Localism

Today there are nearly 900 rural co-ops still providing their communities with electricity. A DIY success story! Now history repeats itself—with broadband. Thirty-nine percent of rural Americans had no access to home broadband in 2016 (compared with 4 percent of folks in urban areas), because big telcos say it’s too expensive to build affordable fiber-optic broadband in the countryside. Residents have to make do with dialup or Wi-Fi from a library. So co-ops are solving the problem again.

No matter who you voted for or what party you belong to, I think we can agree on one thing - access to high-speed broadband is one of the most important issues in the US today. In Congressional race after Congressional race, in Maine, Vermont, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico, just to name a few, voters said that broadband access was a top three issue, sometimes coming after health care and jobs, and other times, like in Vermont, coming in as the number one concern for voters.

More than 10.7 million low-income households in the United States lack access to quality internet service. In cities like San Jose (CA), local governments are using streetlight poles to facilitate equitable access to high-speed internet to dramatically improve educational outcomes for low-income students and expand economic opportunity for their families.

The Federal Communications Commission's Brendan Carr is taking off the gloves in a fight with San Jose (CA) Mayor Sam Liccardo. “We must do better than Mayor Liccardo’s failed broadband policies,” Commissioner Carr wrote on Twitter  in response to a Liccardo op-ed. “Under his 3+ year leadership, San Jose approved zero small cells-ZERO-depriving residents of broadband options.

Many rural communities in Maine have been waiting decades for the major internet service providers to bring broadband service to their areas, a situation exacerbated by the state having the second slowest internet speeds in the country. The lack of broadband is a deterrent to would-be residents and businesses, and it thwarts local efforts at economic development. It also deprives existing residents of opportunities for entertainment, education, employment, and digital health services.

When EPB, Chattanooga's municipal power utility, launched its Internet, video, and phone services nearly a decade ago in conjunction with its efforts to build a smarter electric grid, the city-owned utility projected it should attract more than 30,000 customers of its telecom services within five years to cover its costs and break even.

For 5G, rather than relying on the huge cellular towers that already loom over industrial parks and shopping centers, carriers are counting on "small cell" antennas placed only hundreds of feet apart. About the size of a backpack, a small cell is typically installed atop an existing utility pole or streetlight, sometimes with other equipment closer to the ground. The small antennas are less powerful than cell towers, covering an area of up to 1,000 feet rather than a few miles. So carriers need more of them to blanket a neighborhood.

For residents in thousands of communities across the country – inner-city neighborhoods, affluent suburbs and rural towns– local newspapers have been the prime, if not sole, source of credible and comprehensive news and information that can affect the quality of their everyday lives. Yet, in the past decade and a half, nearly one in five newspapers has disappeared, and countless others have become shells – or “ghosts” – of themselves. Our research found a net loss since 2004 of almost 1,800 local newspapers.

The whole multitrillion dollar promise of 5G — millions of jobs and new businesses — is just a pipe dream without infrastructure. Unlike 4G, which can be delivered through a relatively small number of tall towers, 5G wireless service relies on lots and lots of small receivers placed fairly close together. And installing all those little 5G cells is turning into a big fight. Pete Holmes is Seattle's city attorney.