By Jim Meyers, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how to connect rural America to broadband. In New Mexico, broadband is not a luxury—it’s as vital to our well-being as electricity, water, or roads. Families deciding whether to move to a community want to know if it has reliable internet. Those living without reliable broadband risk being left further behind as work, school, healthcare, and civic life increasingly move online.
Reliable broadband is about more than streaming movies or checking email. It raises the entire economic floor of a community. It allows farmers to use precision agriculture tools that conserve water and improve yields. It lets patients in rural areas connect to specialists hundreds of miles away through telehealth. It ensures students can learn and compete no matter their ZIP code. It helps local businesses grow and makes remote work possible. It strengthens public safety and security systems. And just as importantly, it keeps families and friends connected.
Too often, the conversation about rural broadband stops at the upfront cost of building networks. Those costs matter—but that’s only part of the story. It takes years of planning to design, fund, and build a network. And in rural areas where distances are long and populations are spread out, it costs more to get everyone connected.
Building the network is only the beginning. Keeping it reliable, affordable, and up to date is a never-ending job that many rural providers have been doing for more than 50 years. The mission of achieving “universal service”—making sure every American can actually use modern communications—requires constant investment and attention.
That’s where the federal Universal Service Fund (USF) comes in. You may never have heard of it, but USF is the backbone of rural connectivity. Its roots go back to the Communications Act of 1934, which declared that all Americans deserve “rapid, efficient, nationwide communications service…at reasonable charges.” Nearly a century later, USF is still making good on that promise, helping millions in rural communities connect and supporting schools, libraries, and health clinics.
The program works, but it needs updating. Today, USF is funded by fees tied to older telecom services that fewer people use. As a result, the burden falls on a smaller group of companies and their customers. Meanwhile, the largest online platforms, whose services account for massive amounts of data flowing over rural networks, contribute nothing. Once upon a time, Netflix paid postage to mail DVDs to customers. Today, internet providers are effectively covering the digital “postage” to deliver the content of other global platforms. This model cannot be sustained. Those who rely most heavily on the networks must contribute to keeping them strong.
We need Congress to modernize USF funding so that everyone who depends on robust broadband helps support it. Simultaneously, accountability is essential. Billions of dollars flow through USF, and every provider who receives support must prove they are delivering on their promises. State officials in New Mexico play a key role in making sure funding goes to providers with the expertise and commitment to serve their communities well.
New Mexico’s people and lawmakers are working hard to improve outcomes in our state. We applaud Senator Ben Ray Luján—co-chair of the bipartisan USF Working Group—for his leadership on this issue. Now, we urge him and his colleagues in Congress to act: update and sustain USF so that networks we are building today remain strong, affordable, and built to last for generations.
Reliable internet isn’t just about convenience; it’s about whether rural communities in New Mexico and across the country can thrive in the modern world.
