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.
..........
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.
..............
"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.
........
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, l
oses 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 p
rogram did not on its own continue to expand in the community like you would hope."
......
"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
