News

April 13, 2009

Broadband services slow to expand across Pa.

Despite a boost from the stimulus package, providers wait for more information.

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer
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The federal stimulus package contains $7.7 billion for expanding broadband services throughout the country, but service providers and others in the state already working toward that end are slow to fast track projects until they learn more about the funds.

Pennsylvania set a deadline of 2015 for telecommunications companies to provide high-speed Internet service under Act 183 of 2004.

Frontier Communications Corp. met its goal last year to provide 100 percent broadband availability, said Ken Mason, vice president of government and regulatory affairs in the company’s Rochester, N.Y., office.

Frontier serves rural and suburban areas in the Pennsylvania and offers a combination of voice, data and video services to its customers. It operates in 24 states nationwide and has approximately 3 million access lines and high-speed Internet subscribers, according to its Web site.

“We’re looking at at least one project in all of our states,” Mason said. “The hope is that we can fill the areas that are not yet served.”

Frontier plans to file comments with the Federal Communications Commission on broadband-related issues by today, he said.

The FCC has been accepting input from the public and industry that will assist the U.S. departments of Commerce and Agriculture, the agencies in charge of dispensing the funds through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Broadband funding is part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law Feb. 17 by President Barack Obama. The program includes selected tax cuts and incentives to spur certain consumer and business spending.

With $4.7 billion in hand the commerce department has the larger share of the funds. Agriculture has $2.5 billion specifically for development of broadband in rural areas.

“The agencies have not come out with rules yet,” Mason said, explaining why Frontier has not requested any funds.

Brian Langan, government services manager with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance community and economic development organization, shared Mason’s caution.

“I think we’re still trying to find our way,” said Langan, who has been working on a broadband educational outreach program for communities in the alliance’s seven county territory.

“Without a doubt Pennsylvania is going to benefit from this program,” Langan said. Just how much “we don’t know,” he said.

Larger players such as Verizon also are taking a cautious approach at this point, said Bill Shuffstall, an extension educator at the Penn State University College of Agriculture Science in University Park.

Absent a national policy, the private sector has taken on the buildout of broadband infrastructure, Shuffstall noted. The companies doing so are interested in making money and they are doing it where they will get the largest return on their investment.

“That’s not rural,” Shuffstall said.

However, the stimulus package and other efforts in advanced communications could result in a national broadband policy, “something that’s been sorely lacking,” he said.

Over the last 13 years, cable companies in the state have invested approximately $8 billion in their broadband networks, according to the Broadband Cable Association of Pennsylvania.

Each of the state’s 67 counties has broadband service, said association spokesman Brian Herrmann.

The stimulus funds could further expand the service to unserved areas. To accomplish that goal, the association recommended several basic principles, including awarding fund to projects that are “competitively and technologically neutral so as not to create disincentives to private investment,” focusing on projects the can be implemented quickly and done transparently and coordinated with other agencies that are providing similar aid. Herrmann stressed that “care must be taken so that the program will do no harm to the fabric of the Commonwealth’s broadband industry.”

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