U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service will receive $2 billion to help people living in rural communities gain access to high-speed internet.
The money will be funded by Division J, under the Department of Agriculture and then rural utilities service as part of the infrastructure investment and jobs act.
“For too long, the ‘digital divide’ has left too many people living in rural communities behind: Unable to compete in the global economy and unable to access the services and resources that all Americans need,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “As we build back better than we were before, the actions I am announcing today will go a long way toward ensuring that people who live or work in rural areas are able to tap into the benefits of broadband, including access to specialized health care, educational opportunities and the global marketplace.”
Congress began the Reconnect Program in 2018 as a pilot program and had previously received $1.8 billion in funding with $600 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018; $550 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019; $555 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 and $100 million in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
The infrastructure bill will be divided with $1.926 billion for the Reconnect Program, along with $74 million for Rural Broadband Program loans.
"Rural people, businesses and communities must have affordable, reliable, high-speed internet so they can fully participate in modern society and the modern economy," Vilsack said.
The program will seek to provide high-speed internet in regions of the country without sufficient service, which has been deemed as 100 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 20 Mbps upstream.
The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service found that 25% of the country’s farms did not have adequate internet access in 2019, but a recent FCC report found rural citizens without internet access had gone down by over 46%, leading the agency to state that the rural–urban divide is "rapidly closing."
