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President Exec Order To Speed Up Broadband Dev

Chuck Zimmerman

Today President Obama will sign a new executive order to make broadband construction cheaper and easier according to the White House. This would mean more people in more places can join the AgWired community!

The Executive Order (EO) will require the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs as well as the US Postal Service to offer carriers a single approach to leasing Federal assets for broadband deployment. The EO also requires that available Federal assets and the requirements for leasing be provided on departmental websites, and it will require public tracking of regional broadband deployment projects via the Federal Infrastructure Projects Dashboard (permits.performance.gov). In addition, the Executive Order will direct departments to help carriers time their broadband deployment activities to periods when streets are already under construction—an approach that can reduce network deployment costs along Federal roadways by up to 90 percent.

You can find a fact sheet on this here (pdf).

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