ROBY, Texas (CN) — With around 4,000 residents spread across a couple small towns and miles of farmland, Fisher County is a lot like other rural and far-flung parts of Texas. But the county stands out for having some of the lowest rates of high-speed internet access in the state, if not the country.
Just around 9% of Fisher County residents have access to broadband, internet with download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second that advocates say is increasingly important for participating in the modern economy. By contrast, more than 96% of Texans overall have broadband availability, according to data from Connected Nation, a group dedicated to improving internet access.
Especially as American life went virtual during the pandemic, the lack of high-speed internet impacted almost everyone here, from students trying to attend remote classes to prisoners and elderly residents with doctor’s appointments. It also effects the local economy, because the many second homeowners who might choose to work remotely in Fisher County are unable to do so, said Fisher County Judge Ken Holt.
“Without broadband,” he explained, “they can’t work.”
Even Holt’s job duties are affected by the lack of high-quality internet. As county judge, he often has to handle late-night magistrate duties and emergency detention orders.
“I could actually do that [from home] with broadband,” Holt said. But without stable high-speed internet, “I have to get dressed.”
During the Texas legislative session this year, lawmakers took aim at the lack of broadband access in places like Fisher County, in the northwest part of the state. House Bill 5, sponsored by East Texas Republican Trent Ashby, will create a state broadband office with the goal of helping direct broadband funding into underserved areas. The legislation has been sent to Republican Governor Greg Abbott's desk and he is expected to sign it.
The bill was a rare bipartisan triumph, gaining yes votes from every representative in the Texas House except for around a dozen conservative Republicans who fretted about access to online pornography. But with the initiative still in its early stages, it could be a year or more before places like Fisher County start seeing results.
The push to improve internet access in Texas has been growing for years. Since at least 2014, the Federal Communications Commission has required internet service providers to file a biannual form indicating the scope of their internet availability. But with ISPs only required to list places where they can or do service “at least one location” — and with the data collected at the census-block level — many complain the form creates a misleading picture of where internet services are offered.
More recently, some local officials in Texas, working with groups like Connected Nation, have been gathering household-level data on internet access, in part to show federal officials that internet access is not as widespread as they might think.
“The digital divide has been a fact, but the pandemic has highlighted it,” said Peggy O’Brien, who is helping lead one such survey in the Big Bend region through the Rio Grande Council of Governments. That's especially true "with students not being able to get connected for schoolwork, or people working at home not being able to connect with jobs.”
When it comes to widespread internet access, Texas has a few factors working against it. With a sparse population in much of the state, it often simply doesn’t make economic sense for telecommunications companies to build out the infrastructure necessary for high-speed internet.
Even when companies do invest the infrastructure, the small customer base can drive up costs. In March, Big Bend Telephone, an internet-service provider covering Far West Texas, estimated they had to lay an average 4 miles of cable just to service one customer. By contrast, internet service providers in big cities might cover thousands of customers with the same distance. That discrepancy is often associated with significantly higher internet bills for rural residents. In Polk County in rural East Texas, fiber internet connections cost around 18 times what they might in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, according to one study.
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