Share:
Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2021 - 2022
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | September 16, 2022 09:35 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator John I. Kane |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | More Tools to Achieve Fast and Affordable Broadband for All Pennsylvanians |
I will introduce a bill to deploy two tools to help communities gain access to high speed and affordable broadband. The first tool is raising the minimum broadband speeds that Pennsylvania’s regulated utilities offer from the woefully inadequate 1.544 Mbps download speed and 128 Kbps upload speed to a symmetrical 100 Mbps download speed and a 100 Mbps upload speed. This will literally bring our capability into the 21st century, only two decades later. Symmetrical speeds of 100/100 Mbps has been identified by several groups and a bi-partisan group of U.S. Senators as the speed that is necessary to have multiple people in homes on zoom calls, streaming educational content, or to reliably process agriculture and small business operations. The second tool deployed by my bill will allow municipalities and municipal authorities to build and maintain broadband services. Large Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and Telecom operators will build and offer high speed broadband when there is a projected solid return on investment. That makes sense from a for-profit business perspective, but broadband has become a necessity for all municipalities. So, my bill will strike out a Chapter 30 provision enacted in 2004 that prohibits municipalities from building and operating broadband networks. We will give local governments the ability to choose whether or not they need to or want to provide a necessary service to their residents when the private sector is not able or willing to build broadband networks. This will give municipalities the ability to form partnerships with private ISP’s, other municipalities, counties, community anchor institutions, and others to build and provide broadband that will help their communities improve education, healthcare, economic development, and agriculture. The COVID19 Pandemic taught us that broadband is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. We use broadband to communicate through voice or video phone calls with family, friends, or work. Invaluable services such as video calls for telehealth appointments have been utilized to improve the convenience of care in our healthcare system. Doctors can talk to patients, help diagnose problems, and provide treatments without stepping a single foot through someone’s front door. We also saw the need for affordable broadband during the COVID19 pandemic. Our homes became classrooms and places of employment. The opportunities to expand learning through online classes and webinars has grown. Additionally, many employers have adopted flexible work schedules that empower workers to work from home and in many instances increase productivity. But in some areas of the Commonwealth, including in my Senate District in Southern Chester County, having more educational enrichment opportunities, working, learning, or speaking to a doctor from home is just a dream. In too many municipalities in our Commonwealth, there is no broadband internet service, or it is not affordable. We have a once in a generation $48 billion available in Federal grant funding to help connect many of our unserved and underserved communities to fast and affordable broadband internet, but there are more tools we can and should deploy to make this a reality to capitalize on available grant funding. Please join me in cosponsoring this legislation to improve broad band deployment in Pennsylvania. |
Introduced as SB1363