Board discusses broadband service

The road to the future hangs along wooden poles next to highways, paved with miles and miles of cable wires connecting literally everything. Broadband internet access has emerged as an expected service in the daily lives of businesses and individuals and is the great cultural and technological force of our time. While it seems everyone and everything is speeding up, though, rural areas suffer in the great megabyte race by the very nature that defines them. In counties like Orange, broadband access can be few and far between, especially for businesses, but county officials hope participation in a new statewide speed test might raise awareness of the state of the county’s wires.

Broadband access in Orange County is currently confined largely to towns of Orange and Gordonsville and the densely populated neighborhoods in the county’s eastern end, said county information technology manager Larry Clement, and that reality appears unlikely to change in the near future.

“Orange County has a very limited amount of quality broadband service, mainly centered towards the towns,” said Clement. “The problem is carriers want a certain density level [to justify installing fiber.] They want to be able to get a return on their investment in infrastructure. Miles of cable and labor are expensive. It’s not cost-beneficial for them to install five miles of cable to hook up five customers.”

During a board of supervisors’ discussion on broadband in a recent meeting, District 1 Supervisor Shannon Abbs stated that access to high-speed internet was well beyond luxury in today’s society, that citizens and businesses alike depend on the broadband in a way similar to water and sewer service and paved roads.

“It’s a quality of life factor today,” said Abbs. “With everything going to computers, people pay their bills online, file for unemployment online, do schoolwork, take online classes, telecommuting. It’s not just a luxury anymore; people rely on broadband to do all the things they need to do.”

Much of Abbs’ district is forced to use dial-up internet service simply due to a lack of broadband infrastructure in the area. For some tasks, Abbs said this entry-level speed is adequate, but is becoming less and less so for most activities.

“When you have dial-up, it’s nearly impossible to do what’s required of you for school,” she said.
Orange County Economic Development Director Karen Epps, who has initiated most of the broadband conversations before the board of supervisors, said the county’s limited broadband service impacts businesses to a larger extent than residential users.

“For businesses, it’s really limited,” said Epps. “The installation cost is so astronomical; the carriers aren’t getting a return on their investment if they don’t have a high density of users. We definitely need to improve our broadband capabilities for businesses.”

Epps said that larger internet users, such as Macmillan Publishing Services in Gordonsville, have reported occasional problems with the speed of the available service, particularly with regard to video conferencing.

A broadband map created by the state’s office of telework promotion and broadband assistance depicts Orange County’s broadband access of both mobile and fixed carriers. The map predominantly shows fixed coverage along the county’s major east-to-west thoroughfare, Route 20 and in the towns and eastern part of the county. The mobile coverage is shown in the county’s more rural sections away from the main roads.

Clement said that the state’s definition of broadband is somewhat weak in terms of what such speeds can offer residents and businesses. He said the state defines broadband internet as a downloading speed of 768kb and uploading speed of 250kb.

“It’s a little on the low end,” he said. “If people wanted to do things like video conferencing or training, it’s not really adequate.”

Given the high cost of high-speed infrastructure, Orange County’s solution to its broadband concerns, at least for residents, could come from the air rather than the land. While the traditional internet service seems to have plateaued at DSL for much of broadband coverage areas, the bristling speed with which mobile coverage has been improving make what Clement calls “myfi” perhaps a viable option for the county’s more rural sections. Clement said the current top-of-the-line coverage for mobile users, 4G offers download speeds of 3 mb and uploading at 1 mb.

“It works fine for residential, but you can’t run a company on myfi,” said Clement.
Epps recently signed up the county for what is essentially a speed test for localities in Virginia. The program, Accelerate Virginia, encourages citizens to log on an run a speed test at one’s residence in order to create a database profiling the extend of the county’s broadband needs.

“We hope to use [the database] as far as working with service providers in terms of getting them to improve coverage in our area,” said Epps.

The data collection is currently open and will end after 30 days, at which point Epps said the county will study the findings and use them to portray the need of the county.
“Increasing broadband access continues to be an issue,” she said. “We’re not the only one in this position, though it doesn’t make it better to say we’re not alone.”

Citizens can participate in the speed test by going to http://acceleratevirginia.org/.

Taken from Orange County Review
Published: May 16, 2012
By: Drew Jackson