The Washington state government receives more than $1.02 billion in federal infrastructure subsidies to provide high-speed Internet service to rural areas and low-income households with slow or no Internet access.
The Biden administration distributes $42 billion of the infrastructure support budget of the ’American Relief Plan Act (ARP)’, which was confirmed as a pandemic response policy in 2021, to state governments as part of the ’Broadband Equal Access Development (BEAD)’ program, nationwide and between regions, announced that it would resolve the phenomenon of ‘digital divide’ between the rich and the poor.
The White House announced that the BEAD program was the largest investment ever in high-speed Internet service and praised itself as an investment comparable to the 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Act, which supplied electricity to farms, ranches, and isolated areas across the country.
President Biden promised that all households across the country would be able to enjoy high-speed Internet service by 2030.
The number of residents in Washington state who do not have or have slow internet access fluctuates from 239,000 to 2 million, depending on the counting agency. The 2021 federal census revealed that 10% of Washington households (about 264,000 households) did not receive broadband (broadband) service, but Microsoft counted it as 30%, three times that.
In the rural and mountainous counties of Perry, Scanamania, Okanogan, Adams, Stevens, Pend O’Reil and Columbia, more than four out of five households said they did not have internet access or broadband access.
Washington State Broadband Authority director Mark Basconi said laying fiber optic cables in these mountainous regions is relatively expensive, but less profitable because of the small population. Therefore, because conventional copper wire or satellite technology is applied to these areas, the connection speed is slow, and even in urban areas, low-income people, people of color, and elderly households are often excluded from broadband service.
With high-speed Internet installations costing up to $10,000 per household, Vasconi said it would take more than $2.04 billion, more than twice the amount of federal funding, to provide high-speed Internet access to all underprivileged households and businesses in Washington State. He added that businesses are expected to bear the burden.