Digital Divide Affecting Nebraska

GLADBROOK (AP) — On the wide-open plains of central Nebraska, a little more than a mile north of the Logan County line along Avenue 70, Pam Schaeffer can go days without functional internet.

On those days, her husband Rodney will walk around the house grumbling about technology as he holds up his cellphone hoping to catch a good signal so he can turn on his center-pivot irrigation system, the Lincoln Journal Star reported. Pam will drive 30 minutes to eat lunch in North Platte (she likes Taco John’s) so she can use the free Wi-Fi to send pictures to her grandchildren.

They pay for service through a cellular company that beams internet to their house from an antenna tower, but reception can be imperfect.

When it does work, it’ll let her upload snapshots, do online banking or research business plans for the new Stapleton Cooperative Market & Deli. But forget watching old “Law & Order” episodes on a computer, or video-conferencing.

“It can’t keep up,” she said. “We live on a hill, so you think it would work. But it doesn’t.”

While the web of internet connectivity continues to spread to rural communities, there are still many places, like the Schaeffer farm, where it lags in access, speed, price and reliability. Federal data shows there isn’t a single fixed-broadband connection in Logan County capable of 25 megabits per second, a measurement of data speed known as Mbps for short.

Nearly 40 percent of rural Americans — 23 million people — lack access to broadband capable of 25 Mbps downloads and 3 Mbps uploads, according to the Federal Communications Commission. In contrast, only 4 percent of urban Americans can’t get those speeds.

It’s a digital divide with real-world implications for attracting new businesses and encouraging the growth of existing enterprises, from online auctions of land and cattle to banking to software company startups.

For rural businesses, 25 Mbps connection means being able to make flawless video calls with clients on more than one device and download large files quickly. It’ll also let you stream Netflix’s 4K Ultra HD movies.

A 2015 study by researchers at Oklahoma State University, Mississippi State University and University of Texas showed rural counties with good access to broadband attracted more new businesses, had better household income growth and better employment figures than their counterparts without.

President Donald Trump pledged to bridge the digital divide last week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“I will be including a provision in our infrastructure proposal — $1 trillion proposal, you’ll be seeing it very shortly — to promote and foster enhanced broadband access for rural America,” Trump said, according to a transcript of his comments. “We will rebuild rural America.”

The pledge is music to the ears of Craig Softley, economic development coordinator for Hayes County. Softley says broadband is an infrastructure of necessity in the 21st century and the federal government should help spread it to rural areas just like telephone, electric and water projects of the past.

Softley grew up on a Perkins County farm but left the state after graduating from Grant High School in 1997. He studied mechanical engineering at Colorado School of Mines, then moved around the country doing logistics work for a variety of industries, including mining, grain processing, food manufacturing and bio-refining.

A little more than a year ago, Softley and his wife Rhea moved back home. They have five children and dreams of ranching.

Softley started a software company and his wife got a job as a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher for the Hayes Center Public Schools district.

“Internet out here is extremely expensive and extremely slow,” Craig said. “We’ve lived all over the country. This is the most I’ve ever paid for the internet and it’s the slowest speed I’ve ever had.”

He pays $112 for 15 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload.

“If I lived in Ogallala today, I could get a gigabyte download speed for $40 a month,” he said.

It’s expensive to get internet to rural communities. Industry estimates are about $30,000 per mile for fiber-optic cable, Softley said. At that cost, broadband companies need help from the government to make it worth connecting rural homes.

When they do build it, Softley said, jobs, quality of life and innovation follows.

Fiber-optic broadband connections that have pushed into rolling hills and Nebraska plains have helped attract software companies such as Atlanta-based Xpanxion Technologies, founded by Loup City native Paul Eurek, which now employs people in Kearney, Loup City and Lincoln, as well as Pune, India.

One survey of Nebraska businesses reported in a 2014 edition of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cornhusker Economics found more than half of the firms that responded rated the availability of broadband as either essential or important in selecting their location, and 64 percent called a fast connection essential for staying where they’re at.

A 2016 poll of rural Nebraskans found 82 percent report subscribing to internet service at home, 6 percent use only a cellphone data plan, 9 percent have neither internet nor cellphone plan and 2 percent have only dial-up internet service. The poll, which had 1,746 responses, was done by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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