congress to include a su...

Patricia Cooper. Satellite technologies provide the only broadband available to more than 10 million Americans who live or work in remote areas of the country, Cooper said. SIA wants Congress “to make satellite broadband networks eligible for these grants without specifying an arbitrary minimum speed” and include a grant program for the upfront cost of the end-user equipment, Cooper wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. Hughes Network Services and WildBlue Communications offer users the option to lease equipment as a way to get around the high upfront costs, but “a lot of people don’t like leasing,” Cooper said. “At some point if you are going to have the service for a long time you want to buy the equipment.” Speed isn’t the only consideration in broadband incentives, Cooper said. “Incentives for broadband services and deployment must be extended beyond its current focus on tiered or speed-based incentives to emphasize universal access,” she wrote. “Improvements in speed are not the primary desire” of these millions of Americans that can’t get terrestrial broadband, she wrote. “For these Americans, access to an always-on broadband service is much more critical than whether the service hits a particular speed benchmark,” she said. “For these Americans, satellite provides the only alternative to dial-up services.” Satellite broadband also can provide backup, SIA said.