Tag: broadband

Committee Approves Bill Incentivizing Broadband Expansion

The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure approved a committee substitute Friday to Senate Bill 16, a bill that would provide up to one million dollars in tax credits to any company delivering broadband service to certain hard-to-reach rural areas.

Though the substitute does not go into specific detail about what defines an “underserviced” area, Senator Chris Walters, the committee’s chair, said it would come down the bandwidth speed of the homes that are being reached.

Walters is the lead-sponsor of another broadband bill, Senate Bill 315, which would provide the construction of statewide “middle-mile” fiber optic network. The middle mile is like a highway system of Internet fiber built across the state. Walters said both bills incentivize broadband providers to get to hard-to-reach areas.

“My bill builds an interstate system, Senate Bill 315,” Walters said. “This bill helps build off ramps off the interstate to hit the houses. So they really complement each other very, very well. Again, whenever we have more competition out in rural areas because of the interstate systems bill, more companies are going to be able to access the credits, get out to homes faster and really bring the state on-board. Light us up even faster. Together they complement each other very well. I’m hopeful for passage of both.”

The amended Senate Bill 16 was referred to the Committee on Finance, whose members will determine how to fund the bill.

Do Right to Work, Broadband Expansion Stand Snowball's Chance of Passing?

On this Snowmaggedon edition of The Front Porch:

1. A huge snowball fight breaks out over Right to Work, and whether it is right for West Virginia

2. Does Sen. Chris Walter’s bill to expand broadband internet access stand a snowball’s chance in hell? Should it?

3. Rick Wilson reads a snowy passage from “King Lear” about finding empathy for the less fortunate, and finds analogies in this year’s legislature 

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/

Ten Reasons Why W.Va. Should Build a High-Speed Broadband Network

West Virginia has some of the lowest rates of broadband access at some of the slowest speeds in the nation.

Sen. Chris Walters, R-Putnam, wants state government to build a sort of fiber-optic interstate highway and then lease it to private providers. The goal is to bring high internet speeds at cheaper costs.

On The Front Porch podcast, Walters gave ten reasons for building the network:

1. West Virginia has some of the slowest internet speeds in the U.S. and is slower than Romania and Bulgaria.

2. In the U.S., 17 percent of households lack access to advanced broadband service. In urban West Virginia: 56 percent, rural West Virginia: 74 percent

3. Slow connections are bad for business. Walters met a Pocahontas County farmer who wants to sell his livestock online, but doesn’t have broadband, so has to use an Alabama broker.

4. Businesses that move here, even to our cities, are shocked at their slow connections, Walters said, and therefore are unlikely to expand.

5. It’s also about education, he said. If you’re connection drops while you are taking an online test, you can fail the test.

6. What’s missing is the so-called “middle mile” between individual homes and the nationwide fiber networks.

7. Walter’s plan: build 2,500 “middle miles” of fiber connection costing $72 million. Two miles of interstate road construction costs $80 million.

8. How to pay for it: FCC grants for telemedicine, Department of Defense grants for wired line 911 emergency system, and bonds that would be repaid with proceeds from companies using the fiber network.

9. Opposition is coming mainly from existing providers that don’t want competition, Walters said.

10. The system would be operated by the state Water Development Authority. “All fiber is, is pipes – pipes with some cords in them.” The state WDA has bonding authority.

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/

Senate Committee Advances Bill to Expand Broadband Access

The Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took up a bill Wednesday that its sponsor says will create a government owned broadband interstate…

The Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took up a bill Wednesday that its sponsor says will create a government owned broadband interstate in West Virginia.

Senate Bill 459 calls on the state to invest $78 million in expanding broadband access to West Virginians. The money would pay for the installation of 2,600 miles of broadband fiber across West Virginia with an emphasis on expanding access in rural areas.

The state would own the fiber, but give open access to any private business who may want to build off of the main fibers into smaller communities. The bill’s lead sponsor and Transportation Committee Chair Sen. Chris Walters said that would help cut down on the private sector’s costs and incentivize them to expand access.

Representatives of both cable internet providers and Frontier told the committee they see the bill as inserting government directly into competition with the private sector. They say their companies have already invested upwards of a billion dollars to expand access and its working

But Jim Martin, owner of the internet provider CityNet, told committee members the expansion would allow the private sector to partner with the state to provide much needed access while lowering the cost for providing service to schools, libraries and other government buildings.

He said the state received a Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, or BTOP grant from the federal government for a similar project, but that project didn’t help with access problems.

“We were all very hopeful that when the BTOP funds were made available in which the state received $126 million dollars to build a middle mile network, that that was going to be a solution for us,” Martin said.  “At the end of the day BTOP didn’t do anything for broadband in West Virginia.”

The state spent some $30 million of the grant on wireless routers that were installed in rural libraries and State Police barracks, many of which were reportedly too large.

Martin, who was a member of West Virginia Broadband Deployment Council, a committee created by the governor that focused on ways the state could increase access to rural areas, told the committee the state put $60 million in a wireless network that isn’t being used and awarded $40 million to Frontier to “extend their last mile network into state facilities and continue to keep a grip on top of state government.”

“There was no middle mile built with that $126 million,” Martin said, “so here we are today trying to find other ways in which we can find funds to get into our rural markets where our citizens are significantly challenged.”

Many members of the committee spoke in favor of the bill despite the high cost.

It ultimately passed and now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its consideration.

W.Va. Faces Loss of Leftover Broadband Funds

Federal officials have rejected West Virginia’s proposal to spend about $2.5 million in funds leftover from a broadband stimulus grant.
 
     State chief technology officer Gale Given tells the Charleston Gazette that the state likely will have to return the unspent funds to the federal government.
 
     The state wanted to award the funding to Citynet to help pay for a project that would give West Virginia direct connections to the national Internet “backbone” in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Columbus, Ohio.
 
     The newspaper says the National Telecommunications & Information Administration rejected the proposal last week.
 
     The state received more than $126 million in 2010 to expand high-speed Internet statewide. The federal agency told Given that the state failed to formally request an extension of the funding, which expired Dec. 31.

   Senator Sam Cann gave a speech on the Senate floor Thursday concerning the loss in funding.

http://youtu.be/F4T-yHwczIU

If you’re not wired yet, you may be soon

West Virginia Internet providers say they're working hard to reach the nine percent of people who lack broadband access, but hurdles remain.The internet…

West Virginia Internet providers say they’re working hard to reach the nine percent of people who lack broadband access, but hurdles remain.

The internet providers spoke Monday at the third Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation Broadband Summit in Morgantown.

The Foundation was formed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller who noted when the last broadband summit was held four years ago, less than 72 percent of West Virginians had access to broadband. Today, 91 percent have access.

Frontier’s Kathleen Quinn Abernathy said Connect America Fund grants help extend service to rural areas, and more than 60,000 people will get service soon. She said it will take much longer to reach the remaining 20,000 households.

Suddenlink spokesman Michael Kelemen said it’s hard to reach everyone when coverage maps are incomplete. And he calls 100 percent a “lofty goal” when water and sewer service doesn’t even reach 90 percent of homes.

Mark Reilly of Comcast said tougher regulation won’t help either. He noted telephone service has yet to reach every U.S. resident.

Other speakers at the event included Jessica Rosenworcel, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, and Mohammed Gawdat, a vice president at Google.

Rosenworcel talked about broadband as both a technology and a platform for opportunity, and its importance as essential infrastructure for the 21st century.

Gawdat’s remarks focused on innovative ideas for the future, including Google’s Project Loon, which has experimented with using high-altitude balloons to bring Internet access to remote communities.

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