It has been interesting to see the changing perception of high-speed or broadband Internet in the legislature over the past few years. When the Rural Internet Access Authority (the organization that preceded the e-NC Authority) began operations in 2001, it’s fair to say that not many legislators were tuned in to the importance of this new infrastructure. But over the past eight years, the legislature’s understanding of the need for high-speed Internet services has grown. And a lot of this has to do with how much they have heard from their constituents.
Citizens and state leaders are beginning to more fully realize the growing benefits of broadband for economic development, lifetime education, health care, public safety, homeland security, telework and environmental sustainability, to name a few. Unfortunately, we still lack an easy answer for the citizens and businesses in rural North Carolina that do not have access to a broadband connection. They live in sparsely populated areas; there is little to no business case for the providers to deploy the needed infrastructure there.
But as more leaders come on board to solve this problem, we believe more solutions will be found. So far, there is no magic technology cheap enough to deploy in sparsely populated areas that would deliver true broadband. And we can’t expect the service providers to shoulder the cost all on their own – they are businesses after all. So really, the question is a policy issue, and a critical one for us at the state and national level. Maybe it cannot be solved at the state level, but the states still have an important role to play, serving as models or testing incentives programs, emerging technologies and public-private partnerships to get the job done.
The question is – will North Carolina leaders and national leaders decide that broadband Internet is actually a public service, like electricity and telephone service? Will they implement policy solutions, like they did with electrification of the United States, to ensure that everyone is able to access broadband Internet? We hope so. While we work toward increasing availability here in North Carolina, we can’t do it without the support of our national leaders.
On the bright side, it is clear that times (and minds) are changing. And the legislators really are beginning to understand the issues involved here. When we get calls from people in rural areas that lack broadband service, we try to help on our own but we also encourage them to contact their legislators. With this newfound understanding in the N.C. General Assembly, we believe we will see more focus on the issue of broadband - more discussions, more solutions, and more prosperity for our state.
All good things.
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"Unfortunately, we still lack an easy answer for the citizens and businesses in rural North Carolina that do not have access to a broadband connection. They live in sparsely populated areas; there is little to no business case for the providers to deploy the needed infrastructure there."
Well, that's not exactly true. There are always easy answers because that equates to having easy choices, choices always being easy. It's usually consequences that are hard. In this case, the answer is simple: enact legislation that requires 100% broadband availability to all North Carolina citizens by 20xx. That's the easy answer, and if executed, would also be effective.
The technology already exists for that, how you get 100% availability is not hard to figure out. DSL has distance limits, but remote DSLAMs make it possible to provide that service outside the range of the central exchange as far out as need be. This is already how many exchanges have near 100% availability already, and could have had it years ago.
I realize remote DSLAMs aren't cheap; none of that equipment is, but again, that has nothing to do with there not being solutions, and DSL is not the only technology that can reach the last mile if they have to.
What this post really wants to say is that the solutions are easy, that they exist now and have for some time, and are being used all over the country, but what's difficult is finding the money to fund the deployments of existing technology and also finding the guts to force businesses to do things that they don't want to do.
I sympathize with the battle but it's worth the effort, it really is. The state government is empowered to do anything it wants, short of violating the state and federal constitutions. If the legislature really wanted to, it could pass a law this week requiring all companies in the state to follow a plan created by e-NC for universal coverage. Of course it'd never happen because there are too many pro-businesses people working in government, and their objections are worth considering since a forceful action like this could do great damage to those companies and the state economy.
But that is not the same thing has there not being easy solutions -- there are. It is also not the same thing as it being unachievable with benefits for all -- risk of damage is not a guarantee of it.
"So far, there is no magic technology cheap enough to deploy in sparsely populated areas that would deliver true broadband."
Not true, remote DSLAMs are getting cheaper every month and they are cheap enough for many telcos to have near 100% coverage even in rural areas of North Carolina.
http://pwt.mediapundit.net/zenphoto/albums/misc/dsl.jpg
This image from e-NC (2006 I think) shows every telco exchange in the state, with 91-100% DSL availability in many rural and mountainous counties to the west and south-west of the green square. It's not only possible to have near universal broadband in North Carolina, in many counties it's already there with DSL in very diverse topologies. The coast, the flat Piedmont, the foothills, and even in the mountains.
We have to ask ourselves why certain exchanges have such high access even in rural and mountainous areas while others have little and sometimes none at all. It may be that some incumbents like Embarq are simply being cheap and lazy, and need a legislative kick in the butt to do something, while others are aggressively deploying in undeserved areas in the interest of actually servicing their customers.
The above statement is simply not true.
"And we can’t expect the service providers to shoulder the cost all on their own – they are businesses after all."
Yes we can, they are reaping 100% of the profit, why shouldn't they shoulder 100% of the cost of serving their own customers? And if e-NC truly believes the claim that broadband is a utility, then what it costs the companies is a secondary concern to serving the public interest now.
That said, I am not against helping to subsidize deployment, but there ought to be something that the communications companies also give in return for that, like priority deployment orders for these subsidized rural areas over speed upgrades to existing wealthy communities. We don't need to be spoon feeding these companies tax dollars only to have them go about rural deployments in a leisurely way.
We can't forget that they are getting something out of this too, more customers paying for yet another service, one of the most expensive they offer. In rural deployments, they gain revenue, so it's not like they are being asked to take a loss here.
They may not want to do it, but the chief concern of the NC government and e-NC should be what citizens want and need, not what the telcos want. That's what the government is supposed to be doing anyway.
"With this newfound understanding in the N.C. General Assembly, we believe we will see more focus on the issue of broadband - more discussions, more solutions, and more prosperity for our state."
That's good news, but means little to people who still have nothing. It has been a decade since DSL was first invented and deployed in the United States and about as long since the first one-way cable systems were brought online. 10 years of communications advancement in this country that has seen wealthy counties and states getting fiber, while others still depend on modems. Not only is it critical to speed things up, it's worth acknowledging what a huge embarrassment it is that it has taken this long just to get this far.
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