High Speed Internet For Rural Areas
By Alex Saitta
October 15, 2020
In a recent letter I addressed the subject of the lack of high speed internet service (HSIS) in rural areas and how that problem is being addressed. I mentioned part of the solution would include the US Congress and/ or state legislature changing some laws and incentivizing local companies when it comes to the required infra-structure investment.
The South Carolina legislature has taken another step in the right direction. It passed a law enabling electric co-ops to utilize their existing electricity network to provide HSIS or lease their networks out to internet providers who will provide HSIS.
AT&T is a common carrier so it has permission to run their polls and wires anywhere to provide phone or internet service. All they have to do is run a wire to your house, drop in the equipment and you’ll have HSIS service.
While AT&T has a massive wire network in place and has easements/ right-a-way access, AT&T doesn’t have an interest in expanding HSIS to the rural areas because their existing network is quite old, labor intensive to maintain and putting in the additional equipment would not be profitable for the company. Additionally, AT&T is a worldwide company that sees their opportunities elsewhere. Ugh!A local electric co-op is not a common carrier, but many of them want to get into the business of providing HSIS to rural customers in their service areas. Electric co-ops have right-a-ways and easements to run electricity on their polls, but are limited to that. In sum, they have the network in place to run any wire to your house, but the law limited them to running only wires delivering electricity.
This new law broadens their electricity easements/ permission to include internet wires, specifically stating, “Utilizing electric easements to provide broadband services, especially existing overhead or underground facilities…” See state code 58-9-3000 for all the details. Going forward an electric co-op like Blue Ridge can now directly provide or contract with an internet provider and let them use their electricity network to run an internet wire to your house if you don’t already have HSIS. Hooray!
This was a big legal hurdle that has been removed in solving this problem. The next big nut to crack will be incentivizing or subsidizing private companies to invest the billions needed to provide HSIS to all rural areas of the state. For example, Senator Lindsay Graham has formulated a bill for $10 billion in grants for the infra-structure required to provide internet to some of the 21 million in the US who do not have a HSIS option in their area.
In sum, HSIS is now considered an essential utility and providing it to all is now a priority. The solution will come from a combination of the state, federal and private sectors working together, but it will take time.