Still buffering: How East Texas lags the rest of the state in broadband

As a broadband connection becomes more integrated into life in the 21st century — from working to studying to keeping in touch with loved ones — rural East Texas continues to lag the rest of the state. Forty percent of people living in 41 East Texas counties did not have broadband in 2016, compared with 11 percent of the population statewide. And East Texans accounted for nearly one-third of the state’s 3 million residents without access to broadband that year. Chris Pedersen, a vice president for Connected Nation, said his organization maps out broadband access by household nationwide and has done so in Texas. He said about one in four rural Texans does not have access to broadband, based on the Federal Communications Commission’s data, but the FCC’s data is likely understating the problem. “There is kind of an outcry, not just in Texas, but in rural communities, that they need broadband, increasingly so, because you need it to do just about anything,” said Pedersen. Pedersen said his organization has been going on listening tours around Texas to understand the needs. He said some people have internet connections but don’t realize what they’re missing because of the slow speed. “I say, ‘Well, do you have broadband,’ and they say ‘Yeah,’ and then I realize that they’re thinking about just having internet,” Pedersen said. “But they’re connecting at like one megabit per second. “I had a conversation with a city manager about it taking four hours to download a PDF,” he said. “That’s not broadband.”