The Daily Yonder recently posted a story about unreliable and inadequate broadband in Indiana…
Luke Dwenger checks his assignments over the public Wi-Fi connection at the Greensburg Decatur County Public Library while his dad Todd waits with him in the parking lot.
The library closed four hours ago, but the Dwengers’ internet is down again.
That Wednesday night isn’t the only night the Dwengers have had to leave their home in search of stable internet. The family has visited the library, local parks and the McDonald’s parking lot to make sure the kids can do their homework.
Many places in rural Minnesota have great broadband, but I know this will sound familiar to some. Here are the stats in Indiana…
According to the consumer data monitor BroadbandNow, a third of Decatur County residents lack download speeds over 25 megabits, the amount considered fast enough to support streaming high definition video, loading webpages, and sending emails across one to three devices at the same time.
Daily Yonder outlines past investment…
The U.S. government has attempted to remedy this divide for over 16 years — and has thrown increasing amounts of money at the project of broadband access.
Since 2009, federal programs have dedicated at least $92 billion to fixing this issue for families like the Dwengers. Reporters at the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism at Indiana University looked at three federal laws funding major broadband programs.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allocated $20.4 billion toward broadband development, while the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund of 2020 put $7.2 billion toward the cause.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 dedicated a mammoth $65 billion to access, mostly through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. Indiana got a whopping $868 million out of the program.
The state is also using funding from the federal American Rescue Plan to invest more than $350 million in constructing new broadband infrastructure. In March, $500,000 was approved for underserved areas like Decatur County to improve service.
In addition to these big-ticket bills, dozens of smaller programs across 15 federal agencies have poured millions more into improving digital equity, according to the Government Accountability Office.
With some criticism…
But some critique the funding structure.
“Historically speaking the approach has been: let’s give money to the big ISPs,” Chao Jun Liu, a legislative associate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Arnolt Center. “It sort of disappears into that black box.”
Indiana’s broadband office said the BEAD program requires states to award funds through subgrants to ISPs.
“Non-profits and local governments are eligible, but only after the state can reach every address with appropriate broadband infrastructure,” Sibley, the office’s spokeswoman wrote in comments to the Capital Chronicle.
The article mentions Frontier, who also has issues in Minnesota…
Frontier’s website did not list connection speeds when enrolling new customers, despite pushing service add-ons to its basic internet package with flashy marketing images that some of their users might struggle to load.
Indiana joined the FTC and five other states in a 2021 complaint against Frontier. In the complaint, Indiana’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG) wrote that Frontier “committed unfair, abusive or deceptive acts” by leading consumers to believe Frontier offered service quality it could not actually live up to.
Indiana’s claims weren’t heard in court. Attorney General Todd Rokita and Frontier reached a $15 million settlement which requires Frontier to “change their advertising efforts to accurately represent to Indiana consumers both the availability and reliability of their internet service” according to an OAG news release.
The settlement required Frontier to invest in internet infrastructure throughout Indiana over four years. The company has until September 2024 to spend the $7.5 million; it’s spent $7, 045,658 to date, the OAG said Friday.
Frontier was also required to credit — from September 2023 to September 2025 — customers who pay for internet that doesn’t live up to advertised speeds. So far, for September 2023, that’s meant $6,153 in credits to 214 customers, per the OAG.