On August 6, PTA President Steve Samara joined FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and Congressman John Joyce (PA-13) in Altoona for a roundtable discussion on impediments to rural broadband deployment in Pennsylvania.
“PTA has been advocating for several years in support of streamlined telco regulations to save investment dollars that could be devoted to broadband deployment,” Samara said. “Now, with federal programs such as BEAD beginning to commit money, the time is right to remove other roadblocks which make committing money to broadband deployment more difficult.”
Among the needed reforms Samara noted Prevailing Wage, rate regulation, changing the skewed BEAD application scoring system which overweighs Prevailing Wage and rate regulation and underappreciates speed to market. And, he said, the need for reform in the permitting process.
Congressman Joyce said it’s been 995 days since the Biden/Harris Administration approved more than $1 billion in funding for Pennsylvania to expand broadband infrastructure.
“The permitting is not rolling out as fast. We need to get these individuals trained, we need to make these connections — whether it’s fiber, whether it’s using satellite, we need to utilize all the technologies that are available,” Joyce said.
Commissioner Carr noted that “Pennsylvania alone is supposed to be getting $1.16 billion of this funding based on needing to connect roughly 280,000 homes and businesses in the Commonwealth. Yet not a single person has been connected with those dollars in Pennsylvania.”
