By Drew FitzGerald
Locals often huddle outside the library in Hudson, N.Y., in cars
or seated in the open air, to tap its Wi-Fi network for a
high-speed internet connection.
The scene is a far cry from what was promised in the same spot
four years ago, when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo touted a plan to
provide universal high-speed home internet service in the state by
2018. The ambitious initiative would spread broadband "faster than
anyone has ever contemplated," the governor said then during a
press conference at the library.
Residents a few miles away from the library say they are still
waiting for service. And their frustration has grown since the
coronavirus pandemic forced families in their rural communities to
work and study online, often through connections that are barely
capable of supporting one video stream, let alone several.
"It's like the apple is dangling in front of my eye," says Marcy
Feld, a photographer based in nearby Hillsdale, N.Y., referring to
a fiber optic cable that stopped well short of her property but is
close enough to be a constant reminder of what she's missing. Her
family of five relies on satellite provider HughesNet for
relatively slow and expensive internet service.
New York tried to fix this problem years ago by showering rural
internet providers with $500 million in state subsidies -- in
addition to hundreds of millions in federal subsidies -- to reach
more than two million residents who lacked broadband. Separately, a
merger settlement forced cable operator Charter Communications Inc.
to add 145,000 internet connections in New York in exchange for
allowing its purchase of Time Warner Cable.
Neither plan worked as advertised. Regulators pushed Charter's
broadband-expansion deadline to mid-2021 after the state
comptroller found the cable company serving fewer locations than
expected. The cable company recently told regulators it had
connected 109,000 of the required locations. A spokesman for the
comptroller said the watchdog agency is also auditing the state's
subsidy program, called New NY Broadband.
'Finish the job'
The digital divide -- in New York and elsewhere -- hasn't gone
away, despite much money spent and many speeches made. A patchwork
of conflicting government programs, flawed maps and weak
enforcement have left broad swaths of the country without access to
high-speed or even basic internet service when people need it more
than ever.
The result is a longstanding source of personal frustration and
economic disadvantage for many rural communities in areas where
spread-out housing makes adding new wires expensive. That lack of
access extends to many more-crowded suburban and exurban counties
where home internet coverage is available in one neighborhood but
out of reach just down the road.
Companies including CenturyLink Inc., Frontier Communications
Inc. and Consolidated Communications Inc. have used billions of
dollars of federal subsidies to wire homes with broadband cables
for the first time. But at least 18 million people in the U.S.
still lack access to true broadband, according to the Federal
Communications Commission's latest national deployment report.
Other studies have found a much higher number of households without
usable broadband service.
Some homes have fallen through the cracks because federal
regulators graded companies' performance using inaccurate maps. The
FCC this year devised a plan to use more-accurate geographic data,
but the initiative lacks congressional funding.
In New York, the Empire State Development agency oversees the
rural expansion program that benefited from $500 million of state
funds. The Public Service Commission, another state regulator,
oversees Charter's mandated broadband expansion.
A spokesman for Empire State Development said in a statement
that New York has narrowed the broadband access gap from 30% of all
residential and commercial locations in the state to 2% over the
past five years, with construction of connections to thousands of
locations continuing.
"Some New NY Broadband projects are ongoing, in part as a result
of Covid-related delays," the spokesman said.
"I commend the governor immensely for what he's tried to do,"
says David Berman, co-chairman of Connect Columbia, an association
of local officials drawn from across the county. "Now we've got to
finish the job."
Patti Matheney, a member of the town board in nearby Ghent, says
that while state subsidies have added many new homes to the
network, "it never feels right if I have it and my neighbor
doesn't."
"The providers have not been very forthcoming with where they're
going, with their maps," Ms. Matheney says. "So we were flying
blind a lot of the time."
Maps with gaps
Hillsdale resident Tod Wohlfarth pays $110 a month for a
low-speed digital subscriber line from Consolidated Communications.
He says the service is unreliable and tops out at 15 megabits per
second, well below the 25 megabits level the Federal Communications
Commission considers necessary to support broadband applications
like videoconferencing and streaming TV.
The New NY Broadband program steered about $1.5 million to
Hillsdale and nearly $30 million to Columbia County, according to
state data. The region also received federal dollars from the
second phase of the Connect America Fund.
Mistrustful of state-supplied data that showed his county well
covered by broadband subsidy programs, Mr. Wohlfarth and his
neighbors formed a committee to press the issue. The committee
earlier this year surveyed Hillsdale residents and found that more
than 70% of them lacked broadband service.
Mr. Wohlfarth, a creative marketing director, has been working
through local groups he and his neighbors formed to convince
Consolidated to string high-speed fiber optic through the area. In
July, several Verizon trucks worked on a nearby road, giving him
hope that the area was due for an upgrade, but a worker said there
was nothing he could do.
The two phone companies operate in different parts of the
county. Local provider FairPoint, which Consolidated later
acquired, began expanding fiber-optic lines into Verizon territory
after Verizon declined to participate in the subsidy program.
Program rules affected which homes received upgrades.
"Call your congressman," the Verizon technician advised,
according to Mr. Wohlfarth.
County residents say that advice is common. A Public Service
Commission spokesman said the department keeps track of internet
providers' progress by fielding "inquiries from elected officials
and consumers who have questions or concerns about service in their
area," in addition to audits and other checks.
Consolidated Communications public-policy executive Michael
Shultz says the telephone network operator built new lines to all
of the New York locations covered by its federal subsidies and
almost all of the locations the state paid to cover. The company
would need more funding to reach other locations, he added.
In the meantime, Mr. Wohlfarth says he's waiting for some
network operator, whether it's Consolidated, Charter or someone
else, to offer service capable of reaching the modern internet.
"I've checked the buildout lookup tool every other month for
years now," he said. "Nothing for me."
Lillian Rizzo contributed to this article
Mr. FitzGerald is a Wall Street Journal reporter based in
Washington, D.C. He can be reached at
andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 22, 2020 12:50 ET (16:50 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.