Small Business Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said he plans to ask the Small Business Administration and the FCC to "conduct a robust effort to gather data about small-business broadband usage." The lack of U.S. broadband deployment should be a major concern because as a result, "we place a technological ceiling on job growth, innovation and economic production," said Kerry, who is also a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Kerry also advocated enacting rules for auctioning spectrum that encourage new market entrants; debating changes to the universal service fund that support communications services in rural and poor areas; and establishing a strong regulatory framework to encourage competition.

"Today the marketplace lacks competition, with 98 percent of Americans receiving their broadband service from either a phone or cable company," Snowe said in prepared remarks.

She said the inability of rural small businesses to afford broadband access hinders U.S. competitiveness. "I'm particularly pleased that many states and municipalities have launched initiatives to bring high-speed Internet services and economic opportunity to communities the market may have overlooked," she added.

The "little data we have suggests that small businesses are starved for telecommunications choice," said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat. He said incentives for investment in broadband development must be increased.

Adelstein said the bidding credits for airwaves made available through an FCC program "can be a potent means of getting spectrum into the hands of small businesses and entrepreneurs," but the commission has not crafted rational rules for participation.

He also called unlicensed spectrum available for various uses an "intriguing avenue" for many underserved areas and said he has pushed for flexible licensing approaches.

Brian Mefford, president of the nonprofit Connected Nation, warned that without broadband connections, U.S. businesses cannot connect to the world's resources.

Douglas Levin, the president of Black Duck Software, said poor Internet capabilities can make it difficult for American companies to support telecommuters. He added that for startups and smaller software developers, it can be "difficult and expensive to deliver the latest software and data updates via today's conventional Internet connections."

Ben Scott of the watchdog group Free Press said in prepared testimony that "a lack of competition has led to high prices and slow speeds for small-business broadband connections." He urged the committee to work with the SBA to "undertake a sweeping inquiry into the broadband policies that will directly benefit American small businesses."

But Scott Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, said "there is little evidence of a U.S. broadband problem," and people who believe there is "fail to provide solid analysis showing that their proposals would actually benefit consumers or small businesses."