Rural folks without fast, affordable, reliable Internet access face challenges with common tasks such as doing homework, completing college courses, or running a small business. Although Tennessee has an entrepreneurial spirit, a large swath of the state's rural residents and businesses don't have the connectivity they need to participate in the digital economy. A September article in the Tennessean looks deeper at the state's digital divide between urban and rural areas.

National Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have failed to make good on promises made over recent decades to bring high-quality Internet access to the entire country, both urban and rural. Several telephone cooperatives and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are already actively investing in better Internet access to improve rural Tennessee’s economy.

The Tennessean Perspective

The newspaper the Tennessean laid out much of the connectivity problem in the "Volunteer State." Tennessee may have excellent Internet access statewide, but the urban and rural divide remains. According to a Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development's report, only 2 percent of all urban residents do not have access to broadband. The FCC defines it as 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download speed and 3 Mbps upload speed. That number climbs in rural areas, where one out of three residents does not have broadband access. 

Speed Is Not The Only Problem

Some folks simply have no Internet connection. For example, Deborah Bahr drove 30 minutes for Wi-Fi at Bojangles (Chicken and Biscuit) or visited a friend’s house a few miles away. Bahr used to run a coffee shop, leaving the Wi-Fi on continuously so local community college students could work on homework overnight in the parking lot. Bahr’s town borders Cocke County, an economically distressed area where almost 30 percent of residents are below the poverty level. 

Native American communities throughout the United States have rather bleak figures when it comes to Internet access. That’s about to change.

In Minnesota, Red Lake Nation now has access to some of the fastest Internet service in the entire country. The telephone cooperative Paul Bunyan Communications has extended its GigaZone, offering a Gigabit (1,000 Megabits) per second Internet service, to the tribal nation. 

Future Focused

In Red Lake Nation News, Tribal Chairman Darrell Seki, Sr., described the benefits of this new high-speed Internet access: 

“Having access to fiber Internet services is vital to our rural economy and impacts so many aspects of life. To start a new business, find a good job, or get a high quality education you need a quality high-speed Internet connection. The GigaZone is on the cutting edge of technology and enhances the Red Lake Nation's unique assets, including a large workforce and the Red Lake Nation College, for economic development and business expansion. We're excited about the positive impact this will have on our Tribe now and well into the future."

The Gigabit service will be available in the communities of Red Lake, Redby, Little Rock and Ponemah. The Red Lake Nation is home to about 13,000 Ojibwe members, and is the only “closed reservation” (meaning that the land is held in common) in Minnesota. The nation is a model of self-reliance: they just announced the launch of an all-solar electricity project.

In October in Minneapolis, Broadband Communities Magazine hosted the “Fiber for the New Economy” conference. The first day featured a set of four panels on the role of rural electric cooperatives in providing much-needed connectivity to far-flung communities.

We want to provide the highlights and give further context to some of the most fascinating stories. In this post, we’ll cover some of the latest research coming out of Ball State University’s Center for Information and Communication Sciences.

Indiana’s Electric Cooperatives 

Researcher Emma Green from Ball State University kicked off the track. Her presentation, “Rural Broadband: Technical and Economic Feasibility,” outlined the potential role of rural electric cooperatives in facilitating last mile (connectivity to homes and business) and middle mile (regional connectivity) deployment. 

Green's research centered on Indiana, where 14 percent of the population does not have broadband access (speeds of at least 25 Megabits (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload). In rural areas of the state, however, more than half of the population does not have access to those speeds. Green's research underscored how rural electric cooperatives can use their assets (such as Smart Grids, Right-of-Way access, and pole ownership) to facilitate middle mile connectivity. 

We previously noted some of this research from Ball State University in our post BBC Mag Spotlights Rural Electric Co-ops. Focusing on the middle mile is not always a pathway to long-term last mile solutions, and our Christopher Mitchell has often pointed out those pitfalls. Unless a provider is willing to invest in the critical last mile connections, middle mile networks have only a minimal impact.

Rural electric cooperatives are providing next-generation connectivity. In Oregon a consortium of electric cooperatives called LS Networks built a middle mile network a few years ago and now are taking the next step with last mile connectivity.

LS Networks’ Connected Communities program hopes to bring last mile fiber connectivity to 25 communities in rural Oregon and Washington. Internet access will officially be available in early 2017 in some communities. Depending on the needs of each community, the solution could be Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH), or fixed wireless using the fiber-optic network for backhaul.

Connected Communities

The project started in July, but LS Networks only now made the official announcement. The Connected Communities program asks folks to nominate their community to be connected by filling out a short form. LS Networks will offer two types of monthly plans [pdf]: 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) for $40 and a Gigabit (1,000 Megabits) for $70. Customers will also be able to purchase voice service for an additional $15 per line and 50 cents per phone number.

Currently, the small, northern Oregon town of Maupin is the only official Connected Community. LS Networks is already at work building out a fiber connection to nearly all of the 400+ homes and businesses in the community. On November 9th, Maupin residents can take part in a town hall meeting at the South Wasco County High School to learn more about LS Networks’ plans and the Connected Communities program.

Consortium of Cooperatives

Paul Bunyan Communications in Minnesota reports it has expanded its “GigaZone” Internet service territory to Turtle River, Puposky, and Tenstrike and to additional areas of Bemidji.

More than 2,800 additional locations now have access to, among other services, Internet speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) following the recent upgrades to its fiber-optic communications network, the Bemidji-based co-op notes.  

"Over the next several months we'll be activating the GigaZone in many more areas,” Gary Johnson, CEO of Paul Bunyan Communications, said in a company statement. "We will continue to do as much as we can to bring the GigaZone to all our members and the communities we serve as fast as we can." 

GigaZone Locations Top 20,000 

The co-op said its GigaZone service is now available to more than over 21,600 locations. Previous areas served include rural Park Rapids, Lake George, Trout Lake Township east of Grand Rapids, most of Grand Rapids, Cohasset, and LaPrairie.

The co-op has an online map showing the active areas of the GigaZone as well as future areas that are set for construction. The co-op said that members who subscribe to GigaZone Broadband can also add PBTV Fusion and/or low cost unlimited long distance phone service.

Co-op Wins Award In 2015

About a year ago, we reported that Paul Bunyan Communications won the 2015 Leading Lights National Award for Most Innovative Gigabit Broadband Service. The northern Minnesota cooperative beat out both local innovative local firms like C Spire and national companies like Google. 

Time to celebrate the work of rural cooperatives that bring high-quality Internet access to residents and businesses forgotten by national corporate providers. October is National Cooperative Month! Let’s celebrate some of the accomplishments of those cooperatives providing next-generation connectivity. 

We pulled together a list of cooperatives who were actively advertising residential access to a Gigabit (1,000 Mbps) at the end of 2015. These cooperatives rang in 2016 with Gigabit speeds, inspiring others to improve rural connectivity throughout the U.S.

To assemble the list, we used Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Form 477 data from December 2015 to find all the providers advertising a residential Gigabit download speed. This generated a list of about 200 providers. Those providers were then manually sorted into “cooperative” or “not cooperative” based on publicly available information. If you would like to make a correction or suggestion concerning this list, please email htrostle@ilsr.org

2015’s Gigabit Cooperatives

Duck River Electric Membership Corporation (DREMC) in Tennessee announced in September that it has launched a feasibility study to investigate ways to use a proposed fiber-optic network to bring better connectivity to members.

Exploring Added Value

According to the announcement, DREMC is considering investing in a fiber-optic loop to improve communications between its offices and substations. DREMC recognizes that this initial investment can be a first prudent step in considering the future of the cooperative and the vitality of rural Tennessee:

A fiber-optic loop has been proposed to connect all offices and substations, including the co-op’s emergency operations center. This project could also provide capacity for community purposes: fiber that could be leased to other parties, even Internet-to-home providers.

The broadband feasibility study will explore how the proposed fiber-optic loop might help improve connectivity in rural areas served by DREMC.

Within The Confines Of The Law

In Tennessee, electric cooperatives are prohibited from providing Internet access to residents, but DREMC still wants to use its publicly owned infrastructure for the benefit of members.

DREMC serves the areas south of Nashville. Columbia and Tullahoma are some of the more densely populated areas and have their own electric utilities, which also provide Gigabit connectivity. Rural areas outside of the cities rely on cooperatives like DREMC for electricity; the state restrictions will keep those communities in that last century for Internet access because national providers have no desire to serve them. 

From the announcement:

“This is a first but very important step,” says DREMC President and CEO Michael Watson.

“Today, so much depends on connectivity. Economic development, job creation and retention, healthcare, education, and public service are all enhanced by access to broadband Internet. But many rural households and communities do not have the connectivity they need.”

We have extensively studied the connectivity situation in North Carolina and just released our report, “North Carolina Connectivity: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Now you can hear from the report authors, H.R. Trostle and Christopher Mitchell, in our most recent PRX coverage.

We spoke with both authors who gave us a recap of the situation in urban and rural North Carolina. They explained how they examined the data and came to the conclusion that, while urban areas are served relatively well by big private providers, the same cannot be said in rural areas. Unless a muni or rural telephone or electric cooperative offers Internet access in a rural region, odds are rural residents and businesses just don’t have access to FCC defined broadband speeds. Audio coverage runs 5:22.

Listen to the story on PRX…

You can also download the report to dig into the details and learn more about connectivity in North Carolina.