June 10, 2019
Voqal welcomes the Ex Parte from the United States Department of Education that urges the Federal Communications Commissions to retain the educational benefits of Educational Broadband Service (EBS).
The following statement can be attributed to Voqal director of telecommunications strategy, Mark Colwell.
“Today’s filing by the U.S. Department of Education is welcome news. The filing adds to a growing chorus in support of EBS. Educators, rural broadband providers, nonprofit organizations, libraries, digital divide advocacy groups, and now the U.S. Department of Education all agree that EBS is a vital tool to close the digital divide, but only if it remains educational.
The Department’s support for keeping EBS educational, issuing unassigned EBS licenses to educators and nonprofits and modernizing educational use rules so that more students and families can benefit is precisely the recipe that can close the digital divide and homework gap in rural and Tribal lands.
For over 50 years, this spectrum band has provided immense benefits for educational institutions and communities. The FCC has a tremendous opportunity to give rural educators and their communities, as well as tribal nations this critical tool to quickly deploy affordable broadband to the unserved and underserved.”
To learn more about this issue, visit saveebs.org.