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Rural broadband access still spottyMonday, May 21, 2007In Southeast Missouri and rural areas across the United States, many people have been left behind in the advance to high speed Internet access across the nation. Rural areas and communities without broadband find it hard to attract business and middle- to upper-class workers who telecommute. But the scope of the problem is difficult to measure with the current system in place to track where broadband access is and is not available.
That program recently came under fire from members of Congress, including U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., after it was found that the program was giving loans to companies to install broadband networks in communities that weren't rural. The USDA implemented new rules last week to address the problem. The difficulty in tracking who has broadband and who doesn't lies with the reporting system. The FCC asks broadband providers to report which area codes in which they serve at least one customer. A ZIP code that has three providers giving service to one customer each would show in the FCC data that three companies serve the area, even if they only serve a few homes. In those areas that don't, attracting new people with good incomes becomes difficult, said Scott Lindsay, president of the Rural Broadband Coalition, a not-for-profit group that advocates for increased access in rural areas. "People do locate specifically because they have broadband access," said Lindsay, who adds that the availability of Internet access is a common question potential homebuyers ask realtors. Many small towns and rural areas are left behind because they lack the capital to make infrastructure improvements to install high-speed data lines and companies often don't want to invest in the technology in low-population areas, Lindsay said. Broadband Internet access is commonplace in most incorporated areas of Southeast Missouri and may become more commonplace after AT&T recently announced plans to expand its broadband service to more areas across the state at a cost of $335 million. Nine companies provide service in Cape Girardeau and Perryville, eight in Jackson, seven in Scott City and six in Marble Hill, according to the FCC. But many unincorporated towns and rural areas are without service, or customers have very few options. Daisy in Cape Girardeau County, Gipsy in Bollinger County and McGee in Wayne County are three Southeast Missouri towns the FCC lists as having no high-speed ISPs. In some Southeast Missouri communities -- Jackson, Poplar Bluff, Qulin, Fisk, Dudley, Puxico, among others -- companies have applications for USDA broadband loans approved, and others -- Advance, Bell City, East Prairie, Whitewater, Glenallen, Sedgewickville, among others -- have loan applications pending. Scott County Developer Joel Evans felt the effects of the broadband deficit in rural areas when he moved to Southeast Missouri. Evans' wife works in sales, and her job requires that she have broadband access. Evans said the couple wanted to build a home in rural Scott County, but the areas where they wanted to build had no access. "Instead, we bought a home in Sikeston," Evans said. Evans said he hasn't mapped where coverage is available, but many unincorporated areas of the county that aren't near main transportation routes are without service, he said. In his position as the county's chief economic development officer, Evans said the problem is one that concerns him, so he tries to keep track of companies' plans to install high-speed access in areas of Scott County. "It's beginning to be a problem in rural areas, and I think will be a more of a problem in the future," Evans said. 335-6611, extension 182 Comments  Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. If you feel that a comment is offensive, please Login or Create an account first, and then you will be able to flag a comment as objectionable. Please also note that those who post comments on semissourian.com may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
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The city of Marble may have broadband but does the outlying comuunity. We live 3 miles out of town and as far as I know we still cannot get broadband other than satillite. Can anyone out there correct me?
A good coverage map would be very valuable. As somebody who has been looking at buying property broadband access is at the top of the list of dealbreakers. It would be great to have a way of quickly figuring what carriers serve a particular address so one can avoid wasting any time looking at houses that are out of range for cable or DSL.
By using only ZIP codes, those of us who live "just out of the city limits" are not even on the radar for high-speed internet. I live less than a mile from Cape's city limits but our area is not even in the near future plans to receive DSL. I learned this recently after contacting the phone company to find out about their plans. No, I don't want Charter. I replaced my cable with satellite and will NEVER return to cable! Yes, I can buy another dish to put on my house and receive high speed internet, but the initial cost outlay is high and so is the monthly service. I want AT&T to provide DSL service to the rest of us. I am sure they have enough money to build the systems and would make plenty of money back from the revenues they would get from us "rural areas."
Don't even consider satellite internet as an option. I've known a couple dozen people who have had it at one point or another & none thought it was worthwhile. It's even slower for general web browsing than a 56k modem because of the horrible latency (every single time you click a link it has to beam a signal up from earth and back... which makes everything lag several seconds behind). While you do get faster download speeds for the big files they also have pretty low monthly caps if you actually decide to use it (i.e. unlimited = cut off after 5 GB downloaded or so). Overall it's just more expensive and not at all comparable to a true DSL or cable broadband connection.
A city of Marble sounds like a beautiful place to live.
I would say rural broadband is less than spotty. I live about 5 miles from Delta which does have cable but not only is there no broadband but our local telephone calling area is Chaffee and Delta, every town in our area including Advance and Cape is a long distance call. We can get broadband if we pay an outrageous up-front cost of about $300 for equipment and then $50 a month and that also will usually consist of a 2 year contract. I would love for AT&T to come to our area. There are several in our area who are trying to work from their homes and would just be thrilled to have broadband at a reasonable cost.What is it going to take to get someone to take an active interest in our rural area.We would really appreciate a good service at a reasonable price to come to our area.
Nil you are so right on point. A good broadband coverage map similar to what the Connect Kentucky program developed would help to idenitfy the specific communities where additional efforts are required to stimulate broadband investment and penetration.
Check out CWA's Speed Matters Campaign at http://www.speedmatters.org and read their white paper which details some successful public/private partnerships which have increased broadband service in underserved areas. While you're at it take the speed test.
We really need high-speed Internet out here. It's not fair that just because we don't live in the cities or incorporated towns that we cannot have broadband. I live on the outskirts of Leopold and we only get dial-up. I had satellite for a while but it was too expensive and always messed up when the weather was bad; the costs definitely outweighed the benefits and it was not worth it. Marble Hill and Advance both have DSL, yet for the unincorporated places between these two places (like where I live), we only get dial-up. It's really not fair. The companies need to expand service to more of these rural areas. High-speed Internet is a necessity these days.