HOUSE RESOLUTION NO. 6

BY  KAUFMANN, GASKILL, WENTHE, MUHLBAUER, WITTNEBEN, HEDDENS, DRAKE, SODERBERG, BALTIMORE, and FRY

A Resolution requesting modifications to a national broadband plan for the benefit of rural residents of this state.

   WHEREAS, residents of this state living in rural areas deserve and expect the same high-quality, affordable communications services that are available to their urban neighbors; and
   WHEREAS, similar to businesses in urban areas, rural businesses, farmers, and ranchers compete in the global marketplace and depend on affordable access to robust broadband services to market and sell their products around the world; and
   WHEREAS, children living in rural areas should have the same educational opportunities as their urban counterparts and high-speed internet access is absolutely necessary to allow these students opportunities for advanced learning through distance education; and
   WHEREAS, residents living in rural areas face unique health care challenges because of the distances that must be traveled to seek basic and advanced medical care, and telemedicine delivered via broadband networks can improve the health of rural residents by reducing the time and travel needed for high-quality health care; and
   WHEREAS, many rural areas encounter significant challenges in pursuing and sustaining economic development plans that bring quality higher paying jobs to their communities, and insufficiently robust broadband speeds will further hamper the economic development needs of many rural communities; and
   WHEREAS, the United States Department of Agriculture has rightfully placed significant importance on the need for broadband access in rural America to improve quality-of-life and economic development; and
   WHEREAS, communications providers that serve this state’s rural areas have worked diligently to ensure that their consumers have access to affordable and reliable broadband services and have utilized the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service loan and grant programs for economic development; and
   WHEREAS, contrary to the progress rural communications providers have had in deploying broadband, the Federal Communications Commission is embarking on a National Broadband Plan that will negatively impact the ability of residents living in rural areas in this state to realize the true benefits of access to robust broadband speeds by limiting support to four megabits per second in rural, high-cost areas of the country, while calling for one hundred million urban homes to have access to broadband speeds at one hundred megabits per second by 2020; and
   WHEREAS, the National Broadband Plan runs counter to the federal universal service policy which ensures access to communications services at comparable rates regardless of the consumer’s location; NOW THEREFORE,

   BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, That the House of Representatives challenges the Federal Communications Commission to make substantive changes to the National Broadband Plan so that the plan does not limit the future economic livelihood and social wellbeing of rural consumers; and

   BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives encourages the members of Iowa’s congressional delegation to work with the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that commissioners understand the importance of robust broadband deployment to rural Iowa and how the current draft of the National Broadband Plan needs to be dramatically altered to ensure quality broadband service availability throughout this state.