[1st-mile-nm] Doing it right Wiring America as Connect Nation

[peter]

  Wiring rural America

Sep 13th 2007 | BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY
 From /The Economist/ print edition


    A public-private partnership success 


    *http://www.connectednation.com/index.php*

FROM her remote farm in southern Kentucky, Lajuana Wilcher checks an 
online database for local ranchers demanding alfalfa. She can specify at 
what price she is willing to sell, which counties to search and whether 
her hay is square-baled or rolled. Without her high-speed internet 
connection, Ms Wilcher insists, it would take far too long to find the 
most generous alfalfa prices, order spare tractor parts and locate the 
best breeding stock for her small cattle operation.

Largely rural, Kentucky is best known for its bourbon and horse racing; 
it rarely ranks in the top tier of states on any measure of 21st-century 
success. According to Brian Mefford, president of ConnectKentucky 
<http://www.connectkentucky.org/>, a public-private partnership, a few 
years ago the state had among the lowest rates of broadband availability 
in the country. Internet service providers could not be sure that there 
were enough Lajuana Wilchers in the Kentucky countryside to justify new 
investment in cabling or wireless transmitters.

    But by the end of this year, Mr Mefford boasts, 98% of residents
    will have access to inexpensive broadband services. This is
    primarily because of ConnectKentucky's effort to map broadband
    demand in communities that didn't have access, he says, which
    indicated that enough people in Kentucky farm country would sign up
    if providers entered the market. At the same time, the organisation
    also talked up high-speed internet services to sceptical residents,
    creating demand where it was slack. Once isolated Kentuckians can
    now consult with doctors in faraway cities or telecommute. 

ConnectKentucky is just one effort among many programmes in different 
states and within the federal government to wire up the American 
countryside. Backers compare them to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal push 
to bring electricity to the hinterland. Supporters also hope expanded 
rural broadband access will stop the steady loss of population to cities 
and suburbs. But not all have been as successful as Kentucky's.

In 2004 President George Bush set a goal to provide every American with 
access to broadband by this year. The federal Agriculture Department has 
distributed over a billion dollars in grants and cut-rate loans to 
high-speed internet providers interested in rural markets. But by Mr 
Bush's yardstick, the effort has been a failure. Swathes of the country 
still lack broadband access, though it is hard to tell how far they 
extend. Admittedly, wiring up the West, with its greater distances and 
thinner population densities, is tougher than wiring up Kentucky.

Part of the problem has been the poor design of federal loan and grant 
schemes by Congress. A loose definition of "rural area", for example, 
let an internet provider get federal funding to wire up a Houston suburb 
where million-dollar homes were under construction. Lawmakers in 
Washington, DC hope to reform the process. But there are other serious 
deficiencies in the federal system. Ensconcing large broadband loan and 
grant programmes in the Agriculture Department threatens to drain 
federal money for decades into parts of the country that already get 
other hefty---and often similarly mismanaged---federal farm and 
development subsidies. The comparison to Roosevelt's rural 
electrification efforts is apt: 70 years on, the Agriculture Department 
is still financing rural power companies long after electricity came to 
the American countryside.

Meanwhile, ConnectKentucky might beat Mr Bush to fulfilling his own 
goal. The group is morphing into a company called Connected Nation, and 
is helping to wire up the neighbouring states of West Virginia and 
Tennessee.

-- 

Peter Baston

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