On RFD-TV: Gus Hurwitz

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08/18/2021 Added

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Gus Hurwitz, director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, appears live on RFD TV, August 18, 2021. He discusses the lack of high speed internet access in some rural households.

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[00:00:00.300]While the pandemic has further underscored the need for
[00:00:02.850]rural broadband access, bridging the digital divide. Well,
[00:00:06.390]it's one of the many efforts currently underway at the
[00:00:08.370]Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, director of the
[00:00:11.550]center, Gus Hurwitz joins us now with the latest on those
[00:00:14.760]efforts. And Gus, thanks for your time this morning, if you
[00:00:17.340]would bring us up to speed on where we currently stand with
[00:00:20.520]rural broadband.
[00:00:22.710]Absolutely, thanks for having me, Janet. The pandemic has
[00:00:26.760]made incredibly clear even more than it already was clear
[00:00:30.420]the importance of the internet to American life, economic,
[00:00:34.350]social, and political nowadays, there are about half a
[00:00:38.670]million households in five rural states alone the Dakotas,
[00:00:42.690]Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas that really lack any meaningful
[00:00:46.170]access to the internet. So that's what we think of as the
[00:00:49.110]rural digital divide. And both the FCC and Congress are
[00:00:53.160]investing dozens of billions of dollars in trying to close
[00:00:56.250]it. But this remains a persistent and ongoing problem.
[00:01:00.149]So what is keeping companies from offering this high speed
[00:01:02.849]access in these rural communities?
[00:01:06.070]Well, we should start by saying there is a lot of work
[00:01:09.190]ongoing, both in industry and government on the ground and
[00:01:13.000]in policy to try and solve these problems. But there are
[00:01:16.540]real technical, economic and policy problems that make this
[00:01:20.020]very difficult. The biggest reality is just pure economics.
[00:01:25.120]When you're trying to install high speed internet
[00:01:28.120]connections, it can cost $5,000 per household. And when
[00:01:32.050]you're installing one of those connections to a small
[00:01:34.390]community, it's going to not have any meaningful return on
[00:01:38.380]investment. So the the economic justification isn't there.
[00:01:41.500]But then we also have technology and policy issues. Figuring
[00:01:45.610]out what technologies to use to close the rural digital
[00:01:48.820]divide is both technically difficult. And also it raises
[00:01:53.260]important political questions, because we're talking about
[00:01:55.780]investing billions of dollars. And we also have a really
[00:02:00.460]locked in mindset for how we should solve this, what
[00:02:04.090]applications users are going to be making of these
[00:02:06.730]technologies that we really haven't updated since the 1990s.
[00:02:10.540]So getting us in a rural mindset to understand the
[00:02:14.200]technologies challenges and uses is really essential to
[00:02:17.740]closing the digital divide.
[00:02:19.530]And Gus is this maybe related also to the other econo
[00:02:22.260]ic challenges that we face in our rural communities at t
[00:02:24.450]is ti
[00:02:26.190]Absolutely. We just saw on that census confirmation of the
[00:02:30.570]phenomenon of rural flight people leaving rural areas. If we
[00:02:34.980]want people to live in our rural communities, they need to
[00:02:37.980]want to live there, and they need to have access to the
[00:02:40.770]opportunities that high speed internet access make possible.
[00:02:43.920]This is really an essential economic, social and political
[00:02:47.220]driver for rural America and our communities if we want them
[00:02:51.030]to thrive and be successful.
[00:02:53.040]All right, well, thank you very much for your insight this
[00:02:54.840]morning, Gus Hurwitz, he's with the University of Nebraska
[00:02:57.300]College of Law joining us of course, from location there.

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On RFD-TV: Gus Hurwitz

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