First published by Government Technology on May 15, 2017
by Theo Douglas
A recent study by Ohio State University (OSU) researchers found broadband access severely lacking in the state’s rural areas, a deficit they reported could yield significant economic growth if corrected — but if resolved could also lead to other, unintended consequences.
Connecting the Dots of Ohio’s Broadband Policy found that 76 percent of Ohio households had broadband subscriptions in 2015, a share that led neighboring states and lagged just 1 percent behind the national average of 77 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.
More troublingly, the report from OSU’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics highlighted a disparity between urban Ohio areas, where fixed broadband access is “near universal” and adoption in metro areas ranges from less than 60 percent to more than 90 percent; and rural communities where 31 percent of the population lacks access to fixed broadband — and lives in areas where extending service is “prohibitively expensive.”
Overall, the report found more than 1 million Ohioans still lack access to fixed broadband service.
“It is widely agreed upon that having high-speed Internet access is becoming an essential utility for almost all households and businesses to participate in our economic, cultural and public institutions,” the authors wrote.
The issue is one that a variety of public agencies nationwide are confronting;
Riverside County in inland California is currently seeking providers to build a county-wide gigabit fiber-optic network with access for every home and business.
OSU’s study found Ohio to be well positioned among other states as a regional leader in broadband, with 92 percent of its overall population having access to fixed broadband — slightly higher than the national average of 90 percent and only 2 percent behind neighboring Pennsylvania.
In rural areas, however, that gap widened with 69 percent of Ohioans having access to broadband compared to 80 percent in Pennsylvania. In urban areas, 98 percent of Ohioans had broadband access.
A key reason for high levels of urban broadband access, the authors wrote, is OARnet, an Ohio Department of Education initiative from the 1990s designed to link state colleges and libraries to the Internet — but which has subsequently enjoyed state investment and come to provide services to local governments, hospitals and public schools.
“In terms of rural broadband access, Ohio really lagged Pennsylvania and looked like a state with more rural population density than it has. I think that suggests there are still gains to be made for Ohio,” study author Mark Rembert, a doctoral student and graduate research associate for the Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy at OSU, told
Government Technology.
“I think it all really comes down to costs," he added. "The telecommunication companies are going to be sort of evaluating expansion on a cost-benefit analysis."
Stu Johnson, executive director of
Connect Ohio, which advances and advocates for broadband access, adoption and use, pointed to the author’s statement calling high-speed Internet an “essential utility” as more proof that its necessity is harder and harder to debate.
He praised the report for considering the economic aspects to expanding broadband instead of merely focusing on quality-of-life issues — and agreed with its assertions that “adoption matters more than availability,” and that access alone may not boost employment numbers.
“The real interesting equation will be, what will be the cost if you do nothing? Because if you overlay where broadband access is not available and adoption is below standard … you see higher unemployment, stagnant or decreasing household incomes and population migration,” Johnson said, agreeing providers may not achieve a return on investment if they extend broadband into areas with low adoption rates.
The OSU authors recommended the state consider five policies to accelerate broadband expansion while minimizing cost to the public:
- Establish a state broadband office to coordinate expansion.
- Adopt a “dig once” policy that would integrate broadband facilities into major construction projects.
- Strengthen public-private partnerships so public infrastructure can be used to expand broadband access without leading to an anti-competitive climate.
- Establish a broadband investment fund to finance infrastructure to reach unserved areas.
- Promote development of local government policies that ease the “last mile” of broadband provision, traditionally one of the costliest parts of a project.
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head to GovTech.com.
