Political Quotes

“Mr. President, my State of Maryland has a proud history of innovation in satellite technology and space exploration. Greenbelt, MD, is home to Goddard, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's first Space Flight Center Space Flight Center. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which operates a fleet of weather satellites, has its headquarters in Silver Spring. Additionally, the largest provider of residential satellite broadband service, Hughes Network Systems, is headquartered in Germantown. Hughes serves consumers in some of the most rural, hard-to-reach areas of the country. As the Senate considers the bipartisan infrastructure bill, I believe there is broad agreement that the broadband deployment grants established by the bill and administered by the Department of Commerce would help bring broadband service to unserved and underserved households in some of the most rural areas in the U.S. I also believe that satellite technology can and should be one of the technological options for achieving our broadband deployment goals. Because a geo- stationary satellite orbits at 22,500 miles above earth, however, even signals traveling at the speed of light take a split-second longer to reach their destination, causing ``latency''--or delay--in real-time broadband applications.…”