Luján Chairs Subcommittee Hearing on Safeguarding Broadband from Disruptive, Dangerous Outages

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband, led a hearing to discuss how the federal government can support deployment of resilient, redundant, and secure broadband and telecommunications infrastructure. The hearing brought together experts from emergency response, industry, and public advocacy, to share lessons learned from recent outage incidents from hurricanes, wildfires, intentional attacks, and network equipment failures.

VIDEO: Luján Chairs Subcommittee Hearing on Safeguarding Broadband from Disruptive, Dangerous Outages

“When disaster strikes, broadband and telecommunications services connect us to someone who can help: firefighters, police, EMTs. Unfortunately, in times of emergency, too many Americans aren’t able to connect to someone who can help. They get a busy signal. They get dead air,” said Luján. “This is unacceptable. The United States government has committed tens of billions of dollars to get Americans connected, and telecommunication services are recording massive profits…It is time that these companies reinvest those profits toward ensuring that their users have access to resilient, redundant, and secure networks.”

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