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King: Trump Infrastructure Plan Should Include Broadband Expansion

AUGUSTA, Maine - When President Donald Trump unveils his infrastructure plan - expected to happen within the next few weeks - Maine U.S. Sen. Angus King says he hopes it will include an expansion of broadband.

King says Maine has the backbone for broadband in place but many rural areas still lag behind.

“It’s like a superhighway, it’s like an interstate without exits," King says. "It’s very hard to get
the broadband from the superhighway out into the communities, particularly rural communities.”

King, an independent, compares broadband to electricity in the early part of the last century:  What drove economic expansion then, he says, was the widespread availability of electricity.

King says he hopes President Trump will include a proposal similar to the Rural Electrification Agency of the 1930’s that provided grants and loans to develop the power grid.

The Roosevelt administration in the 30's invented rural electrification involving co-ops and other federal interventions that allowed electricity to get throughout the country," King says. "To me it is exactly the same case.”
 

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.