The pockets of high-speed internet wasteland that pockmark Pennsylvania are shameful in an age when good internet accessibility is as ubiquitous, for most, as postal service and electricity.
And in this pandemic moment in time, those deserts of affordable and reliable connectivity threaten quality of life and education, creating two classes of citizens — the haves and have-nots — on opposite sides of a digital divide.
The lack of reasonably priced and dependable internet access — the kind of high-speed access that allows students to connect to their lessons and citizens to connect in a safe way to their family members — should be of top priority for state legislators.
It’s a problem evident in both rural and urban areas, but especially in rural and semi-rural areas. Within an hour’s drive of Pittsburgh, there are communities where residents with spotty or slow internet speeds cannot do a Google search or stream a movie unless they have the means to pay for special equipment/service that still does not provide access equal in cost and dependability to the kind of connectivity taken for granted by most Pennsylvanians. Slow internet speed can mean extended time downloading information and images from the internet. When more students across the state are relying on home computers during COVID-19, this undermines learning.
A recent study by the Joint State Government Commission has acknowledged the pandemic has put regions without broadband access at a disadvantage in health care, education, agriculture and economic development.
Expansion of the broadband network has been primarily developer driven, with providers expanding service according to market demands. But, when it comes to this essential service, the infrastructure must be given a push by government. Pennsylvania took a critical first step by enacting two state laws last year: Act 132, which provides $5 million — a pittance — to help start a broadband expansion fund, and Act 98, which eases restrictions on the ability of rural electric cooperatives and cable companies to attach broadband units to existing utility poles. Now the purse strings must be loosened and essential funding for grants and loans must be put in place and in amounts large enough to get the job done.
Those lacking good broadband service is estimated at some 800,000 people.
The cost estimate for bringing all of Pennsylvania into the digital age ranges from millions to billions of dollars, depending on who is doing the estimating. In 2019, the Governor’s Office of Broadband Initiatives put the figure at between $500 million to $1 billion. Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed a natural gas severance tax to fund the initiative, a proposal that has never gained traction.
Kinber (the acronym for the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research, a nonprofit based in Harrisburg) and Morgantown, W.Va.-based ClearFiber Communications are demonstrating one way to do it; the partners are planning an 81-mile broadband cable through parts of Washington and Greene counties to serve 2,000 homes.
Partnerships are likely to be the gold standard in pushing good internet access to all corners of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Legislature can help with dollars and sense. Eliminating the state’s digital haves and have-nots is an imperative mission of fairness as well as an investment in future productivity.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS
