Rural America Is Stranded in the Dial-Up Age... 15 June 2017

 Excerpts from:

Rural America Is Stranded in the Dial-Up Age; High costs and lack of access to broadband service prevent residents of far-flung communities from joining the modern economy

To View Entire Article--see Jennifer Levitz; Valerie Bauerlein | Photographs by Nick Schnelle for. Wall Street Journal (Online); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]15 June 2017: n/a. 

CALEDONIA, Mo.--Jeanne Wilson Johnson raises sheep and angora goats, and to sell the wool and mohair online she drives 4 miles to the parking lot of Roy's gas station, the closest spot for decent internet access.

At her 420-acre farm, Ms. Johnson pays $170 a month for a satellite internet service too slow to upload photos, much less conduct business.

As in many rural communities, broadband here lags behind in both speed and available connections. Federal data shows only a fraction of Washington County's 25,000 residents, including Ms. Johnson, have internet service fast enough to stream videos or access the cloud, activities that residents 80 miles away in St. Louis take for granted.

"We don't feel like we're worth it," said Ms. Johnson, 60 years old.
Delivering up-to-date broadband service to distant reaches of the U.S. would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, experts estimate, an expense government, industry and consumers haven't been willing to pay.
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Counties without modern internet connections can't attract new firms, and their isolation discourages the enterprises they have: ranchers who want to buy and sell cattle in online auctions or farmers who could use the internet to monitor crops. Reliance on broadband includes any business that uses high-speed data transmission, spanning banks to insurance firms to factories.

Rural counties with more households connected to broadband had higher incomes and lower unemployment than those with fewer, according to a 2015 study by university researchers in Oklahoma, Mississippi and Texas who compared rural counties before and after getting high-speed internet service.
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"We drill for oil above the Arctic Circle in some of the worst conditions known to man," Mr. Goad said. "Surely we can drop broadband across the rural areas in the Midwest."
About 39% of the U.S. rural population, or 23 million people, lack access to broadband internet service--defined as "fast" by the Federal Communications Commission--compared with 4% of the urban residents.

Fast service, according to the FCC, means a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second, a measure of bandwidth known as Mbps. That speed can support email, web surfing, video streaming and graphics for more than one device at once. It is faster than old dial-up connections--typically, less than 1 Mbps--but slower than the 100 Mbps service common in cities.

Costly connections
Rural America can't seem to afford broadband: Too few customers are spread over too great a distance. The gold standard is fiber-optic service, but rural internet providers say they can't invest in door-to-door connections with such a limited number of subscribers.
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Most rural communities rely on existing telephone technology that transmits data over copper lines. Even with upgrades, those lines can't deliver data at speeds common to fiber-optic networks.

...... Even when it works, cell service can't match the speed or capacity of broadband. "You just can't compete," said Brian Whitacre, an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University. "Running a business with a smartphone is not going to happen."

Alternative internet technologies--satellite dish or fixed wireless, which uses cellular networks to beam data short distances using antennas and transmitters--struggle to handle video streaming or other high-data uses. Those services also typically cap the amount of data used each month.

The 25-bed Washington County Memorial Hospital, which has service of 10 Mbps, loses internet connections often enough that ambulance drivers are told to divert critical patients, ....

The city clerk in Irondale, who is connected to the internet through existing copper lines, can't attach financial reports to email because it is so slow.


...Some lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration to include rural broadband in an anticipated $1 trillion infrastructure package. The White House hasn't said how any such projects might be funded.
"Rural broadband, we need that quite honestly more than we need roads and bridges in many of the counties I represent," U.S. Rep. Austin Scott (R., Ga.) said at a May 17 House committee hearing on the rural economy.

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said broadband connectivity should be seen as the "roads, sewers and water" of the modern age. "The good news is, this is square on the radar scope of the president." he said at the hearing.

Mr. Pai, President Donald Trump's FCC chairman, said rural broadband should be included in the expected infrastructure package. ..

Missouri broadband providers received $261 million of the stimulus money. "The intent was to spread accessibility throughout the state," said Luke Holtschneider, the state's Rural Development Manager. "But that program did not on its own continue to expand in the community like you would hope."
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"I just want to know what happened to all the money and grant and things," said Ms. Johnson, the sheep farmer. "We didn't see any benefits."

Self-serve systems
Some rural communities have successfully done the job themselves.
In central Missouri, Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, Inc., a not-for-profit, customer-owned co-op formed in 1939 to deliver electricity, started a fiber-optic network that has built connections to 25,000 members in a region more sparsely populated than Washington County. So far, it has 15,000 subscribers, including non-members in neighboring communities..

While some rural communities have built their own systems, laws in at least 19 states restrict such efforts, generally on the grounds they pose a threat to private companies. A GOP-sponsored bill that set up obstacles to similar broadband efforts stalled this spring in the Missouri legislature.
Every other Thursday, Dr. Stuart Higano, a cardiologist from Missouri Baptist Medical Center in St. Louis, visits the family practice office of Gregory Terpstra in Potosi, Mo., to see patients.
The office has internet service at 10 Mbps from CenturyLink Inc., too slow for Dr. Higano to efficiently connect with the database at his hospital to access patient records or view heart images. "Everything in medicine now is electronic medical records," he said.
Dr. Terpstra, age 69, now has a copper line that connects his office to the fiber-optic cable that runs through town. To get a faster and more reliable connection, CenturyLink said it would have to install 1,000 feet of fiber-optic line to his office and charge the higher monthly fee.
Earlier this year, Dr. Terpstra, dressed in a bow tie and white coat, said he got a quote for fiber-optic service that ranged from $563 a month for 20 Mbps to $1,190 a month for 200 Mbps.
"Does that sound like a good deal?" he said.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com and Valerie Bauerlein at valerie.bauerlein@wsj.com
Credit: By Jennifer Levitz and Valerie Bauerlein | Photographs by Nick Schnelle for The Wall Street Journal

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