- Now for a Closer Look at the challenge of getting strong
reliable internet in all regions of the state.
Good broadband is more than just the ability to stream video.
For the state's rural areas in particular,
it can be a link to a better way of life,
allowing people to work from home or start a business.
But it also requires substantial government investment.
An issue that has received rare bipartisan support.
Andy Soth has this report from western Wisconsin.
- This is Janice with Interiors by J and L.
- Janice Quinton has a short commute.
It's just down the basement stairs.
But from her home in western Wisconsin,
she's in constant touch with her colleagues
working in the Madison area.
Window treatments are being hung in this new home.
Work coordinated remotely by Quinton.
- We primarily do window coverings,
whether it be commercial or residential.
Some of the plans, I can get off of line and then I'm able to do,
through the online services, do the quoting and bidding out
of products to customers.
I might just need to send you down the work order.
- This wouldn't be possible without the internet.
Specifically a stable broadband link that keeps Quinton
connected.
The Quinton family moved to Pepin so Janice's husband Bruce
could take a job as school superintendent.
- Yeah, Pepin has been great for our family.
The area is beautiful.
The children have a lot of opportunities
even through a small town.
- But that beautiful landscape of the Mississippi Valley
makes wiring for the internet a challenge.
Something the Quintons didn't consider when they moved.
- At the time of looking at house,
which ones had internet connection and which ones didn't
was not something that was part of our criteria of what we were
looking for in a house and it probably should have been cause
some of the house we looked at were five to ten mile range
outside of town.
So there were a few that were out into the bluffs.
- A look at the state's broadband,
as mapped by the Public Service Commission,
reveals a checkerboard of digital haves in dark blue and
have nots in light brown.
But the potential for broadband to support a telecommuting
workforce in the state's rural areas is great.
- Broadband is one of the greatest tools we have to help
rural people stay in the rural communities and be engaged.
- Ricky Rolfsmeyer heads Wisconsin Rural Partners.
- It's really, really going to be important to the rural
communities.
It's going to be essential for almost anything and any kind of
employment, and truly essential for keeping rural people rural.
- Down the Great River Road from Pepin in Cochrane,
the Cochrane Co-op telephone company keeps an old telephone
switchboard from its early founding days.
- We are the oldest of the 11 telephone cooperatives
in the state.
In 1905, the cooperative was formed and it used to be called
Farmers, Farmers Telephone.
- The name may have changed but serving farmers
remains a core mission.
- There's a piece of glass there.
- At this farm miles into the hills above Cochrane,
a technician services the hair-thin fiber optic cable.
- Cutting the square end on the end of the glass.
- Fiber to the farm provides the same level of service as
available in town but it comes with a substantial price tag.
- In rural areas it's very hard to be able to afford to go out
to that one customer that has a mile,
mile and a half driveway and they're 10 miles out from the
central office which is where all the electronics sit.
- Federal grants and loans help.
- We took out a loan with the USDA Rural Utility Services to
allow us to invest in a fiber network.
It's important for us that our customers have the same quality
and type of service as they have in the bigger cities.
- Advocates for rural broadband draw parallels to historic
government investment in rural electrification
and universal telephone service.
- Hopefully that will help get broadband out to all of America
as an essential service.
- It's a service that's been essential for Janice Quinton and
her family to live the kind of life they were searching for
when they moved to Pepin.
- We wanted a smaller town atmosphere
for the kids at school.
- And the flexibility of working from home also improved
that quality of life.
- I can be at the track meets.
I can be at the softball games.
I can both that at-home mom and be able to fulfill
my work requirements.
- Joining us now from Rhinelander to talk about
broadband in rural areas is Don Sidlowski,
founder of the Northwoods Broadband Economic Development
Coalition.
Thanks for your time today.
- Glad to be here.
- Broadband is being compared to rural electrification.
Do we need fiber to reach every home in this state?
- We do not actually.
We can accomplish what we want with a creative patchwork quilt
of broadband technology solutions.
Some of it's going to be fiber for sure.
Point to point wireless has gained in technological
capability as have the other ways of doing it.
Is there going to be some glass to the towers and glass to the
homes?
Absolutely but that's not the only way we can light up
Wisconsin.
- There's a proposal in the state budget that'll help expand
broadband.
Is it enough and how does that work?
- Well, what's ever enough?
But compared to where we were a few short years ago.
$500,000 a year and now we're talking $35 million a year.
Our legislators get it.
It took a while for patient advocacy to really make that
break through but when you hear the governor,
lieutenant governor and all the leaders going around the state
saying broadband this, broadband that,
it means they got the message loud and clear.
With that kind of funding for the next three or four years,
we ought to be able to do a pretty good job making broadband
universally accessible in all of Wisconsin,
including those part of rural.
- Is broadband going to be the difference between one city or
one region growing and one other region falling behind
if they don't have it?
- Absolutely.
There can't be two Wisconsins.
One that has all of the advantages of the 21st century
and the other that's in this backwards place
without access to it.
If you have broadband, the future is yours to control.
It's really up to your community then to decide how to leverage
that for economic development, education and a variety
of other things.
- There's a lot of brain drain in rural and northern Wisconsin
with young people going away for college and ending up in a big
city because that's where a lot of those jobs are.
Is broadband the type of thing that can bring them back?
- It sure is.
If they decide to go off to technical college or four year
school they can come back, work from home if they start a
business themselves.
Or work from a remote location for their employer.
With the Fab Lab program that we started in the schools,
this connects broadband to economic development and
education.
Those kids are going to be more encouraged to want to stay right
here, closer to home and pursue their careers here in Wisconsin.
- From some parts of the state,
Rhinelander's considered a rural area.
In your part of the state, is Rhinelander the big city?
How do you define rural once you get to the north woods
and people are more spread out?
- Let's put it into perspective.
Wausau has a population of about 50,000.
All of Oneida County, in which Rhinelander is located,
has a population of about 40,000.
My hometown of Three Lakes 2,000.
All of Florence County, 2,000.
So what is rural?
How small can we get when we define rural?
I'm going to say anything that really is under the size of a
city of Wausau, 50,000 and under,
you're starting to get into rural and then there's very
rural.
- How does Wisconsin compare to other states especially in the
region, competitively for this?
- We're catching up.
Ten years ago we were way behind our neighbors to the west,
in Minnesota, were putting in $100 million a year.
And we're up to over a third of that so we're catching up fast.
We're going to be able to compete effectively with
Illinois, Minnesota and the other surrounding
Great Lake states.
- Don Sidlowski from the north woods.
Thank you for your time today.
- Pleasure. Thank you.