ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Box 1-3: The Administration’s Record in the Technology Sector
The technological advancements of the 21 st century, like cloud
computing, personalized medicine, and advanced materials, not only
improve our daily lives, but also have the potential to increase productivity
growth, one of the most important factors in raising standards of living
and incomes. The Obama Administration has been dedicated to laying
the groundwork for technology to improve the lives of all Americans.
It has created and updated essential infrastructure for providing more
equitable access to technology and worked to modernize America’s
institutions so that they support, rather than inhibit, innovation. The
Administration has also placed a large emphasis on preparing Americans
for the 21 st century economy. (For a discussion of the economic impact
of a number of these policies, see Chapter 5 of the 2014 Economic
Report of the President and Chapter 5 of the 2016 Economic Report of the
President.)
The Administration has worked to ensure that the technological
infrastructure is in place, and the rules of the road are set, so that all
Americans can benefit from technology. The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act provided funding to deploy or upgrade more than
114,000 miles of new broadband infrastructure, consistent with the
President’s goal of enhancing consumer welfare, civic participation, education,
entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth through greater
access to broadband. The Recovery Act financed additional broadband
projects totaling $2.9 billion, bringing high-speed Internet access to
260,000 more rural households, 17,500 businesses, and 1,900 community
facilities. Indeed, average home Internet speed in the United States has
tripled over the past four years.
In addition, the Administration has taken unprecedented action
to free up spectrum—the airwaves that carry our wireless communications—with
Presidential Memoranda directing the Department of
Commerce, through the National Telecommunication and Information
Administration, to collaborate with the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) to make available 500 MHz of spectrum for mobile
broadband use by 2020 and to accelerate spectrum sharing efforts. The
Nation is halfway to the 500 MHz goal, thanks to the hard work of nearly
two dozen Federal agencies to free up spectrum for auction and innovative
new plans to share the airwaves. The FCC’s 2015 spectrum auction
was its most successful ever, raising more than $40 billion in revenue
for the Federal Government while spurring the deployment of faster
wireless and mobile broadband. Thanks in large part to these efforts,
we have achieved the President’s 2011 State of the Union goal that more
48 | Chapter 1