North Country Public Radio
Miles, Gary, and Wini Martin outside the Martinâs home and lumber mill in Thurman, NY.
(Provided photo â Emily Russell/North Country Public Radio) More than 14 million Americans don’t have high-speed internet, according to the FCC. The Biden Administration wants to change that by investing billions of dollars into broadband expansion. But there’s a problem: it’s not clear where internet dead zones are, which means even more Americans could be struggling to get online, including many in the North Country. Wini Martin lives in the town of Thurman in the southern Adirondacks. It’s as rural as it gets there’s no gas station or grocery store in town. Martin is standing by the side of the road with her grandson.
Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, chairs the House Technology and Infrastructure Committee.
The West Virginia Legislature’s latest bill for broadband expansion is off to the governor, having completed its legislative journey.
To lead sponsor Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, House Bill 2002 is a good bill one that offers new consumer protections to broadband users, makes the deployment of publicly owned infrastructure possible and expands on existing data-collection efforts to identify areas of the state that need high-speed internet.
But he said it could’ve been better. In the 40 days the Senate had to consider the bill after its passage out of the House in March, Linville said, telecommunications companies like Comcast and Suddenlink objected to attempts to add funding provisions for open access broadband infrastructure and grant-matching to the bill.
News Analysis Robert Clark 4/12/2021
The Biden Administration s $100 billion broadband plan marks the end of an era.
Since telecom reform began in the mid-80s with the breakup of the old AT&T it s been big telecom that has driven the industry, constrained by no more than light-touch regulation.
That s been the case not just in the US but across the OECD and much of the developing world.
The new Biden plan, hazy as it still is, drives the last nail in the coffin of the old regime.
Just as the deregulation era was driven by wider economic trends and new technology that rendered obsolete the natural monopoly concept, today s change is driven by an equally broad recognition that we need governments to do certain things, like manage health crises and ensure access to affordable broadband.
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