Opinion: Extending rural internet access must be a priority

Lost in the clamor surrounding the possible expansion of the Google Fiber network to the Triangle has been the fact that areas of adjacent Chatham County are still not served by standard internet service providers.

In fact, a 2013 FCC reported ranked North Carolina dead last in the nation for the number of households with access to internet connections at the minimum speed deemed sufficient for engaging in modern life: Just 17 percent, at present.

Several factors have conspired to create this reality. Internet companies will likely point to poverty or lack of demand as the most prominent, but in reality, lack of access seems to be the biggest problem.

There is, as it turns out, a large distinction between coverage maps — the areas internet companies say they cover — and peoples’ abilities to procure internet access for their homes. 

Time Warner Cable claims to cover 98 percent of North Carolina, but homes in Chatham County rely either on dial-up, satellite, or mobile hotspots to connect to the internet. 

Time Warner Cable’s director of public relations for the east coast, Scott Pryswansky, admitted in a 2013 interview on local NPR affiliate WUNC’s The State of Things, that the large distances between homes in rural areas like Chatham County are cost prohibitive when it comes to deciding where to extend cable service.

This might be a believable, good-faith explanation of market constraints had Time Warner Cable not

been heavily involved in the passage of the state’s House Bill 129, which severely restricts municipal governments from building connectivity infrastructure.

Pryswansky explained this as Time Warner’s effort to “level the playing field” and preserve competition with respect to business costs not borne by government infrastructural initiatives.

But coupled with claims from rural residents that coverage maps are inaccurate, it does not seem as though Time Warner orany other cable company can be trusted to make the investments necessary to ensure the most rural parts of the state are connected to the internet. 

Internet access has become increasingly important, not just for Netflix and Facebook, but for those who wish to complete academic coursework or professional certifications online.  

These resources are especially important for people in geographically isolated parts of the state or whom in-person attendance is impractical.

Marion Norton, a Chatham County resident featured on the same program, described having to stay up late into the night while completing her nursing certification because her tenuous connection would not allow her to submit course materials.

Norton wrote a letter to the Chapel Hill News this week to confirm that her situation had not changed.

The internet has done a lot to smooth out the divisions between urban and rural communities by allowing more equal access to goods, services and information. 

But failing to provide internet access to the geographically estranged, whose potential benefit is greatest, deepens those divides rather than closing them. H.B. 129 should be repealed, and local and state politicians should make the extension of service into the state’s rural communities one of North Carolina’s foremost public works priorities.