Senator Tom Brandt of Plymouth and Legislative District 32 has continued working to address the issue of getting rural broadband to all Nebraskans. With COVID-19 and many rural Nebraskans needing faster speeds and greater bandwidth for everything from Zoom calls to telehealth to precision farming to Netflix, reliable broadband has become more important than ever. As Senator Brandt was quoted as saying in the Lincoln Journal Star’s Editorial on January 30th: “COVID really exposed a lot of weaknesses in the system, and I think everybody just wants to speed it up.”

Last session, Senator Brandt brought LB996 which passed and was signed into law by the Governor. It created the Broadband Data Improvement Program to ensure that the State of Nebraska is accurately represented in federal broadband grant programs.

This Session, Senator Brandt introduced two bills to tackle the issue. On January 15, he introduced LB460, which would enable public power to lease their dark fiber and would lift major hurdles for utilities to partner with internet providers to provide high-speed connectivity to unserved and underserved communities. On January 20th, he introduced LB600 which would expand financial resources and tools for the development of broadband infrastructure and facilities in rural areas by allowing public power districts and electric cooperatives financing authority, and by repurposing the Municipal Infrastructure Redevelopment Act for financing broadband infrastructure and facilities in rural communities.

“These bills put us well on the way to getting high-speed Internet, not just in unserved rural areas but also in underserved urban communities as well,” Senator Brandt said. “The telecoms have worked hard for twenty years to address this, and there is still a lot of work left to do in our rural areas. I’d like to see public power use its immense resources to partner with the telecoms to solve this technology problem.”

In addition to introducing these bills, Senator Brandt has co-sponsored Sen. Curt Friesen’s LB388 which was introduced at the request of the Governor. It would create the Broadband Bridge Program to allocate $40 million over two fiscal years in grants to underserved and unserved communities.

Dennis Houston, CEO of the Nebraska Rural Electric Association stated, “I believe that partnering together, putting the people of rural Nebraska ahead of profits, and eliminating red tape might ultimately be the recipe for providing connectivity to every Nebraskan.

We thank Senator Brandt and the Governor for introducing legislation that strives towards this vision, and look forward to the opportunity to help facilitate better connectivity across rural Nebraska.”

“I’m happy to see so many bills from my colleagues with their sights set on rural broadband expansion,” Senator Brandt continued, “Higher internet speeds will help my constituents better compete with their counterparts in Omaha, Lincoln and other better served communities as well as weather the covid storm, and it will help to bring younger folks back to rural Nebraska which will revitalize rural communities.”