Summary: Many rural areas today are struggling to overcome serious economic and social problems, such as a lack of access to higher education, sophisticated medical treatment, and business opportunities, that have arisen because of remoteness from urban centers. Although improved roads were once seen as the key to a brighter future for rural areas, experts now believe that telecommunications technologies may prove much more crucial to fostering development. Advanced telecommunications technologies--the Internet, videoconferencing, and high-speed data transmission--offer rural areas the opportunity to overcome their geographic isolation, take advantage of expertise in other communities, improve medical services, create new jobs, and improve access to education. This report (1) identifies federal programs that rural areas can use to fund telecommunications projects; (2) identifies lessons learned by rural areas that have used these programs to establish such projects; and (3) provides the views of experts, public and private officials, and program users on whether changes to these programs are needed.
