According to a story in The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky’s rural areas are losing jobs at a rapid pace and, although the number of jobs has increased across the state as a whole, the growth rate trails that of the nation. What does this have to do with muni broadband? A lot. Kentucky’s broadband initiative, Connect Kentucky, is being touted as a model for the U.S.According to a story in The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky’s rural areas are losing jobs at a rapid pace and, although jobs have grown in the state overall, the growth rate trails the nation.
The story is based on a poll of Kentucky voters regarding what they perceive as key issues in the upcoming gubnatorial campaign. Jobs and local economics topped concerns of rural voters and, although the story doesn’t mention ConnectKentucky, you have to wonder what’s going on. ConnectKentucky was Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s initiative to promote job and economic growth and to address the urban-rural digital divide by bringing broadband to underserved areas.
The Herald-Leader story raises concern because ConnectKentucky is being held out as the model that the U.S. should follow in adopting a national broadband policy. A lobbying campaign called Connected Nation has been out front in promoting the model. The single-state focus of Connected Nation concerns me, as do its politics. Most of Connected Nation’s leadership team previously served in Fletcher’s administration or elsewhere in Kentucky politics. It’s not what you would call a broad-based coalition. Connected Nation has also received strong support from incumbent carriers. Verizon, the incumbent that spearheaded anti-muni legislation in Pennsylvania to prohibit local communities from determining their own broadband futures, has been out-front in promoting it.
The Herald-Leader cites statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor to conclude: “Under Fletcher, Kentucky’s economy has grown, but at a rate slower than the national average. The number of jobs in Kentucky has grown by 3.41 percent since Fletcher took office in December 2003, an increase of 61,200 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationally, jobs increased 5.94 percent over that period.”
Quite a number of readers left intelligent and informed commentary on an earlier post that linked to a column on another blog that called ConnectKentucky a bad model for the U.S. That column criticized ConnectKentucky for counting DSL as acceptable broadband speed, saying it set the bar too low for a national broadband policy for the U.S. Numerous readers pointed out that ConnectKentucky, in giving rural residents in the state options to dial-up, achieved great success in addressing the digital divide but that prohibitive costs continues to plague efforts to bring truly high-speed service to remote areas of the state.
Therein lies the problem. Addressing the digital divide is one thing and developing a broadband infrastructure that’s robust enough to support enterprise-level communications and economic development is another. However successful ConnectKentucky may be on getting residents connected, the data in the Herald-Leader story suggests it has failed on the economic front.
In the debate over a national broadband policy, the question remains: should the national standard be simply something that is better than dial-up? Or should we aim to close the gap that has left the U.S. lagging behind other nations in speed and connectivity? Shouldn’t we be raising the bar to restore U.S. competitiveness and move it back to the top of the list as am international broadband leader?
Click here to read the Herald-Leader’s story and please post your thoughts in the form below. This is an important issue. We’d like to hear from you.
Can anyone explain why DSL is not adequate to serve small business and residential customers in rural areas? I live in a larger metropolitan area with DSL from Cavalier Telephone (a CLEC), and it works great for me. If my friends in DC and Phoenix have DSL, my mom and dad in rural South Carolina have DSL, why isn’t that good enough for rural areas?
I follow these broadband debates with interest, as it seems to me the internet is the internet, regardless if you get there with fiber to the home or dial-up (although one is certainly faster than the other).
If we’re talking about getting broadband to remote areas, I assume we mean having large pipes that can serve T1 and T3 speeds, or maybe even metro ethernet type services? Granted DSL isn’t for everyone, but if you have dial-up, and have the option for DSL, isn’t that good enough??? I’m not a fan of the big ILEC’s, but they do provide DSL and spent the money to get it there. I’m just having trouble understanding why the industry thinks that DSL is just not good enough…
It is ashame to read about the lack of growth, but you can’t honestly expect overnight results with this can you? I still aplaud the efforts being made by this group to bring broadband to the masses and I would definitely give them more time to see the effects of their work. You can’t expect everyone to just jump on board, learn how to adapt to this technology AND be proficient enough to use it to better their jobs right after firing it up, can you?
I think that an article pointing a finger and saying “look they’re doing a bad job” is a little premature. What are we to expect from other communities that are just getting these networks off the ground? Immediate knowledge and no learning curve? I don’t think so..
I would venture to say that DSL does qualify as broadband simply due to it’s potential capacity.
That said, I take issue with AT&T’s promises to the FCC about broadband coverage that they made in order to win approval of the merger with BellSouth.
Satellite and wi-fi should NOT be classified as ‘broadband’ for 2 reasons.
1. Satellite bandwidth is so limited that when everyone logs in at the same time (say on a Monday evening after everyone gets home from work), download and upload speeds are about as slow as dialup.
A TRUE definition of broadband should state that it is only broadband if download speeds of (for instance) 128kbps can be SUSTAINED.
Meaning if the download speed is at MINIMUM of 128Kbps (or some similar number) AT ALL TIMES. Satellite users report all too often that their connection is actually nothing more than a glorified dial-up connection. So to classify it as ‘broadband’ is a joke.
2. Wi-fi should only be classified as broadband if wireless ISPs allow uploading and downloading, as normal ISPs do with their landline broadband.
What does it matter that it is a 1.5mbps or more wireless connection if the terms of service do not allow uploading or downloading of files (as with Verizon), and if they will cancel account if you should do so? Again, classifying wireless as ‘broadband’ is an even bigger joke.
AT&T promised the FCC that they would provide broadband by landline (DSL) to 80% of their customer base, and would offer Satellite or Wireless services to the other 20%.
They ALREADY provided DSL to 80% of their customer base before the merger, and the merger did not change that.
And ‘offering’ Satellite or Wireless means NOTHING. ANY CUSTOMER of AT&T can at ANY TIME choose to go with a Satellite or Wireless provider.
The promise that AT&T made to the FCC means NOTHING!
ZERO!
ZILCH!
They made it sound as if they were actually promising to provide more broadband services to their customer base, but in reality it is a LIE.
They did not promise the FCC anything more than what they already offered.
And the FCC fell for it, hook line and sinker.
Either the FCC is staffed with a bunch of mentally deficient, gullible idiots, or else they are getting paid off by AT&T under the table.
The above article blaming ConnectKentucky for the loss of jobs in the state ALSO means NOTHING.
There is no evidence whatsoever, that the slow employment growth rate can be connected to ConnectKentucky’s efforts to provide broadband to rural residents who lack it.
So the State Of Kentucky has a job-growth rate that is lower than the national average.
So what? What in the hell does that have to do with ConnectKentucky?
The idiot that wrote that article tries in vain to say that Governor Fletcher’s statements promoting ConnectKentucky as a way to assist the job and economic outlook of his state are somehow PROMISES or CRYSTAL BALL FORECASTS that ConnectKentucky WILL increse job growth and the economy of the State Of Kentucky.
The writer did not bother to even consider that without the efforts of ConnectKentucky, the growth rate might be worse than it is.
At least there is growth!
The writer did state “jobs and local economics topped concerns of rural voters and, although the story doesn‚Äôt mention ConnectKentucky, you have to wonder what’s going on.”
NO! WE do not have to wonder what is going on, as there is NOTHING TO WONDER ABOUT! The author of the above ignorant piece for some reason is trying to INVENT some kind of negative issue to link to ConnectKentucky, as in reality there is likely no connection whatsoever!
In other words, it seems to me she is creating an issue with no basis in fact, simply because either a) she does not like ConnectKentucky, b) does not want broadband to be available to ALL Kentuckians, or c) is being paid off by opponents of ConnectKentucky who simply want something negative about ConnectKentucky in the press so they can point their fingers at this non-existent problem and excitedly shriek “SEE? WE TOLD YOU! CONNECTKENTUCKY IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY! IT IS NOT WORKING! WE MUST STOP IT BEFORE WE HAVE NO JOB GROWTH AT ALL!!!! AIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”
Yes, broadband is something as necessary to our standard of living these days as electricity was in the 1930s. However, there is no need to make up lies in order to slander those who are actually trying to do something about the problem.
Seems to me the author of the article above has a vested interest in forcing rural residents to remain with string-and-tin-can dial-up services, or in simply critisizing the performance of Governor Fletcher’s administration in creating a better job growth rate.
Utterly ridiculous.
It’s simply not true to call wireless broadband a joke. First of all, different wireless carriers have deployed completely different technologies, so it’s not accurate to generalize.
Second, those transmission speeds are getting up there and may surpass some of the wireline options in the next few years. Some existing cellphone providers with relatively new networks do let you upload and download files.
Give the vendors (who sell equipment to the cell phone companies) a year or two to start full-scale production in the U.S. of equipment they’ve been deploying and testing abroad in the last few years. Give the providers a few years to find financing for the equipment and get it in place. Some of it is FAST, in both directions. But you can’t buy and deploy a new network, find landowners to lease cell sites from, etc., overnight.
Check out the Pew Center studies — broadband is being deployed faster than other past consumer technologies. Stimulate demand, help economically support deployment where necessary, and then exercise patience while the carriers deploy as fast as they can. They certainly want to meet demand, where and when it exists. If broadband buildout can be made an economically viable alternative for carriers, in any given community, they’ll be happy to supply it.