Thursday, September 03, 2009
Editorial: An unhealthy broadband lag
Southwest Virginia and much of rural America are falling behind in high-speed Internet access.
From the RoundTable blog
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America may be in the slow lane on the information superhighway, but this region of Virginia is on a dirt path beside the highway, according to a recent report by the Communication Workers of America.
Granted, CWA might simply be interested in securing more jobs for union workers upgrading the nation's digital infrastructure, but the report points out some serious problems.
Across the nation, the average download speed is 5.1 megabits per second. The average download speed in South Korea, on the other hand, is 20.4 mbps.
Sure, it's easier and cheaper to wire a nation the size of Kentucky than one that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but -- whatever the causes -- the speed differential has a real impact on the nation's competitive ability when companies and educational institutions need the ability to move large chunks of data quickly.
Virginia beats the national average, but that's solely due to a concentration of high-speed access in Northern Virginia near D.C.
Southwest Virginia has some of the lowest average download speeds in the state. Wythe County doesn't even crack 1 mbps, and most counties in the region are far below 4 mbps.
Such speeds put advanced uses of the Internet out of reach, such as medical monitoring of homebound patients and distance education projects involving two-way videoconferencing.
They also keep consumers from fully enjoying things like streaming video, downloading music or playing online video games, as well as making it more difficult to use the computer to work from home.
The stimulus bill includes $7.2 billion for broadband projects in rural areas where the need is greatest. That's a lot of money, but still just a drop in the bucket compared to the needs.
America as a whole is falling behind the rest of the world in Internet connectivity, and rural areas are doing even worse. Broadband Internet is becoming a crucial infrastrure for the 21st century, for business and entertainment. America -- all of America -- needs to try to catch up.
