State Representative Ray Sorensen (R) is continuing to work towards increasing access to high speed internet for rural Iowans with multiple bills being reviewed by the House Commerce Committee.

The first bill Sorensen ran seeks to extend the sunset on streamlining the process for companies with wireless infrastructure to install towers for their customers. This proposal seeks to extend the sunset until 2025 to allow this technology to develop and mature, and includes expanding access to the fifth generation of wireless technology. The second bill that Sorensen says advanced out of subcommittee serves as a foundational aspect for underserved communities, giving them the opportunity to achieve a designation like the Home Base Iowa program for veterans’ services.

By calling themselves “Broadband Forward” or “Telecommuter Ready,” Sorensen says this program would establish a point of contact in communities to help with grant writing for state and federal funded programs, “It would help streamline that process and increase the communication back and forth and kind of set up a way to advertise to anyone that would be maybe wanting to move to your community that, ‘Hey, we’re broadband ready, we’re connected or in the process of getting connected.’ And then if you want to be ‘Telecommuter Ready’ then you have a place or a building where telecommuters could rather than drive into the city, they drive into this office that’s a heck of a lot closer to where they live and they could be telecommuting to their business and going to this building and have internet access.”

In the State Government and Veterans Affairs committees, Sorensen has been assigned bills regarding lemonade and other minor-operated stands and allowing hunting and fishing for those in the armed forces stationed at the Rock Island Arsenal near Davenport. You can hear more from Sorensen in Monday’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County program on air and at raccoonvalleyradio.com.