Broadband Expansion Story Archives - Page 6 of 7 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

House Bill Creates Broadband 'Co-Opts' in W.Va. Communities

In the House Friday, the House Judiciary Committee took its first look at a bill to expand broadband internet access in the state. The bill’s goal is for all West Virginians to have access by 2020.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, 30 percent of West Virginians do not have access to basic broadband services as defined by federal law. When you look at just the rural parts of the state that percentage increases to 48.

House Bill 3093, which was taken up in the chamber’s Judiciary Committee Friday morning, seeks to expand access to underserved areas in the state.

The bill itself is 33 pages long. It allows communities to form “internet co-opts,” which lead sponsor of the bill Delegate Roger Hanshaw explains are groups of citizens who live in certain geographic areas. The groups can work together to become their own internet service provider.

“If a provider isn’t coming into their area with service that’s of high enough quality to suit their needs,” Hanshaw said, “they can get together to work with the provider and become their own provider there in that small community.”

Hanshaw, who is from rural Clay County, says this was one of the biggest barriers he and his colleagues found as they began working on this bill a year ago. He says the bill also addresses some smaller barriers, too, like dealing with micro-trenching, which is the official term for a simple process—the laying of pipes with internet fibers inside them alongside any new highway construction in the state.

Hanshaw says the bill is comprehensive but with a straightforward approach.

“It’s just simply meant to remove barriers to service,” he explained, “So our objective in adopting this bill, if we ultimately get it passed both houses is just to remove several barriers all at once to expansion of service, and in doing so, hopefully remove that great big barrier.”

Hanshaw says the bill wouldn’t use any state dollars, and it gives communities the authority to get it started.

“There’s nothing compulsory about this bill,” he noted, “This is all a permissive bill; it lets people do things; that’s the objective. So this is a revenue neutral bill. This bill doesn’t require any expenditure of state funds. So how quickly the bill causes service to expand is largely going to be driven by how quickly people want it to happen.”

The bill also creates a Broadband Enhancement Council, which is made up of thirteen voting members including the Secretary of Commerce and the State Superintendent of Schools. The council is housed in the Department of Commerce and is tasked with providing administrative, personnel, and technical support services to the communities that seek broadband expansion on their own.

The bill also establishes a Broadband Enhancement Fund, which will hold any donations or appropriations the Council receives for their projects.

Hanshaw says this bill is an important frontier for West Virginia.

“The interstate highway system, when it was built, after President Eisenhower’s term opened up the country to an entirely new form of commerce. The broadband – access to adequate broadband service, is this generation’s equivalent to the interstate highway system.”

After an hour of questions and discussion in committee, House Judiciary passed House Bill 3093 without debate. It now heads to the full chamber and will likely see a vote next week.

2017 Session So Far Lacking Broadband Expansion Bills

Lawmakers are 14 days into this legislative session and so far, not a single bill dealing with broadband expansion has been introduced. The issue received attention early last session, but lawmakers say they’re still working on a plan to reach both unserved and underserved areas of West Virginia.

Thirty percent of West Virginians do not have access to basic broadband service under federal definitions. When you look at just the rural parts of the state, that percentage increases to 48, according the Federal Communications Commission.

The lack of access poses a problem for many West Virginians on a daily basis.

“My family owns a hardware store in the municipality of Clay and there are often times in which we can’t process a credit card because connectivity is so poor,” Del. Roger Hanshaw, a Republican from Clay County, said Tuesday.

“A credit card.”

So far this session, no member of the Legislature has introduced a bill to take on the lack of access, but Hanshaw said those talks are underway in his chamber.

“All over the Capitol right now, we have representatives of all of the companies who provide internet access in West Virginia having almost daily meetings about just what kind of help the state can offer,” he said.

But exactly what that help looks like hasn’t been determined.

During the 2016 Legislative Session, then-Republican Senator Chris Walters championed a bill to create a government-owned broadband network, using a bond to pay for its construction. The bill made it through his chamber, but members in both bodies had concerns about the government interfering in private business.

That included now-Senate President Mitch Carmichael who works for Frontier, one of the largest internet providers in the state.

Advocacy groups have started pushing lawmakers to take action this year, including the AARP.

State Director Gaylene Miller released the group’s legislative priorities today and broadband is near the top of the list. This year, AARP is teaming up with Generation West Virginia, a group that advocates for millennial issues, to get a bill passed.

“The issue is so important that you have all the generations, from AARP to Generation West Virginia coming together to say, ‘hey look, let’s shine a light on the issue.’ Let’s see what we can do together to move the state forward,” she said.

Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns Tuesday on the Senate floor.

This year, Senate Majority Leader Ryan Ferns said proposals will likely come in the form of two pieces of legislation, at least in the Senate.

One would incentivize private expansion into areas that currently don’t have access with tax credits; the other would provide government-backed loans to internet companies to upgrade access in underserved areas, or areas with slow internet speeds.

Democratic Sen. Mike Woelfel opposed the government-owned network proposed in 2016 and said this year, he’d likely support tax credits for businesses, but still doesn’t think they will make much difference.

“Tax credits can be a useful tool, but the free market is going to drive this and there are so many parts of this state that don’t even have a water line to their house,” he said. “I don’t know how we can justify subsidizing broadband access to those folks when we can’t even get them water.”

But Woelfel and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle do agree that the lack of connectivity is impeding business expansion.

“If we’re going to talk about small businesses in West Virginia growing and doing new things and talking about a new economy, we have to give them the tools to do that,” Del. Hanshaw said, “and one of those is being able to sell products to people who aren’t in your backyard.”

In 2015, the FCC reclassified broadband access as a public utility, blocking industry practices that allowed certain companies to pay to have their websites respond more quickly for consumers.

The reclassification was eventually backed by federal courts, but many lawmakers in West Virginia—lawmakers in both parties—don’t think broadband should be treated as an essential service rather than a luxury.

Sen. Mike Woelfel on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Still, Sen. Woelfel believes it’s an expensive proposition for the state no matter how the Legislature decides to incentivize expansion.

“To take it to that final mile or the last mile to someone’s house or someone’s business is going to be, just due to our topography, going to be an economic burden that the private sector is not likely to take on,” he said.

Del. Hanshaw expects a broadband expansion bill to be introduced in his chamber by the end of the week.

Senator Capito on What Trump Means for Miners, Health Insurance, Broadband, and More

This week on the Front Porch, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito gives her take on what the new Trump administration means for West Virginia.

We discuss recent resurgence of black lung among coal miners, what comes after the promised repeal of the Affordable Care Act, what can be done to build rural broadband networks, and more.

“The Front Porch” is a place where we tackle the tough issues facing West Virginia and Appalachia with some of the region’s most interesting thinkers.

WVPB Executive Director Scott Finn serves as host and provocateur, joined by Laurie Lin, a conservative lawyer and columnist, and Rick Wilson, a liberal columnist and avid goat herder who works for the American Friends Service Committee.

Subscribe to “The Front Porch” podcast on iTunes or however you listen to podcasts.

An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available above.

Share your opinions with us about these issues, and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in the future. Send a tweet to @radiofinn or @wvpublicnews, or e-mail Scott at sfinn @ wvpublic.org

The Front Porch is underwritten by The Charleston Gazette Mail, providing both sides of the story on its two editorial pages. Check it out: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/

Lack of Broadband Hinders Telemedicine in Rural Areas

Telemedicine has been touted as a way to fill in some gaps in health care for rural residents. But telemedicine relies on broadband service, which parts of Appalachia still don’t have.

“Without broadband, you don’t have telemedicine,” said nurse practitioner Lindsey Kennedy. Kennedy manages the telemedicine program at Bland County Medical Center in southwestern Virginia.

The clinic is located at that tip of Virginia that curves down between West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. Kennedy said patients from all of those states utilize the clinic’s telemedicine services.

The Bland clinic is a federally qualified health center, which means that many of the clinic’s patients are uninsured or underinsured. Without telemedicine, patients needing specialty care have to drive to a hospital that offers financial assistance, which could be hours away.

“But it’s just not feasible for our patients to drive that far and to provide the finances for transportation and the time for that,” said Kennedy.

Telemedicine offers a way to bridge that gap. People drive to the clinic, which is centrally located, and then have consults with doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville.

“I think there’s been a clear communication in this country that rural people need access to resources,” said David G. Cattell, director of telemedicine for UVA. UVA works with 150 rural clinics like the one in Bland County. West Virginia University also has a telemedicine program as does the University of Kentucky.

However, much of the region lacks adequate broadband access, which is defined as download speeds of 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 3 megabits per second. Even in areas that have some access to broadband, like the Bland Clinic, it isn’t always enough.

“We are working with Carillion to do cardiology clinics,” said Kennedy, “because a lot of our patients have heart attacks. They’re flown out to Roanoke and are expected to follow up in Roanoke,… [but] a two hour drive for a 90-year-old, elderly woman is not feasible.”

The clinic had to add an additional IP address to be able to electronically connect to the hospital system. But there’s only one internet provider in Bland, and they weren’t in rush to get the project done.

Installation “took six months. It was something that could have been done in a day,” she said. “But because we only have the one carrier in the area, they took their time with it. …They knew we didn’t have anyone else to go to.”

Now UVA is expanding telemedicine into the local school system, yet Kennedy said everyone’s pretty nervous about whether the school’s internet will be fast enough to manage the task.

“I mean a lot of people don’t think about it, but that’s your fundamental for telemedicine – you have to have that connection so you have that flawless face-to-face encounter,” she said.

Telemedicine uses videoconferencing to create face-to-face encounters between a patient and provider – think Skype or Facetime on steroids.

“We have accessories that you can plug into… If you have to listen to heart or lung sounds, they have a stethoscope you can plug in,” said Kennedy.”Then on my end, I’ll hold it up to the patient, just as if I was doing an assessment and on their end they’ll be able to hear those sounds.”

Recently the federal government has taken steps to expand broadband in rural America. In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced grants of nearly $12 million to help establish broadband access in rural areas.

Some states, however, have declined to add their tax money to the cause. Last January, West Virginia legislators proposed a bill to create a $72 million state-run broadband network. But the bill was never put to a vote in the House in the absence of support from some Republican members.

Both Kennedy and Gordon-Cattell emphasize that without broadband you can’t have telemedicine.

“We as a nation need to commit to full-scale broadband. Broadband is that place where education, economic development and health are interdigitated,” said Gordon-Cattell.

Gordon-Cattell said in the end rural broadband isn’t just about healthcare – although that’s desperately needed. He said broadband can bolster rural economies by helping rural hospitals stay open and creating technology jobs.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.

Senate-Approved Bill Allows for W.Va.-Owned Broadband Network

Members of the West Virginia Senate approved a bill to create a government-owned middle mile network, expanding access to broadband Internet in the state.

The measure passed 29-5 during Thursday’s Senate floor session.

The bill, sponsored by the chamber’s youngest member, Republican Sen. Chris Walters, allows private Internet providers to present a business plan to connect to the state-owned middle mile network to the West Virginia Water Development Authority. Once a business plan is deemed viable, the authority would be able to bond the construction project.

Walters described that middle mile as a highway system from which providers could build off-ramps into rural communities, but he said the state would not build those miles until providers assure them they want to connect to the network through the business plan.

The bill also directs several state agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Resources, to apply for federal grants.

Some members of the Republican majority spoke against the bill, saying they did not believe the state should get into a business that can be handled by the private sector.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael shared that sentiment. Carmichael is employed by Frontier, one of the largest Internet providers in West Virginia, and has spoken loudly against the bill.

After the vote, Walters said he was hopeful members of the House of Delegates would take a favorable look at the bill. He said he will be meeting with committee chairs and offering himself to testify at any House committee meetings.

Senator's Broadband Provision Moves Forward Despite Industry Pushback

The Senate’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has approved a bill that aims to expand access to broadband internet services across West Virginia, even though industry representatives continue to express opposition to the bill.

Senate Bill 315 would created a government constructed, government owned middle mile network paid for with federal grants and, possibly, a bond.

The committee’s chair and the bill’s lead sponsor Sen. Chris Walters explains a middle mile like a state highway system made up of internet fiber. Internet providers would be able to hook up to that interstate at the cost to maintain the system, creating their own off ramps into rural communities.

While Walters maintains the proposal won’t take any money from the state’s budget to complete, industry representatives say lawmakers should be concerned with cost.

“We believe that the last mile is the challenge and it is. It is far more expensive to try to connect people to their homes than it is to connect people on the middle mile network,” Frontier Government and External Affairs Manager Kathy Cosco said.

Cosco said she thinks lawmakers should be focused on providing tax credits to companies who expanded their last mile, the connection directly to a customer’s home.

“I think there may be opportunity to work out a better solution or at least a compromised solution that really does immediately improve broadband delivery in West Virginia,” Senate Majority Leader, and Frontier employee, Senator Mitch Carmichael said.

Carmichael would like to see a bill passed that incentivizes the private sector to expand rather than creating the government owned middle mile.

“If there is enough interest within the body to put the state in the broadband business than it certainly will come to a vote,” he added.

Sen. Walters’s bill will next be considered by the Senate Committee on Government Organization.