State Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, left, jokes with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps at the Rural Broadband Round Table Summit on Wednesday at Kansas University's Dole Institute of Politics. Access to broadband communications is a right, not a luxury, for all Americans, Copps said at the event, which drew Kansas government officials and local business leaders. He argued that rural America will fall further behind if broadband communications don't become accessible soon.

State legislators, federal regulators and a U.S. congressman say they don’t know how to push broadband technology into the nation’s rural areas.

But they know it has to happen.

“It’s not a do-good or social-policy thing,” said Michael Copps, a Federal Communications Commission commissioner. “That’s not the way to look at it. It’s a competitive business thing. A small businessman or woman out there in rural Kansas who is trying to start a company, if they don’t have high-speed, they can’t compete with that person in the big city – much less with somebody in downtown Seoul or in India or in China, where other people are starting their own small businesses.

“You can’t compete with their data and the outreach and the capacity in responding to the market.”

Copps was the featured speaker during the Rural Broadband Round Table Summit, conducted Wednesday at Kansas University’s Dole Institute of Politics.

The event, organized by state Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, drew lawmakers, regulators and other government officials to sit alongside business executives and others involved in the telecommunications industry to discuss closing the digital divide: the gap between high-speed Internet access common in metropolitan areas and the slower, dial-up service that often serves rural areas.

Copps, for one, advocates using the Universal Service Fund – a charge assessed on phone bills – to extend broadband service into rural areas, where companies often shy away from serving with high-speed service because of the relatively high cost of doing so.

But Copps said that the cost of not doing so is even higher, given the immensely competitive world of global commerce, life-saving possibilities of telemedicine and world-changing opportunities offered by educational access.

“Congress needs to rationalize all this and figure out what kind of tax incentives, what kind of other incentives must be there to encourage the deployment of broadband,” Copps said.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., whose congressional district includes many rural areas still awaiting reliable broadband service, said that the federal government had $1 billion available today to address such needs, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But all parties involved – businesses, government and communities themselves – need to keep talking to come up with a solution that meets the needs of a changing world.

“We’re making progress, in Kansas and across the country,” Moran said. “But ultimately, it’s got to be done in a way that gives the necessary speed and quality so that it doesn’t matter where you live, and you can quickly access information on the Internet. That’s the goal.”

Sloan, for his part, knows that the solution won’t be easy to find. That was evident from the discussions among nearly 100 people attending the summit.

But he’s confident there’s an answer out there.

“That’s part of the reason for having this meeting, is to figure out who doesn’t have broadband, how do we get it to them and how do we pay for it,” he said.