Municipal Networks

A Q&A with Vermont gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist.

Telehealth vendors have the frustrating experience of seeing their best efforts to serve rural populations thwarted by pathetic broadband connections. Or worse, no broadband at all. At least vendors and healthcare facilities have the benefit of serving urban areas because there, the broadband is always good. Or is it? Urban broadband availability is still a problem. Cities suffer from the legacy of broadband’s origins. Three steps to advancing telehealth networks:

Many rural communities in Maine have been waiting decades for the major internet service providers to bring broadband service to their areas, a situation exacerbated by the state having the second slowest internet speeds in the country. The lack of broadband is a deterrent to would-be residents and businesses, and it thwarts local efforts at economic development. It also deprives existing residents of opportunities for entertainment, education, employment, and digital health services.

When EPB, Chattanooga's municipal power utility, launched its Internet, video, and phone services nearly a decade ago in conjunction with its efforts to build a smarter electric grid, the city-owned utility projected it should attract more than 30,000 customers of its telecom services within five years to cover its costs and break even.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said she thinks Tennessee's approach to providing high-speed Internet and broadband services to rural areas "has worked well in our state" and she reiterated her opposition to having government utilities like EPB expand outside their territories to compete with AT&T, Comcast and other private telecom companies.

The vast majority of farmers in the Midwest aren’t able to utilize “precision agriculture” GPS technology because they don’t get high-speed internet, according to Christopher Ali, assistant media studies professor at the University of Virginia. He said companies don’t want to put in fiber optic cable – considered the gold standard – because of its great expense. “There’s not enough customers on a farm, because there’s technically one customer on the farm – the farmer,” he said. “That doesn’t merit any of these companies coming out.

If Christine Hallquist is elected governor of Vermont, her plan is to pass legislation that would require electric utilities to hang fiber-optic cable in their service areas. The power companies could make money by leasing the fiber to internet service providers. Utilities would not be allowed to compete with traditional telecommunication companies by selling internet service directly to customers. "When I talk about doing fiber, I'm not saying that the electric companies are going to provide the services, because that would be unfair," Hallquist said.

Access to serviceable Internet is of serious importance in Aiken County (SC) and surrounding areas, said Economic Development Partnership President and CEO Will Williams.  "Many of our areas don't have broadband capabilities because of where they are," Williams said.

A Q&A with Jeremy Hegle, a senior community development adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. The Federal Reserve Bank is trying convince businesses that the digital divide is their problem, too. He said:

Cumberland County (Maine) is in the process of creating a playbook that communities could use to develop their own municipal broadband internet networks. The county issued a request for proposals for a community broadband study that would cost up to $25,000, funded by a federal Community Development Block Grant.