Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith

By 2017, we concluded that TV white spaces technology was ready for broader adoption at scale, including in rural areas across the United States. After several months of planning, we launched in July what we called the Microsoft Rural Airband Initiative at the Willard InterContinental hotel in Washington, DC. We pledged to bring broadband coverage to two million additional Americans in rural areas within five years—by July 4, 2022. We would not enter the telecommunications business, but we would partner with telecom providers and deploy a mix of wireless technologies, including new wireless devices using the TV white spaces spectrum. We pledged that for five years we would reinvest every dollar of profit from these endeavors to further expand coverage.