Whenever it is that we look back in our rear-view mirrors at the age of COVID-19, it’s becoming starkly obvious we’ll do it from a different place, a different perspective.
The world will have changed in many ways. We might not, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has suggested, shake hands as often — or at all. We might be more friendly to our neighbors. We might keep just a little more toilet paper on hand than normal. Grocery delivery may become more the rule and less the exception. There may be fewer movie theaters and more streaming of entertainment content, fewer restaurants but more of them offering curbside service. Social distancing in some forms may still exist, and no doubt the lingering pain from the economic gut-punch that we’re seeing, and will see, will exist for some time.
The pandemic has exposed a lot of cracks in our collective systems — not just in health care, but in other places that are lower-priority in our lives. But one area previously exposed is one that COVID-19 laid absolutely bare in Chatham County: our comparatively woeful access to broadband.
As detailed in a story in this week’s edition, our access to dependable, quality internet connection lags behind our neighbors. Yes, 86.5 percent of Chatham residents have acceptable internet and 82.7 percent have access to some level of connectivity. But in each of Chatham’s neighboring counties, those numbers are in the 90s, and often the high 90s.
The local deficiency created, and is creating, pinch points for our schools and businesses. It’s been, as the story says, a “talking point” in Chatham for some time. Some key elements to recognize as you drill down on the issue:
• 18 percent of students at Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City don’t have internet access at home, stemming from the fact that less than 80 percent of the Siler City area has access to high-speed broadband coverage (compared to 95.2 percent of all of North Carolina).
• Internet “hotspots,” devices which use cell signals to provide boosted web access, aren’t reliable in some parts of the county.
• The “speed” or bandwidth of some of Chatham County’s major internet providers is a fraction of that provided in surrounding counties.
“We are lacking that in many areas,” County Manager Dan LaMontagne told the News + Record. “It’s extremely valuable to our students. Their homework is increasingly online. This is really a needed utility throughout the state.” And according to Amanda Hartness, the district’s assistant superintendent of academic service and instructional support, internet inequity has been CCS’ “biggest challenge” during COVID-19. She says: “We do have students and staff who aren’t getting the same experience,” an inequality that creates additional and unnecessary gaps in learning.
Broadband services, according to a report from the N.C. League of Municipalities, “has become essential infrastructure, fundamental to commerce, education, health care and entertainment. Nonetheless, more than two decades into the digital revolution, many areas of North Carolina lack access to adequate broadband service, and even densely-populated areas can lack the kinds of internet speeds needed for business to thrive.”
This isn’t about good access to Netflix or your Amazon Prime account. It’s about inadequate access across all of Chatham County for those who need it for essential day-to-day living. To fix it, the discussion about that access needs to be re-framed — to see broadband access not as a luxury, but as a utility, just like water and electricity, in the words of County Manager Dan LaMontagne.
Local officials, including Chatham’s legislative delegation, are working the problem — making it a priority in part because it’ll help Chatham’s economic fortunes as well. A report from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization in Washington, D.C., pointed out the correlation between better broadband and higher per capita gross domestic product, higher revenues for home businesses connected to high-speed connections and improved property values.
“If a community wants to thrive in the economy and society of the decades to come, it needs a network capable of carrying that kind of traffic,” the report’s author wrote. “There is no silver bullet that works for every community. But there is a bullet that can kill every community — doing nothing.”
Check out the story this week, which begins on page A1, to see what Chatham County is doing and to understand the significance of this issue. Its importance can’t be underestimated.