More Work Remains on Broadband Deployment in Rural America, Carr Says
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, on a trip this week to Montana and Wyoming, said his time on the road supports the conclusions in the 2018 broadband deployment report that the digital divide is narrowing (see 1905290017). “What I see on…
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the road is the same thing that we found in our report, which is that we’re making tremendous progress, and that’s good news,” Carr told us. “Nobody is declaring mission accomplished. Anybody that spends time outside of D.C. can see the work that remains. We need to acknowledge reality.” Carr said “the digital divide is closing” and “more fiber is being built out than ever before.” But a “significant number of Americans, millions of Americans, still need connectivity,” Carr said. Congress doesn’t ask the FCC to look at in its Section 706 report whether 100 percent of Americans have broadband, he said: “That wouldn’t, frankly, be a very helpful report if that’s all we did.” Carr said he's still sorting through the next steps on wireless infrastructure rules: “I think there’s more to do.” Several ideas have made it in the record lately on “additional infrastructure reforms that I’m taking a close look at,” Carr said: “I’d like to make some more progress.”