What’s Keeping Your Community From Getting Involved in Local Broadband Planning? Here’s a List of Skeptical Questions We’ve Heard
While many Americans support efforts by public entities to address the digital divide, there are still communities where critical public sector leaders are not thinking about how to improve their community’s connectivity. Those towns are increasingly in a tough spot; without political will for the public sector to address broadband challenges, those communities will likely not be able to take full advantage of funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program and Digital Equity Act.
Getting public sector leaders on board means helping them understand the value of better broadband and overcoming their concerns. To that end, here is a short list of questions we’ve received from tenative decision-makers:
- How can any rural area be served reliably? Isn’t it a given that rural areas are just going to have bad internet?
- Even if new, fast internet is brought to my area, how will I be able to afford it?
- Won’t the private sector handle this eventually on its own? Why do we even need to pursue grants?
- Isn’t building a new fiber network in a rural area too risky due to Starlink?
- Whatever we build now will be obsolete in 5 years, so why do anything?
- I have internet service that works and can use Google and send emails. Why do we need something better?
Building political will to act on broadband opportunities doesn’t happen overnight, so if it’s lacking in your community, there’s no time to waste.
Do you have answers ready for all of the questions listed above? What questions have you encountered that aren’t on the list? Are there any that you need help answering? Let us know, and we might make them the topic of a future post!
