Outside Gettysburg, a Battle for Better Broadband

In the borough of New Oxford (PA), ten miles east of the county seat (Gettysburg), the non-profit media group Community Media of South Central Pennsylvania is leading the charge to bring Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) victory for the approximately 102,000 residents spread out across the rural county’s 520 square miles. But with restrictive state laws that protect incumbent providers from competition by not allowing municipalities to provide broadband service, and scarce funding for non-governmental entities to build broadband infrastructure, victory is far from certain.  About 10 years ago a county initiative known as Adams County Connected tried to entice the big incumbent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to invest in broadband infrastructure that would reach unserved parts of the county. It’s a harsh lesson in the “free market” economics practiced by the big incumbent ISPs in rural communities across the nation. In sparsely populated regions dominated by monopoly providers interested in maximizing short-term profits, it doesn’t make “business sense” for the big cable and telco companies to make large capital investments associated with quality broadband infrastructure. As hundreds of other communities have come to realize, if they want better broadband infrastructure, they’ll have to build it themselves.