Access to broadband internet, the affordability of it and the opportunity it can create are three bullet points the Jefferson County Broadband Working Group have been tasked to address.
A small group of city-level leaders including the mayors of Altheimer and Redfield and Pine Bluff officials heard from Glen Howie, the state broadband director for ARConnect, the brand name for the Arkansas State Broadband Office, about grant opportunities for internet service providers in a launch meeting Friday at the Economic Development Alliance for Jefferson County in downtown Pine Bluff.
Arkansas received $1.024 billion through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, of which Jefferson County is projected to receive $7.84 million. The working group will supply details on the county’s broadband needs to ARConnect before its final proposal due date of Oct. 4.
The grant request, Howie said, will go to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an office of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
“As things stand today, affordability is one of the things we are scoring applicants on in the process,” Howie said. “As the internet service providers are applying for our infrastructure grants for our latest round of scoring, one of the things we are scoring them on is affordability. The lower the cost of service they offer to residents, they get more points for that in the scoring process. So, they are incentivized in scoring to have low prices for consumers. That’s one way we’re attacking that. We think that process encourages lower costs for residents when the projects are complete.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Howie stated his goal to make Arkansas the most wired state in the U.S. In Jefferson County, he said, Cablelynx, Logix Communications, Optimum, Rally Networks and Ritter Communications’ RightFiber are among the ISPs that have applied for infrastructure grants.
“If Jefferson County is the most wired county in the state but some people can’t afford it, that’s an issue,” Howie said. “Likewise, it can be the most wired county in the state and hypothetically free for folks, but if they don’t have the digital skills required to leverage it or don’t have the devices to access it, that’s an issue as well. So, we want to access all three things (access, affordability and opportunity) at the right time.”
Those three things are what Howie calls the pillars of broadband.
Redfield Mayor Roben Brooks is confident the new working group will reach out to citizens to collect information for ARConnect, but following through on it is vital, she believes. The group is also looking at solutions for training those who don’t have internet skills for personal or professional use.
“It’s easy to get people excited about it and it’s definitely needed throughout the county, absolutely,” she said. “Mostly the training is needed to make sure people are trained. We have a lot of senior citizens who aren’t going to be interested in this. That’s the biggest dilemma I see, getting people to accept change and moving forward with that change.”
Getting young people involved may be an important hurdle for the group to clear as well, Brooks remarked. The current state of play in Arkansas broadband, Howie illustrated to the group, is that about 84,000 citizens lack it or have not been subject to a grant, about 607,000 households may struggle to afford a high-speed internet package and about 300,000 Arkansans ages 18-64 may lack basic digital skills.
Homes with internet speeds of at least 100 megabits per second in download speed and at least 20 mbps in upload are eligible to be served by ISPs that will receive infrastructure grants.
“The biggest need is to have internet and broadband in every home and affordability,” Altheimer Mayor Zola Hudson said. “That’s going to be one of the main questions asked — ‘What does it cost?’ — and they’ve got to be able to afford it. If it’s in every home, every child will be able to do their homework and even college students or whatever.”
Hudson added ISPs should offer packaged services for entities such as city government. A separate bill for each city building is expensive, she said.
“When my water guy needs to use the internet, he’s got to come to City Hall, because I can’t afford it in each building,” Hudson said.