Tag: Broadband

CenturyLink, a telecommunications company that services much of the state, says the company will make urban areas, not rural, the focus of future broadband development in America, including Idaho, according to the company’s chief financial officer.

The company will focus its resources on improving speed in areas with the greatest population density, Sunit Patel, CFO of CenturyLink, told investors during the Citi 2018 Global TMT West Conference on January 9, according to FierceTelecom.

“Instead of focusing capital on getting broadband speeds up to 10-20 Mbps, you would focus your money more surgically on areas that have higher population densities and better socioeconomic demographics that are in coexistence with businesses and where wireless infrastructure might be needed to get a better return on capital,” Patel said, according to FierceTelecom, which covers telecommunications news. “You would focus your capital on providing much higher broadband speeds than just offering 10-20 Mbps.”

Last in the nation

That’s great for those regions, but not necessarily great for Idaho, which has perennially lagged behind other states in price, accessibility, and speed of broadband internet. “According to content delivery network Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report from Q1 2017, Idaho has the slowest broadband connection speeds in the nation with an average of 12.0 Mbps,” said Dylan Baker, broadband consultant for the Idaho Commission for Libraries, who helps Idaho libraries get broadband internet for patrons. “That is far less than the average speed across the country of 18.7 Mbps and less than half that of the fastest state of Delaware with an average speed of 25.2 Mbps.” And it’s particularly bad in rural areas, he said. “Outside of the larger cities, most of rural Idaho has very little access to decent broadband,” he said. “Distance and mountainous terrain are significant obstacles to providing broadband access throughout our state.”

That makes it harder for Idaho to participate in the information economy. “If we believe information is the next economy, how will Idaho meaningfully participate when we’re ranked 50^th in broadband connectivity in the whole country?” asked Bruce Patterson, technology director of the city of Ammon, which is rolling out its own gigabit internet service (see box). Whenever such rankings are done, “we always fall in the bottom 10 percent,” he said.

It isn’t even clear just how much of Idaho is served by broadband internet. The most recent state map dates from 2014, though work is underway to update the information. (See box.) CenturyLink wouldn’t say to how much of Idaho it provides with broadband service, calling it competitive information, but according to the consumer website highinternetspeed.com, CenturyLink has the capability of providing broadband service to 54.2 percent of Idaho.

Feds are here to help

That’s not to say that CenturyLink is telling rural Idaho to drop dead. CenturyLink will expand in areas such as rural Idaho when there is federal money to do so, Patel told the group. “We understand the importance of broadband connectivity and will continue to invest in bringing high-speed internet services to rural households and businesses in Idaho. We are in the process of bringing improved broadband speeds to more than 12,000 households and businesses in high-cost areas of Idaho through CenturyLink’s participation in the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect America Fund II program,” said CenturyLink spokesman Mark Molzen. (“High cost” is a federal funding term for more expensive internet in rural areas, as opposed to the less expensive services available in urban areas.)

The company received more than $500 million through the FCC program in 2015 to upgrade internet services in 27 Idaho counties, ranging from $1.2 million and 1,940 locations in Idaho County to $77 for one location in Fremont County.  “We have completed broadband upgrades to more than 1,500 homes and businesses, including locations in Kamiah, Lava Hot Springs, Montpelier and New Plymouth,” Molzen said. “We are on schedule to have 60 percent of the company’s overall CAF builds completed by the end of 2018 as required by the FCC.” Other companies, such as Frontier Communications, are also using the CAF program to expand broadband internet in rural Idaho.

In addition, when a library or a school in a community is connected to high-quality broadband, the provider can often make that service more affordably available to businesses and residences throughout the community, because the initial investment in infrastructure has already been made, Baker said. “Without an initial investment of infrastructure to bring broadband into a rural community, there aren’t many other options for rural Idahoans,” he said. Also, as cellular providers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon expand their coverage areas, people may be able to use tethering on their cell phones to provide broadband internet service, Patterson said.

Broadband internet funding programs for rural areas are also provided through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For example, since 2002, Idaho has been granted $11 million through the Community Connect Award, said Joe Bradley, general field representative, rural development, for the rural utilities service telecommunications program. In the past few years, however, Idaho hasn’t gotten any funding from that program, because it applies only to regions with no broadband internet whatsoever.

And even the USDA programs won’t necessarily reach every Idahoan. “Will it reach everybody? Will it reach four people in the middle of nowhere for $3 million? It’s not going to happen,” said Layne Bangerter, state director for rural development, whose house in Melba has to use a combination of satellite internet and data service through Verizon cell service. “The bottom line is we definitely have some gaps.”

Future hazy, try again later

It isn’t clear, though, how much federal investment may be available in the future. While President Donald Trump signed two presidential orders on Jan. 8 intended to improve rural broadband access by making it easier to build infrastructure on federal lands, critics pointed out that the budget he proposed in spring 2017 eliminated the $10 million Rural Utilities Service broadband grants program. “That does far more damage than any of the good his orders would present,” said Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a 44-year-old Minneapolis nonprofit focused on community development policies. In addition, the CAF program ends in 2020, and nothing is yet slated to take its place, according to Mark Wigfield, deputy director of the FCC’s office of media relations.

On the USDA side, the availability of funding will be part of the farm bill; it expires later this year and a new one has not yet been drafted, Bangerter said. However, both President Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue have vowed to improve broadband internet access in rural America, he said. When he met Perdue and Anne Hazlett, who heads the rural development agencies, “the first thing they said was, “How’s broadband in Idaho?’” he said, “I’m part of that, so kids don’t have to do their homework at McDonald’s (where there’s Wi-Fi),” he said. “I want to make them have every advantage they possibly can. I’m not going to say everyone will get covered, but we’re going to improve it.”

“I don’t think it is a problem because I believe the federal government ultimately will be putting money into the rural telecommunications infrastructure,” agreed Gens Johnson, a rural telecommunications consultant who has worked on broadband internet grants in rural Idaho for more than a decade. In areas where providers like CenturyLink have declined because there is no business model, “that would be a classic case of ‘market failure’ and it’s an appropriate place for government activity,” she said.

In October, CenturyLink also requested permission from the FCC to experiment with fixed broadband wireless in the 3.4-3.7 GHz band, which could provide the next generation of telecommunications service. Fixed broadband uses a transmitter and a receiver on a home or business, rather than cabling, which makes it more suitable for rural areas. The company didn’t say in its FCC filing where or when it planned to offer the service.

“It is incredibly important for rural Idaho to have access and that we work with all stakeholders, including cities, and both existing and new utilities, to increase this access,” said Lt. Gov. Brad Little. “I come from rural Idaho, where we have seen technology change our traditional industries and provide previously unimagined economic opportunities. Broadband is at the core of  efforts to grow and diversify rural communities across Idaho, creating greater opportunities for residents and leveraging their strength as a great place to live and raise a family.”