Many in area still without good internet

About 6,000 households total in Benton and Washington counties have no access to high-speed internet, and those that do have wide disparities among them for speed and capacity, local leaders were told in Fayetteville and Bentonville on Wednesday.

The estimates of households still lacking broadband were shown in meetings with local leaders by state Broadband Office director Glen Howie and by Laurie Ringler, project manager for the state’s broadband expansion project. The state office set a goal of complete statewide

broadband coverage by 2028. Howie and Ringler were 10 visits deep in a tour of all 75 counties when they finished an 11 a.m. meeting with Benton County leaders at the county Quorum Court’s meeting room. They met with Washington County leaders at 9 a.m. at Fayetteville City Hall.

Broadband office figures show an estimated 1,945 households in Washington County and 2,812 in Benton County without highspeed internet, defined by the state as internet with 100 megabits per second when downloading and 20 mbps when uploading. For instance, 100 goodquality photos of 1.5 million megabits each would take no more than about one minute to download while 20 such photos could be uploaded from the household to the internet in the same amount of time.

Howie and Ringler encouraged those attending the meetings to form county broadband committees to determine local priorities. The state could receive more than $1 billion for broadband expansion from the U.S. Department of Commerce, taxpayer money that could be used for other things than infrastructure, Howie said.

“We could get fiber (optic cable) to every home and business, and it would do no good if they can’t afford it,” Howie said, referring to internet service provider charges. “We could give the services for free, and it would still not do any good for people who don’t have the skills to use the internet.”

“This is not going to be a ‘one size fits all’ plan from the state,” Howie said.

There is already a serious lack of people using government assistance already available to obtain internet service, Howie said. For instance, 35,000 Washington County residents are eligible for the federal Affordable Connectivity Program, which pays $100 for hooking up a household to high-speed internet and paying up to $30 a month of the bill. “There are about 8,900 enrolled households in the county,” or about one in four of those eligible, he said.

The expansion of broadband is not a project just for rural, isolated areas either, Howie said. Fayetteville City Chief of Staff Sue Norton, Fayetteville Information Technology Director Keith Macedo and Bella Vista Mayor John Flynn said they were glad cities were not being neglected.

“You can string 20 miles of fiber-optic cable in the country for the same amount of money that would go half a city block here,” Macedo said at the Fayetteville meeting. Existing sewer, water, electric lines and other utilities along with pavement all add to the expense of locating new lines. Norton said multifamily residential units and some businesses in town need better internet and some gaps of highspeed internet still exist in Fayetteville.

“All I hear is that all this money is for rural and you’re not rural,” Flynn told Howie.