Rep. Eshoo recently sent a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood urging him to administratively implement a “dig once” policy, similar to her Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2011 (H.R. 1695) introduced earlier this year. Adoption of a “dig once” policy by DOT would encourage the inclusion of “broadband conduit” – plastic pipes which house fiber-optic communications cable – during the construction of federal highways.  An excerpt of the article is below:

Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif., who is spearheading a federal effort in Congress to include broadband conduits in federal highway construction projects, publicly urged the Department of Transportation secretary to join her in prioritizing such a federal policy.

“We need to continue looking for creative approaches at the federal level to rapidly deploy broadband and improve the economy with limited public dollars,” Eshoo said in a prepared statement.

The Department of Transportation has the tools to adopt a “dig once” policy modeled after legislation Eshoo introduced in May, she said. It would “expand broadband at a fraction of the cost by including the conduit as roads are already being built.”

The Federal Highway Administration estimates it is 10 times more expensive to dig up, then repair an existing road to lay fiber than it is to dig a channel for it when the road is being fixed or built, Eshoo said in her letter to Ray LaHood, Department of Transportation secretary. The dig once policy will add less than 1 percent to the cost of the overall project, she said.

The federal push for broadband is vital, say local broadband advocates, who celebrated Thursday a three-year, $450,000 California Public Utilities grant to help prepare for broadband conduits in the tri-county region of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties.

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