Aug 28, 2016 4 min read

Over the past two decades, the internet has gone from a luxury item for those who enjoyed surfing the World Wide Web to a modern-day necessity that regularly impacts our daily lives.

Long gone are the days in the late 1990s of dial-up modems and screeching tones while connecting to the internet on a second phone line.

As the internet has given us more options for commerce, travel, news and communication, it also has grown more technical with faster downloading and uploading speeds for websites.

But the web’s infrastructure is tangled in many rural areas, not offering the same access to people living in Greene County and other lightly populated areas that bigger cities just a few miles away receive.

The state House Consumer Affairs Committee held a hearing in Waynesburg earlier this month to address concerns from the community about how to improve internet service in rural communities.

While there were the usual and valid complaints about internet speeds and reliability, it also revealed state legislators recognized more than a decade ago the need for the wide availability of internet service across Pennsylvania.

In 2004, the Legislature updated a provision in the state Public Utility Commission’s regulation that required internet providers to offer 1.544 megabits per second, better known as Mbps, to all residents in the state by 2015. Every company complied with the order, and many internet providers even upgraded their high-speed services by 2008.

But 2004 was a lifetime ago when it comes to the speed at which the internet has grown in recent years. The 1.544 Mbps speed is now inadequate to do many of the functions on upgraded websites that students use to learn or play games or adults use to purchase goods or arrange accommodations.

“I want to see our internet providers beef up their service,” state Rep. Pam Snyder said during the hearing. “But we legislators need to beef up (the PUC regulations).”

That’s true. State lawmakers should revisit the law and ensure, if possible, that the standards are upgraded to give more people better and more reliable access to the internet.

But they should also investigate whether the current regulations are being followed. State Rep. Brandon Neuman raised concerns during the hearing that while all telecommunication companies are in compliance with the rules, he heard numerous complaints from Greene County residents about not receiving the download speeds they were offered.

Kelly Keruskin of Morgan Township and Deborah Morgan of Mt. Morris both testified their internet service through Windstream is nowhere close to the PUC’s threshold and is regularly below 1 Mbps.

“I feel like it’s 1998 with what you’re describing,” Neuman said.

But Neuman really focused on whether the companies are truly in compliance. He questioned the accuracy of that compliance rate since it requires customers to contact their internet provider and prove to them the speeds are slower than advertised. Keruskin said after the hearing her complaints about service go unanswered.

The state should do more to ensure telecommunication companies are, indeed, offering the services they are advertising. Penalizing companies that are not complying with the regulations would be one way to solve the problem with network reliability.

The other is to “beef up” internet speeds, as Snyder suggested.

Unfortunately, it is very costly for telecommunication companies to upgrade their line infrastructure in rural areas that might have only a fraction of the paying customers urban and suburban neighborhoods have.

“There is a cost to do this,” said Steve Samara, president of Pennsylvania Telephone Association. “A million dollars here and a million dollars there,” Samara said. “We’re trying to get it to the right places, but everyone wants it.”

And there’s money available to do just that.

There is currently $2.2 million in federal Connect America Fund Phase II money earmarked for fiber upgrades in Greene County, which is included in the total $23.7 million in unclaimed CAF II funds slated for Pennsylvania. That money should be used here to help improve internet infrastructure, although it legally can be spent anywhere, possibly in other areas of the country.

So, why not spend that money here and use it now? It’s not 1998 anymore.