Broadband access takes center stage at congressional hearing
GREENPORT — Education, small businesses and health care.
These are the aspects of life that are so drastically impacted by the lack of broadband access in rural communities, witnesses highlighted at a congressional hearing Friday hosted by U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-19, who was joined by Commissioner Geoffrey Starks from the Federal Communications Commission, the agency responsible for broadband.
Business owners, educators, health care providers and broadband providers all testified at the hearing, held at Columbia-Greene Community College.
“There is no service in this auditorium,” Delgado said at the start of the hearing, met with a chuckle from the audience. “This, unfortunately, is not an exception.”
Delgado shared anecdotes about small businesses whose simple payment transactions consistently fail because their internet goes down 100 times a day, and students who have to sit in the McDonald’s parking lot to download and complete their homework assignments.
An obstacle to effectively accessing broadband has been problems with its mapping, Starks said.
According to the New York State Broadband Program Office, 98% of New Yorkers have access to broadband. However, the number is known to be an extreme overestimate because of mapping flaws. If one home within a census block has access to broadband services, the entire block is marked as served, according to the office.
Broadband providers at the hearing said they face extreme obstacles trying to build fiber optics in rural communities, predominantly because of population density.
“When you look at the cost of fiber-optic installation in a green field, we are talking about upwards of $40,000 per mile,” said David Berman, co-chairman of Columbia Connect. In rural communities, “homes will have to be contracted for 35-40 years before you’ll ever make money.”
The negative effects are far-reaching.
“Technology is a great tool for progress and change,” said Brian Dunn, superintendent of the Middleburgh Central School District in Schoharie County.
With access to technology, not only would teachers and administrators be better trained for the jobs, but diversity and inclusion could be better incorporated in students’ educational experiences through distance learning with more diverse, urban school districts.
Cliff Belden, Columbia Memorial Health’s chief medical officer, highlighted how much telemedicine can alleviate the health care despair within rural communities, as well.
“Twenty-five percent of the U.S. population lives in rural counties, but only 10 percent of physicians are in those areas — creating a significant mismatch between service needs and providers,” Belden said.
That discrepancy deepens among providers such as OBGYNs and child psychiatrists. But through telemedicine, which incorporates remote patient visits and remote telemonitoring, mortality, quality of life, treatment costs and readmission rates all improve, he added.
The opioid crisis can also be alleviated through telemedicine, Belden said, with psychology and psychiatry services being readily available to those suffering from addiction in rural areas.
The growth of small businesses, which Delgado described as the backbone of the upstate economy, heavily relies on broadband as well. Those with access to broadband can generate double the revenue, experience four times the growth and create three times more jobs than those without, Delgado cited.
“Connecting communities in rural upstate is of critical importance to me,” Delgado said, adding that broadband providers “need real, robust, targeted funding so billions of dollars of infrastructure incentives can reach the towns and communities that need them the most.”
“Closing the digital divide should be a top priority for members of Congress,” he concluded. “It certainly is one of mine.”