Universal Broadband

Recently, the Waterloo (IA) City Council voted unanimously to use $84,500 in general obligation bond money for a broadband feasibility study conducted by Magellan Advisors. The study’s goal is to help Waterloo determine the practicality of a city-owned broadband system versus other options, such as a service based on a public-private partnership model. As this and other arguments over how best to make broadband available in Waterloo continues, there may be lessons emerging from the situation for connectivity efforts in communities nationwide.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai says bringing broadband to rural areas is his highest priority, but since there aren’t lucrative deals to be made, service providers have generally ignored rural communities like the one I called home. This puts opportunities afforded to the connected population out of reach and disproportionately affects Native American communities. Service providers haven’t had the incentive to establish connectivity in areas with rugged terrain.

Thank you to the Broadband Communities team for organizing a great event and inviting me here today to discuss an issue that I care so deeply about which is getting high-speed, affordable broadband to every person across this country.

Frontier Communications requests that the Federal Communications Commission waive Frontier’s obligations under the Connect America Fund (“CAF”) Phase II model-based support program to reach its 80% year-end 2019 milestone in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah because it has not been permitted to build on the Navajo Nation for the past year. Frontier requires the use of the Navajo Nation public rights of way.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) invested nearly $3.8 million in high-speed broadband infrastructure that will create or improve rural e-Connectivity for more than 1,250 rural households in Virginia. Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative will use ReConnect Program funding to deploy a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband network capable of simultaneous transmission rates of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or greater. The funded service areas include 1,254 households, two volunteer fire departments, and four educational facilities.

If you walk into a retail store in southern Ohio, you might see a "cash only" sign sitting in the window. Cash, unlike credit card machines, does not rely on internet access to work. In an area with limited options for high-speed internet access, some businesses struggle with credit card machines. Up until five years ago, M&M Feed Supply, in Guernsey County, was one of those businesses. It had dial-up internet, which allowed them to use the machine, but only in the store where it could be physically connected.

At a time when millions of Americans still do not have access to broadband of any kind, Next Century Cities is a resource for local leaders who are searching for connectivity solutions. Lifting up the voices of local broadband advocates, our work helps to ensure that lawmakers and policymakers understand what is at stake for our member communities, especially those that are still struggling to provide reliable, affordable broadband access for their residents.

Most of us think of the internet as existing “virtually,” yet cyberspace requires a physical infrastructure that is mostly hidden from view. And it requires workers to go under city streets to tie things together. They run fiber-optic cables—incredibly thin strands of glass that carry the super-fast data signals providing high-speed internet, or “broadband,” service—and connect them underground to commercial buildings. There are many things that wouldn’t be the same without broadband. Here’s a look at 10 things broadband has brought to, or changed about, the world:

As part of his just-announced "Partnership with Rural Communities," Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer has proposed a massive rural broadband connectivity program that includes $135 billion in investment and "protecting" municipal and co-op broadband networks. "The modern economy is a knowledge economy," Steyer's plan points out. "Full participation in commerce depends on reliable, fast, affordable access to the Internet.

North Carolinians aren’t the quickest adopters when it comes to broadband. Despite the fact that around 94.8 percent of North Carolinians have access to high-speed internet, only 59.4 percent of households adopt it, according to the Federal Communications Commission. “It’s pretty low. That’s a good 40 percent of the population that has access but is still not adopting,” said Amy Huffman, NC Department of Information Technology’s digital equity and digital inclusion program manager. It affects rural and urban areas equally. “That’s a big problem,” she said.