While larger cities like Virginia Beach and Richmond have enjoyed broadband service for years, residents in the western half of the state often are not so lucky. The region is home to some serious broadband black holes, where residents have no access to Internet service beyond dial-up, satellite, or borrowing a friend’s expensive DSL connection in town.

Like West Virginia to the northwest, much of this part of the state suffers with very low speed DSL, occasional wireless Internet, and a handful of cable companies trying to provide access. In addition to the rural character of the region, landline networks have deteriorated over the years and large phone companies have focused their efforts on network improvements further east.

Now a series of government-funded broadband expansion projects, regional and local broadband and telephone co-ops, and local providers are working together to expand modern broadband into areas that have never had access before.

The Virginia Tech Foundation and the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative are now working to expand a fiber broadband middle-mile network from Bedford to Blacksburg — the areas surrounding Roanoke that have suffered with difficult Internet access for years.

Among the first clients is PemTel, a telephone cooperative in Pembroke. PemTel still speaks of DSL as a “new technology” in the area, and has speeds that reflect that:

PemTel started with an original plan offering just 256kbps — speed that does not even qualify as “broadband.” But increasing capacity is opening the door for Pembroke residents to get speeds that can at least manage today’s web pages. Customers are also glad to see the back of satellite “broadband” which severely limited usage.

With fiber middle mile networks now stringing through southern Virginia, local providers can access backbone capacity at lower prices, which can, in turn, deliver substantial broadband capacity to new high tech businesses setting up in the area.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDBJ Roanoke Fiber Through New River Valley 6-11-12.mp4[/flv]

The New River Valley in Virginia is building a multi-county fiber network to act like an interstate highway system for broadband.  WDBJ reports. (2 minutes)

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSLS Roanoke Bedford to Blacksburg gets hi-speed internet boost 6-12-12.flv[/flv]

WSLS in Roanoke explores a new fiber network going in from Blacksburg to Bedford, Va., and what it could mean for broadband-deprived residents.  (2 minutes)

Did you know privately-run cable companies can get public tax subsidies, grants, and even loans at favorable interest rates? When opponents of community broadband complain government-funded broadband competes against the private sector, the hidden truth is many “private sector” companies also enjoy benefits at the public’s expense.

Cablevision is the latest example, reports the Star-Ledger. When the company noted its lease for a call center in Newark was set to expire in two years, the Economic Development Authority responded, approving a $37.5 million Urban Transit Hub tax credit for the private cable company.

“Cablevision has a long-standing and important relationship with the state of New Jersey and the city of Newark, and a commitment to local hiring, local jobs and supporting the local economy,” said Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella. “We are pleased to be investing in a new state-of-the-art call center, larger than our existing facility, closer to mass transit and modernized for our more than 500 Newark employees.”

New Jersey is currently mired in a major budget battle, trying to find enough revenue to sustain a general tax cut for New Jersey residents.

They're not so great at broadband mapping, but they are excellent at connecting the political dots to get their contract renewed.

The telecommunications industry-dominated Connected Nation, a group created to spur industry-friendly broadband expansion, is at the center of a scandal that cost taxpayers nearly $4 million to produce a broadband availability map critics contend is error-ridden and incomplete.

The non-profit Kentucky company, which historically has close ties to some of the nation’s largest phone companies, has learned how to play political games to win lucrative contracts while producing less-than-useful results, according to a new investigation by the Miami Herald.

When Florida’s Department of Management Services (DMS) decided Connected Nation’s performance in the state was lacking, it decided to let the state’s contract with the group expire and seek other bidders.

That is a remarkable turnaround for an agency that three years earlier took bids from the group’s state chapter — Connect Florida, who estimated the cost of mapping broadband in the state at around $7.1 million.  Another bidder, ISC of Tallahassee was a real bargain, offering to do the project for $2.8 million.  Connected Nation won. So much for awarding contracts to the lowest bidder.

It turned out the judges scoring the two groups were split, until a former BellSouth (AT&T) executive serving as a judge on the panel put his thumb on the scale, awarding an astounding 51 points to Connected Nation, itself shown to have past ties to AT&T.  The other judges scored no more than 15 points in either direction.

Undercut Connected Nation's bid by millions but still lost.

ISC, a homegrown Florida business, was stunned. Managing Partner Edwin Lott told Public Knowledge in 2009:

“Florida’s small businesses are working harder than ever to survive in this challenging economy. ISC, like other small businesses around the country, have had our hopes raised with Congress’s efforts to stimulate the economy with the Reinvestment Act and other initiatives. It originally appeared these initiatives were going to provide regional funding to sustain and promote jobs in the communities served by local and state governments.

“Our raised hopes were dashed as Connected Nation appeared to use its ‘connections’ in Florida to ensure its success in what was supposed to be a competitive procurement.”

DMS officials have apparently learned their lesson (at taxpayer expense), but Connected Nation isn’t going quietly. The non-profit group unleashed a high-powered lobbying campaign directed at the state legislature in Tallahassee to get its contract renewed to continue mapping Florida’s broadband future.

Williams

It worked, but only after the group’s critics at DMS were effectively bypassed. The legislature approved and Florida governor Rick Scott signed legislation that transferred broadband mapping away from the agency altogether, launching a new one — the Department of Economic Opportunity, to handle broadband matters effective July 1.

At least this time, taxpayers will have to pay less. Connected Nation’s latest bid was half of its original price, undercutting other bidders.

Rep. Alan Williams, a Tallahassee Democrat told the Herald price does not matter as much as political connections in the state legislature.

“Is this a favor to Connected Nation and a lobbyist or is this really good government?’’ Williams asked. “Is this really being accountable and efficient to the state of Florida the way the governor wants to be?”

Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) told the newspaper Florida state government is rife with insider influence peddling, and that appears to be the case with Connected Nation’s contract.

The group’s potent lobbying team included Lanny Wiles, the husband of the governor’s campaign manager; Al Cardenas, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and head of the Conservative Political Action Committee; and Slater Bayliss, a one-time aide to former Gov. Jeb Bush.

No broadband for you...

Sometimes even money doesn’t talk… or buy you faster broadband service.

That is a lesson some of New Hampshire’s wealthiest residents — company presidents, top-dollar lawyers, and the trust-fund endowed — in Rindge and Grafton County are learning only too well.

It seems neither Comcast or FairPoint Communications has shown much interest in extending today’s definition of “broadband” to the multi-million dollar homes on Hubbard Road.

“Every year, I start working up the telephone chain, calling people at Comcast. I’m looking for the vice president, or whatever, in charge of infrastructure so I can call him, bribe him, plead with him to connect me,” said Leigh Eichel, who moved to the ritzy cul-de-sac in 2005. “I’ll pay anything!”

Eichel and his friends told their story to David Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph, who used the plight of the 1%’ers to ponder whether broadband should be a universal right.

A century ago, the government decided that mail service to all American homes was necessary and launched Rural Free Delivery. Then it decided electricity was necessary and created regulated utilities that guaranteed connection. It did the same with telephones, creating the universal access fund that collects money from all phone bills to subsidize land lines to the remotest home.

But nothing similar has happened with Internet service, which is mostly unregulated by government. The market has been largely left to its own.

The result is scattered empty spots like Hubbard Road, which should be broadband heaven.

... or you.

Comcast continues, for the seventh year running, to show zero interest in wiring the wealthy enclave.  That left residents trying to make do with satellite broadband, which they cried was too slow and usage-capped.

Eichel finally managed to cajole FairPoint Communications, the bankrupt phone company that bought out Verizon landlines in northern New England, to extend DSL to the neighborhood, but they did it on-the-cheap, leaving residents with sub-par service barely capable of breaking 1Mbps, when they’re lucky.

Welcome to broadband equality of a different kind, whether you are fighting AT&T from a family farm in Wisconsin for better-than-1Mbps DSL or a super-wealthy executive in New Hampshire suffering with FairPoint’s alleged broadband and utterly rejected by Comcast.

Particularly appalling for the well-traveled Hubbard Road residents: the realization that Singapore’s equivalent of a seedy Motel 6 has basic broadband service that beats the pants off New England’s dominant phone company.

Even Money Won't Talk

“I was staying in a budget hotel; there weren’t even windows in the room. Hey, I was spending my own money,” Eichel’s neighbor Rick Slocum told the newspaper. “[They had] 12Mbps broadband — the connection [was] 10 times as fast as my home.”

Brooks concludes New England wants the same thing most of the rest of the country wants — universal fiber-to-the-home access, which delivers 100-1000Mbps, depending on the provider.

They, like most everyone else, will have to wait.  Like AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS, FairPoint’s very-limited fiber offering FAST has reached a limit of its own — the amount the phone company is willing to spend rebuilding their network.  Future expansion plans are now on hold.

Slocum ponders the speed needs America will have in the future, and wonders if even fiber optics will one day need to be replaced for something even faster.

Brooks responds with a prediction.  As long as Comcast and FairPoint are in charge, whatever it is, Hubbard Road probably won’t have it.

This influential documentary explores the rural cooperative movement for electricity in the 1930s.

In 1935, just 5-10 percent of America’s family farms were wired for electricity.  The cities: lighted.  The rest of the country: in the dark.  It was the same old story then as it is today for rural broadband:

• There are two few customers for us to make a profit by bringing you service;
• The return on investment will take too long;
• You won’t use enough service to justify the expense of providing it;
• Okay, we’ll install service, if you pay thousands of dollars to cover the cost to bring it you.

Private providers delivered electricity to big cities, but found the countryside not worthy of their time or investment.  Then, as now, rural America’s economy suffered for it.  Back in 1935, family farms coped with wood-fired stoves, school homework by kerosene lamp, discarding fresh farm products that could not be kept cool, no running water, no radio, and no appliances to make an already difficult life a bit easier to manage.  In 2012, an increasing amount of the rural economy is moving online, where raw materials and goods are bought and sold, where knowledge-based jobs require a dedicated broadband connection, and education means completing homework assignments and doing research on the Internet.

Same old problems cast in a different light to be sure, but borrowing from America’s past may put a down payment on our broadband future.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had heard all of the excuses and seen private electric companies try to showcase their minor efforts to improve power in rural America. A series of small scale projects that looked good in the newspaper could not hide the more general attitude it was unprofitable to provide the service to family farms.  In 1935, Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing the Rural Electrification Administration (REA).  Although FDR’s contemporary critics like to consider him a socialist that interfered in the private economy, in fact Roosevelt’s REA spent the majority of its effort in areas commercial providers wouldn’t touch with a 25-foot power pole.

The idea was simple.  Rural American communities with limited or no electric service could reach out to the REA to obtain low interest loans to finance the infrastructure to construct rural electric service.  When loans were approved, a cooperative electric company was established, with each “customer” being a member and part-owner of the co-op.  Income earned from ratepayers would pay for the service and pay back the government loans.  When the federal government was paid in full, the cooperative owned the new utility company outright.

In practice, this was the only way rural Americans, especially farmers, could obtain electric service.  These cooperatives often found they could deliver the same service a private company could, and for much less money. Co-ops work for the benefit of their members, not for outside investors.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Power and the Land.flv[/flv]

In 1940, the federal government commissioned ‘Power and the Land’ through the United States Film Service.  This one film, showing life for a farm family in southeastern Ohio before and after electrification, helped drive the rural electrification movement forward in areas yet to be wired for service.  The first 17 minutes chronicles life on the powerless farm, while the second half explores the REA electrification program and the changes electricity brought to farming life. (38 minutes)

Belmont County, Ohio shows the legacy of the REA. Diagonal line-shaded sections illustrate the service areas of the original power co-op noted in the film 'Power and the Land.' The yellow shaded areas are served by Ohio Power, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, Inc., a commercial company.

The film’s impact was profound (the Village Voice called it “a little masterpiece”), and more than four million farmers were estimated to have seen it.  Eventually, more than 500 miles of electric lines were being strung by America’s co-ops every single day.  Additional documentaries about the film were made decades later, narrated by Walter Cronkite, to chronicle the cooperative electricity movement, the original film, and what happened to the family.

Private providers were, of course, horrified by the REA and other Roosevelt Administration public works projects.  Private companies railed they were being undermined by low interest government loans, government involvement, and fear new regulations would threaten their profitable business models.  Some of Roosevelt’s fiercest critics called the administration’s zeal for public-good spending anti-capitalist and anti-American.  For Roosevelt, it was often simply a matter of finding the fastest solution to a pervasive problem private companies seemed uninterested and unwilling to solve.

The legacy of the REA remains plainly visible today.  In Ohio, what started as the Belmont Power Cooperative is today part of the South Central Power Company, itself a co-op within the Touchstone Energy Cooperative.  Belmont County, Ohio’s power grid still reflects the work of the REA in the 1930s, with the county divided into regions served by the original REA co-op and Ohio Power.

While South Central Power hasn’t gotten into the broadband business, several other rural co-ops have, expanding their focus towards fiber to deliver cable TV, Internet, and phone service.

If the concept of the REA was adopted for broadband, the formula for success can remain the same.  Low interest loans to finance fiber telecommunications networks provide limitless expansion possibilities and a clear path to solving rural America’s broadband inferiority problem.  Interest rates have never been lower, and by gradually repaying the loans from income earned from subscribers, taxpayer dollars are not at risk.  The federal government’s only real involvement in guaranteeing loans and providing oversight that the money is spent appropriately.  The co-ops that result will govern themselves by and for their members.

Some will say electricity is more important than broadband, and for some families that may be as true as similar arguments were for and against REA electricity in the 1920s and 30s.  But take a week off from your broadband service.  Disconnect it, don’t read e-mail or visit websites, and then re-evaluate that statement.

More and more, broadband has become a firmly established part of our lives at work, school, and home. If private companies won’t step up, let others organize to provide it.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/North Carolina Farmers Utilizing the Internet America’s Heartland.flv[/flv]

Fast forward to December 2011, and watch how rural Rutherford County, N.C. farmers are adapting to the new digital economy with the use of broadband.  They are selling their crops online to eager restaurants, markets, and other buyers up to 70 miles away.  No broadband?  No deal.  (5 minutes)