Connect the Future

By John Mcpeek, Mayor of Harrisburg, IL

America has many deep divisions and one of the most striking is the digital divide – the divide between families, businesses, and communities with high-speed internet, and those without. Access to high-speed internet is essential these days. American of all ages rely on it for healthcare, education, commerce, social engagements, and more. And yet, over 14 million people lack access to high-speed internet. The pandemic hastened the transition to more and more of our lives online, putting the 14 million-plus Americans who are on the wrong side of the digital divide even further behind. Children without access to high-speed internet are the most vulnerable – the inequality among kids driven by lack of access to broadband is so well-documented it has its own name, the “homework gap.”

That’s why the desire to create policy that closes this divide has brought together elected officials in both parties including in Illinois making it one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus. The recently passed bipartisan infrastructure law provides $65 billion in funding to help get every American connected to high-speed internet. The vast majority of that funding goes to broadband expansion projects, predominantly in rural areas that typically aren’t cost effective to build in, requiring public and private entities to work together to connect the remaining unserved homes. This law has the potential to be as significant as the rural electrification effort in the early Twentieth century, finally enabling every American to get access to this crucial resource that will help them learn, work, and play -- but it won’t happen unless lawmakers modernize an outdated and inefficient system.

Unless Congress helps fix the broken process around access to utility poles, millions will be left waiting for internet, again. Utility poles are a crucial piece of communications infrastructure. They’re used to connect homes with electricity, telephone service, and now high-speed internet. But most utility poles aren’t owned by internet service providers or those doing broadband expansion; a combination of co-ops, local utilities and public entities do. Providers are supposed to pay a fair value for access to the poles which they’ve historically been more than willing to do. The problem is that rules for accessing permits and building is complicated and opaque. Sometimes, pole owners don’t feel the same sense of urgency to get broadband deployed as consumers do. When disputes arise, they take forever to be heard and sorted out. All of this leads to huge delays that hurt consumers and drives up costs for the project draining our tax dollars.

At the end of the day, those hurt most by this outdated process are the unserved folks that elected officials on both sides of the aisle sought to help with the infrastructure bill’s broadband expansion effort – particularly rural communities. Because multiple poles are sometimes needed to connect a single unserved home, a delay on one pole leads to exponential delays.

We need our elected leaders in Congress to cut through the red tape and modernize the pole access process to speed expansion and get everyone connected. Luckily there are a few simple ways they can do that. First, we need Congress to update the process to replace old poles. Secondly, they can increase transparency by building and enforcing consistent timelines for permitting and pole access. And finally, when disputes arise between pole owners and those charged with deploying broadband, they need to be heard and resolved quickly. None of these solutions come at any additional costs to the taxpayer. They simply make sense as a way to finish the job our elected officials set out to do – and unserved families and businesses in Illinois are counting on them to do.