Small Business Broadband Deployment Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Walden for yielding the time and for his important leadership.
I think it is worth noting, as I know Representative Loebsack and several of us from rural districts often get involved in issues like this, and I always like to remind people that Representative Walden's district is actually larger than the State of North Dakota. That is how rural we are. We all know Iowa is a rural State. I think this bill is a great representation of what happens when a coalition of rural States and districts get together and try to do the right thing for the people we work for. So it is a pleasure to be part of that.
I will be brief because the leadership has already outlined the essence of the bill very effectively. I will spend just a minute or 2 talking about the reality of the importance of this to a place like North Dakota and to places like rural Oregon or Iowa and other places where distance is greater than the population, where the advantages of access to something as dynamic as the Internet makes all the difference in the world for education opportunities, for health care accessibility, and, of course, for individual use.
That is a challenge in rural America that, frankly, many of our small Internet service providers and communication and technology companies have been meeting all along with plenty of things going against them, not the least of which is: much of the deployment of broadband in rural America has been done, even when it is not necessarily economically advantageous to do it at the time, so that the burdensome regulations, intended or unintended, that came from the FCC rule just don't apply to everybody.
I think that the standards that we have set in the negotiation that have created the benchmarks for access deployment are appropriate. And 250,000 consumers and the size of the companies, I think, hits just right that sweet spot, not only because it was negotiated and it has got consensus, but because I think it is the right number. I think they are the right numbers.
So we don't want to stifle innovation. We want to expand innovation, especially in something as dynamic as the Internet. This act does that. I am honored to be a part of it, and I am honored to be a member of the committee.
I thank the Representative Eshoo as well as Representative Loebsack and certainly Chairman Walden for their leadership.
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