The Broadband Challenge: Going Deep
Being online whenever we want or need to be has become so urgent for so many of us that it’s taken for granted that internet availability and capacity should just keep going and growing.
Fortunately, Southern Maryland has become the beneficiary of “lit fiber,” a quantum leap in broadband capacity designed to link public agencies and improve connectivity in the state’s more rural areas. The backbone, as it’s called, was completed last fall, with money from the state and the federal government via the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Now Southern Maryland residents and businesses can participate in an assessment of their Internet usage habits to help them better understand how to utilize broadband technologies.
The Maryland Broadband Cooperative, which owns the fiber, has prepaid for 500 end-users to complete the Southern Maryland Business Assessment questionnaire, available here. The tool is available on a first-come, first-served basis and, based on users’ responses, will yield individual scorecards that summarize the financial impact broadband has on their activities as compared with peer organizations. The scorecards will be processed weekly and then sent to participants. John Hartline, executive director of the Tri-County Council of Southern Maryland, sees this feedback as a way for Southern Maryland “to leverage its strength as a leader in the digital economy.”
Bonnie Green, executive director of The Patuxent Partnership, says the completion of the broadband project into Southern Maryland has been a long wait. Discussions began in 2006 about extending broadband to underserved areas, but the investment has been well worth it, given that St. Mary’s and Charles Counties are tied for third-fastest growing county in the most recent analysis of the state’s demographics.
“Improving broadband capacity can bring lots of additional opportunities for economic development and innovation,” says Ms. Green. “Our need for broadband technologies has grown exponentially since this project started in 2006. There’s an insatiable increase in demand for broadband. This new backbone will allow for that growth without slowing down services.”
John McQuaid, broadband implementation coordinator, says, “What that project built was an information interstate. What it did not build was on and off ramps. It’s up to local communities to figure out how to now utilize that asset or resource. You now have the capacity for any internet service provider to come in and lease or utilize that fiber asset and begin to offer competitive services.”
A big task remaining is how to take high-speed internet more deeply into areas that currently don’t have it. “It’s the last-mile challenge,” Mr. McQuaid says. “I think the challenge that lies before us is at the county level. Counties need to think about how to incorporate the need for high-speed Internet into their three- and five-year strategic plans.” He also sees a need for planning and zoning codes that will incorporate fiber as a non-regulated utility.
“In particular, they need to look at their code as it relates to towers because a lot of last-mile issues will require a wireless solution via towers. No one likes towers but everyone likes high speed,” Mr. McQuaid says. “And you need wire going to those towers.”
