Pai on 'Piedmont Digital Opportunity' Trip, Teams With Minow on Rural Telehealth Piece
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai began a "Piedmont digital opportunity" road trip Monday through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, concluding Friday. Pai will visit a telehealth facility, schools, a farm and a tech incubator, and have roundtables with Rep.…
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Doug Collins, R-Ga., and North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest (R), said an agency release Sunday. He's scheduled to speak at a Wireless Infrastructure Association event in Charlotte Wednesday. Pai and former FCC Chairman Newton Minow (1961-63) Monday called for expanding rural high-speed internet access to increase the availability of telehealth solutions and narrow the digital divide. "While the benefits of digital health care are clear, we’ve been too slow to embrace its potential," they wrote in the Boston Globe. "The most crucial step in seizing the opportunities of digital medicine is making sure that every community has high-speed Internet access." They noted FCC efforts through auctions of $6.5 billion in Connect America Fund rural subsidies for fixed and mobile broadband services; a rural health care subsidy program in which demand exceeds a $400 million annual cap, with the commission "exploring whether to increase the size of the program and how to ensure that every dollar is stretched as far as possible;" and a Connect2Health Task Force collaboration with the National Cancer Institute on a broadband study in Appalachia. They also cited a need to address regulatory barriers to telehealth services such as state licensing.