寬帶接入重要的農村地區和經濟

我還得開車 20 miles to see a traffic light. To get to an airport from our farm requires a 2-hour drive to Burlington.

換一種說法, 我們在佛蒙特州的奶牛場的生活可能感覺很遙遠.

在我們獲得寬帶接入之前尤其如此, 當我們似乎在通往信息高速公路的入口處遇到紅燈時. Now that broadband finally has come to our country home—the red light has turned green—my family can enjoy the benefits of rural living along with the connectivity that keeps us in touch with the whole world.

We’re better farmers, 太, because high-speed internet improves our ability to raise our dairy cows—and as we continue to take advantage of the communications revolution, we’re going to keep on perfecting our operations.

可悲的是, 24 百萬美國人仍然無法使用寬帶, 根據一個 報告 去年由聯邦通信委員會發布 (聯邦通信委員會). 他們絕大多數生活在農村地區, 許多是農民. 兩年前, 美國. 農業部 調查 發現 29 百分之一的農民無法可靠地訪問互聯網.

城市居民和郊區居民可能將寬帶服務視為理所當然. 在美國鄉村, we can’t.

This isn’t a problem just for farmers, 然而. It’s a problem for all of us because it means that our economy falls short of its potential. 美國農業部 報告 今年早些時候的研究表明，如果每個農民都能通過農村寬帶充分利用數字技術, 我們的經濟將增長多達 $23 每年十億.

That’s almost four times the size of Vermont’s entire state budget.

所以農村寬帶是雙贏: 為農民增加收入, 為政府增加稅收, 以及每個人都可以負擔得起的食物.

農業部長桑尼·珀杜（Sonny Perdue）這樣說: “Broadband in rural America will be as transformative in the 21st century as rural electrification was in the last century.”

That’s a striking claim, 可能接近標記. 寬帶無疑改變了我們經營農場的方式.

寬帶前, 我們依靠衛星互聯網的緩慢而不可靠的服務. One of its peculiarities was that we couldn’t connect to it from our house, 但是我們可以從穀倉裡. 所以我們建了一個臨時辦公室. 這不理想: 我必須戴耳機以保護耳朵免受真空泵的大聲喧from. 降雨期間, I couldn’t work at all because the service went down. 傳輸速率相當於觀看草生長的數字等效. 當我想下載數據時, I’d leave the computer and come back later, 希望這項工作能完成.

寬帶使一切變得更好. 我們保留了關於牛群的出色記錄, monitoring every animal’s health and production. The veterinarian doesn’t need to visit nearly as often because we can get our pregnancy test reports in our email from a milk testing lab in Pennsylvania. We can look up our milk production and quality measures from our dairy cooperative online, 以及在報告準備就緒時接收文本警報. 我們也可以立即訪問我們的銀行, 允許我們檢查餘額, 支付帳單, 並在白天或晚上的任何時間請求付款.

We’re hoping to make more advances soon. We’d like to put activity monitors on our cows so that we can track their movement and diet. 如果他們迷路了, we’ll find them. 如果他們停止進食, we’ll know something is wrong. We’ll also put sensors on our water tanks and in our sugar woods (我們生產楓糖漿的地方): 如果線路中斷或扭結, we’ll receive alert messages on our phones.

也許這些創新聽起來平凡，而不是現代技術前沿的奇異奇蹟. But that’s the point. They are the ordinary tools of business nowadays—and millions of farmers can’t use them because they don’t have broadband.

好消息是，美國農業部正試圖通過以下方式解決這一問題 投資 在農村寬帶. 在六月, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Doug Jones of Alabama—a Republican and a Democrat, respectively—提議的 額外資金. 大約在同一時間, FCC主席Ajit Pai 宣布 建立了一個工作組，以審查美國精準農業的連接性和技術需求.

The task force’s title is quite a mouthful, 但它的任務很簡單: 將寬帶帶入美國鄉村.

我們盡快在任何地方都需要它.