Dear Friends,

I’ve been doing a little research on the history of electricity. We often think of Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity with a kite, a key and some lightening. While this is often how we think of it, the history of electricity goes back as far as 500 B.C. Doctors and scientists dabbled with the theory of electricity throughout our history. In the early 1700’s there was an English scientist that made a glass ball glow while experimenting and created enough light to read in the dark. Fast forward to 1751 when Benjamin Franklin published his findings “Experiments and Observations on Electricity”. We could say the rest is history, but it wasn’t until 1882 when the first home in the United States was set up with what we would consider residential electricity. By 1960 nearly every home in the United States had electricity. Crazy, right? I was fascinated by these facts, which I found on mrelectric.com if you want to check it out. So, why was I researching electricity? Seems like an odd thing for someone like me to do I know. I was interested in seeing how long it took to develop, from the idea of electricity to actual implementation and practical usage. I wondered how we could take some of the concepts and practices for the development of electricity and how we can correlate that to broadband service as a utility.

In the early days of electricity use in homes, blocks of wood were used for panels, switches and fuse boxes. No wonder fires were so common! Do you remember the early days of getting online? Dial-up. Whoa! Blast from the past right? Dial-up. First you hear the number dial … then a brief pause … then the sound like a fax machine makes, then lots of static and bam! You’re online. My kids today have no idea how tedious and unreliable the process of getting online used to be. Getting bumped off, retrying over and over if too many people were online … what a nightmare! And now? You are always connected, always online, never have to login or worry about too many people getting on at the same time. Our phones, televisions, computers, homes, cars … everything is always connected!

Our issues today are more about access to internet and quality. When I look back to the history of electricity and the infrastructure we have today, it’s amazing what we take for granted. Dark out? Flip the switch. Need to make a call? Pick up your cell and make it. Want to search what other movies that actor or actress was in? Grab your device and search it! We have unlimited information literally at our fingertips. Well, not all of us do.

Unfortunately, nearly half of those who live and work in Chenango County face a big problem. In August of 2020, a study from Congressman Brindisi’s office was released and noted some of the glaring issues throughout NY22 regarding broadband access, cost and reliability of the service. One of the biggest discrepancies was that the FCC inaccurately claims that 76.8% of Chenango County residents and businesses have access to broadband. However, a similar report put out by Microsoft shows that only 26% of Chenango County have access. This is such a huge difference and even if we feel like it’s probably in the middle of each, we can safely guess that about half of Chenango County has access to broadband. And out of those that have it, most have issues with reliability, speed and cost.

One of the biggest issues facing us is availability of broadband. It cripples our businesses; it makes us uncompetitive when trying to attract any business or person to relocate here; and this doesn’t even touch on the issues facing our students and educators with this lack of access. To me, solving this problem will make all the difference in our economic development initiatives. Helping to solve this broadband puzzle in Chenango County is a top priority of my office.

Broadband is a necessary part of infrastructure that should be available to everyone, everywhere, no matter what. Just like electricity is. It’s necessary to our future and without it, we have to work that much harder to be competitive. Just like we worked hard as a nation to provide electricity to every home in the United States, we are faced with the same need once again and this time it’s broadband. I just can’t believe that we are over 20 years into the “dot com” transformation, and we still haven’t figured this out yet.

While we wait for those higher up to finally make the investments necessary, Commerce Chenango and our affiliated organizations are not waiting around. We’re taking action in many ways. We were integral in developing the Southern Tier 8 Regional Broadband Coalition where we are working on updated maps, education and planning so we can apply for funds to build out the infrastructure. We have teamed up with new and innovative companies that have technology that is affordable and reliable to do this now. In addition, we will be submitting a grant later this week. If we are successful, we’ll get the money needed to build out two underserved communities in Chenango County with broadband. In addition, once we show how we were successful with this first program, we will be able to get additional funds to continue this work throughout the rest of the county. If we have to slowly outfit each community, one grant at a time, we will make this happen. Chenango County has waited long enough, and we can’t afford to be crippled by this lack of basic infrastructure.

Just know that you have a dedicated group of people working on this together. We are determined to make this happen, and we are using every tool and resource we have to find a way to fund this imitative.

Hey, if The Flintstones can figure out how to use dinosaurs and animals to outfit their kitchen appliances, this broadband thing should be a snap!

Yabba Dabba Doo, Chenango!

– Kerri