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Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise to today in support of a bill I introduced last week along with my friend Senator MOYNIHAN and 26 other members on both sides of the aisle. The bill, S. 2698, the Broadband Internet Access Act of 2000, crates tax incentives for the deployment of broadband (high-speed) Internet services to rural, low-income, and residential areas.
This bill will ensure that all Americans gain timely and equitable access to the Internet over current and future generations of broadband capability.
The legislation provides graduated tax credits to companies that bring qualified telecommunication capabilities to targeted areas. It grants a 10-percent credit for expenditures on equipment that provide a bandwidth of 1.5 million bits per second (mbps) to subscribes in rural and low-income areas, and a 20-percent credit for delivery of 22 mbps to these customers and other residential subscribers.
This bill has been endorsed by a number of organizations, including Bell Atlantic, MCI/Worldcom, Corning Incorporated, the National Telephone Cooperative Association, the Association for Local Telecommunications Services, the United States Distance Learning Association, and the Imaging Science and Information Systems Center at Georgetown University Medical Center.
Mr. President, in a few short years, the Internet has grown exponentially to become a mass medium used daily by over 100 million people worldwide. The explosion of information technology has created opportunities undreamed of by previous generations. In my home state of Montana, companies such as Healthdirectory.com and Vanns.com are taking advantage of the global markets made possible by the stunning reach of the Internet.
The pace of broadband deployment to rural America must be accelerated for electronic commerce to meet its full potential, however. Broadband access is an important to our small businesses in Montana as water is to agribusiness.
I am aware of all of the recent discussion regarding the ``digital divide'' and I am very concerned that the pace of broadband deployment is greater in urban than rural areas. However, there is some positive and exciting news on this front as well. The reality on the ground shows that some of the ``gloom and doom'' scenarios are far from the case. By pooling their limited resources, Montana's independent and cooperative telephone companies are doing great things. I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.
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