Bringing the internet to rural Nevada

It was encouraging to see in the Feb. 4 Review-Journal that both of Nevada’s U.S. senators not only recognize the urgent need for high-speed communications in the state’s rural areas, but they are also joining in a bipartisan effort to “light up” underserved communities.

Both Sens. Dean Heller and Catherine Cortez Masto have urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to “move forward” with efforts to expand communications services.

When high-speed communications are delivered in rural areas, the effects can be dramatic — not unlike when the lights came on in the farming communities of our great state decades ago.

We know. In 1965, we brought electricity to western Nevada and eastern California and we are still innovating. This past year, we began connecting our members to the fastest, most-reliable fiber-optic broadband to be found anywhere in the state.

Connecting rural, disparate communities to broadband is essential for education, emergency services, health care, economic development and quality of life. However, communications infrastructure requirements are very expensive. And just as it helped bring power to rural America in the past century, the federal government plays a vital role in bringing high-speed communications to all citizens.

Electricity is not considered a luxury today, and neither should high-speed broadband. It is critical infrastructure, essential to the educational, cultural and economic vitality of any community regardless of size and distance from metropolitan areas.

In a letter to Mr. Pai, Sens. Heller and Masto said, “It is necessary for our constituents, living in some of the most remote and rural areas, to participate in today’s digital economy.”

How right they are. To underscore the need, one only need talk to teachers such as Tom Lyman in the remote mining town of Gabbs or Sheriff Sharon Wehrly of Nye County.

Valley Electric Association, through our wholly owned subsidiary Valley Communications Association, connected the sheriff’s office to a 100 megabit fiberoptic circuit last spring. Reliable communications are essential for the sheriff, but until 2016, she and her deputies struggled with slow-speed, unreliable internet. Incredibly, within her first 14 months in office, the Nye County emergency communications system went down three times, jeopardizing emergency response. The sheriff sleeps much better knowing that her vital communications link is lightning fast and stable.

For Mr. Lyman in Gabbs, however, it is a far different story. Distance learning tools, essential to rural districts with few teachers, are only dreams in the town of 552 with its 32 students, 325 miles northwest of Las Vegas. “As it stands, we can’t even run our online program because the internet speed is so slow,” said Lyman. “We can’t download a file from YouTube. It sometimes takes two to three minutes for a computer to change from one screen to the next. Other times, it knocks the kids plumb out of the program.”

The only option for Gabbs students is to travel hours by bus to get educational resources students in metropolitan markets take for granted. Gabbs is not alone in that regard. Many Nevada students must contend with poor online learning tools. Emergency services, health care and businesses suffer as well.

Better access to broadband and other communications infrastructure will make remote rural communities more competitive and put them on the road to self-sustainability by attracting business investment, marketing tourism opportunities and stimulating economic growth. In addition, broadband access will provide resources to help students and teachers succeed in a technology-driven society and put rural communities on the road to self-sustainability.

As a nonprofit cooperative serving rural Nevada, it is our goal at Valley Electric Association to bring high-speed communications to any rural community in the state that wants it. To make that goal a reality, however, we will need support from Carson City and Washington, D.C.