On the recordOctober 25, 2017
I was just sitting here, Mr. Chairman, and I am excited and welcome my friend from Georgia to the fight for broadband. I have been leading on this fight now for several years, especially in my district, which is rural, which has a company called Windstream that does not provide for its citizens. I am excited to have the acknowledgment that rural broadband is something that we need to be fighting for. My district has areas in which Windstream was supposed to use its Connect America funds to widen its footprint on rural broadband. Instead, they have shrunk it, only to compete in areas where they are competing against other companies, and only widening it in areas where they already had technology which they could have widened years before. I think it is really interesting, and I am so glad about this because it also gives me the opportunity to talk about the GO Act, the Gigabyte Opportunity Act, which actually will provide real solutions into these districts for broadband opportunity. I would encourage my friends from Georgia and from Michigan, and anybody else, to sign on to this bill. It is a good bill that has support across the way in the Senate, and also working with the administration to provide the way for States to actually look at their own States and provide gigabyte opportunity zones so that they can actually make ways and get these companies that are monopolizing the areas and not serving their constituents. By the way, Mr.…
