Friday, July 17, 2009

Where the CITIZENS come to ask questions…

Almost on a daily basis, the e-NC Authority hears from citizens that do not have broadband access. Their stories are often born from ongoing frustration with lack of service, being held back at work and school by not having service, and the experience they have had with telecommunications service providers.

When we correspond with citizens, we always try to gather information about their specific experience (ex. do they know others nearby without service, what their experience has been when contacting who they think would be the obvious service provider, how lack of service is affecting their life/home, etc.), but we also encourage them to write to their legislators about the issue. Often, we must also explain the nature of the telecommunications industry and its relationship with regulatory government. Once we gather information about the citizen’s home address and landline telephone number, we ensure that the citizen has contact information for their elected leaders in the N.C. General Assembly.

With address and home landline in-hand, we then forward that information to the closest service provider to inquire about if that citizen’s location is included in any known deployment plans. Getting this answer back from a service provider can take anywhere from a few days to several months. We always forewarn citizens that the e-NC Authority does not hold regulatory authority and that getting information back from the service provider about their specific location can often take a long period of time.

The content of the correspondence is something to behold. From time to time, we plan to post that content to this blog. Here are a few. (Specific information from citizens and their service provider has been removed to protect privacy.)

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Hello, I live three miles from the local university and cannot get broadband. I am a professional therapist and my wife is a professor at the college. A neighbor up the road gets broadband, but apparently we are too far from the source. We are supposedly about the same distance away from the other transfer station, so we will likely never get broadband. Help!

I have had (the telecommunications company) come and check the line on two separate occasions. They never let me know their findings until I called and was routed through several different branches of their service. Then I was told our house was too far away, with no explanation about why our neighbor who lives up the mountain received broadband services.

S.M., Jackson County


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I live in Graham County. For the last two years I have been struggling to get broadband service at my residence. I contacted (the telecommunications company) and they stated that DSL service was not available. After talking to the local technicians, they said it might be possible to get DSL. The current outcome is that the local employees want to provide the service and they say they could, but the upper management of their company did not want to provide a solution. I've called and talked to anybody in (the telecommunications company’s) chain of management that would listen to me. The higher up I go, the less they care about the situation and always more focus on profit issues.

My wife is a full time college student who is a distant learner and her university requires high-speed Internet for school work. She must drive either to the public library or her mother's house to have Internet access. I know of many more residents in my area and in Graham County who would like broadband service to better themselves. It seems my efforts alone will not get the ball rolling, so if there is any help or guidance that e-NC can provide would be greatly appreciated. If this helps any I am a Disabled Veteran, a former Marine, who is still serving (in a public service job) and in the U.S. Army reserves. All I am asking for is for something that many take for granted.

K.T., Graham County


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I took an early retirement package from a newspaper in November and established a business at my home. I have been severely hampered by having only slow, dialup Internet at home. Many Web sites I need to use for research will not open here. PDFs are also very slow to open, if they open at all. Often, I write on my laptop and then drive six miles to another town to e-mail my article to my customer. One offer of regular editing work was rescinded in part because of my "connectivity issues."

Everything I do takes much, much longer than it should. This is a real burden in my business. I live in eastern Stokes County. (Telecommunications company) is my phone provider; they will not bring DSL to my house, even though they have it north of here. (Another telecommunications company) is the local cable provider; they told me I am "unserviceable" even though they come near our road. Someone I met who lives in a remote area of Stokes County right on the Virginia line recommended (a satellite company), but they said that they will not serve my area.

I have a (telecommunications company) air card for my laptop, but their service is not strong enough in my house to use the air card. Once, I wrote an article in my laptop and, because it was raining, had to drive to the top of a nearby hill just to send it out by e-mail. This is not a very good way to run a business.

I e-mailed all my state representatives and some others who I had been told were on crucial committees about rural broad-band back in the winter. I received not a single reply. If there is anything I can do to help this process along, please let me know.

L.B., Stokes County

2 comments:

Paul William Tenny said...

"Everything I do takes much, much longer than it should. This is a real burden in my business. I live in eastern Stokes County. (Telecommunications company) is my phone provider; they will not bring DSL to my house, even though they have it north of here. (Another telecommunications company) is the local cable provider; they told me I am "unserviceable" even though they come near our road."

Heh, as someone who lives in Stokes, I know exactly who this person is talking about. The telco is Embarq. They are the only telco in the county that doesn't actually want people to have DSL. Surry Telephone Membership Corp and Windstream have had 100% rollout in all of their exchanges since 2006. Embarq has 46% in Danbury (which is my exchange, which means neither I nor anyone else anywhere around me can get DSL), 41% in Quaker Gap, 36% in Sandy Ridge, 46% in Walnut Cove, a pathetic 21% in Madison, and 34% in Pilot Mountain.

I talked to the Embarq engineer helping people on DSL Reports and he talked to the Embarq people in this area, and pretty much said tough luck. The best I could do is get my neighbors to write letters asking for DSL, and then just wait and pray.

It's very easy to see how little Embarq cares about the people living on Stokes. While Danbury did finally expand (no DSL in 2004, 18% in 2006, 46% in 2007), Quaker Gap and Sandy Ridge only increased availability by 1% between 2006 and 2007. Madison at 21% hasn't changed at all.

The cable company is most likely Time Warner. Access to Time Warner in Stokes actually *dropped* from 58.04% in 2006 to 56.96% in 2007.

Like this person, I also emailed a couple of my representatives before. Like them, I did not receive a single reply. Not even an automated form reply.

It's nuts. I live 1.9 miles from a telco site that has several large cabinets and a cement atmospherically controlled shed that has had *fiber* run to it for like five years now, and Embarq still refuses to put a DSLAM out there.

I'm so tired of it. Embarq spends money to upgrade DSL in Nevada to 10mbit but they wont spend any money to roll it out to rural sites where there is zero competition, and we're talking about technology that is what, a decade old?

Ugh.

Paul William Tenny said...

Did some research on the web and found minutes from a Stokes county board meeting that explained a few things for me.

Time Warner ran cable down my road (North Stokes School Road) sometime within the last two months in order to satisfy a shiny new contract they have to provide Internet access to schools around here.

They ran cable about 83% the length of this road until they got to the school, and then just stopped.

I'm not joking, this road which would never be considered by Time Warner had it not been for the school and a fat contract from the county/state, got 80%+ access and they just *stopped*.

Six homes left within a little more than *half a mile* of where they stopped, and we get nothing because Time Warner got what they wanted, $160k and they simply went home.

I'm happy for the school but it's disgusting that we're throwing $160k at Time Warner to *not* serve us.