BELLEFONTE — In this day and age, high speed internet is an essential tool. Yet, there are some parts of Centre County where service is lacking. In order to address this, Centre County agreed to have a tech company assess local needs and develop a broadband strategic plan.
“This really marks a new effort by the commissioners to advance improvements in broadband across the county,” said Lize Lose, county assistant director of planning and community development, in presenting the contract for Columbia Telecommunications Corporations to develop the plan to County Commissioners on Tuesday.
The cost of the project is $175,000, which is funded by the county’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation.
Lose said CTC will provide guidance to where priority investment in infrastructure can be made and provide assistance in conducting an online survey so the county can identify where service gaps are located.
The commissioners unanimously agreed to the contract shortly after a Comcast internet outage impacted much of the country including Centre County, showing how much the broadband infrastructure impacts lives, said Lose.
“A lot of people on the East Coast woke up this morning to no internet. Imagine if that was every single day of the week, every single day of the month and every single day of the year. Now a days the internet is as crucial as electricity, heat and phone service,” commissioner Mark Higgins said.
“Part of this process, also internal to Centre County Government, is pulling in our 911 communications and EMA department because in the event we have an outage like this, how crucial they are,” Lose said.
Chairman commissioner Michael Pipe said CTC has experience in doing similar project with other states, cities and counties.
“They did demonstrate the ability to draw down major state dollars, major federal dollars, and I think that is going to be crucial moving forward, especially with the passage of the infrastructure investment act last week,” Pipe said. “This is going to be really great timing, where we know we need more broadband, we have some thoughts about where it is needed, but this study will be able to use data and justify the grant application when we put them in 2022 where that broadband can be most utilized.”
Commissioner Steven Dershem said the ability to use the study to get state and federal funding is important, otherwise “the study is little more than another book on a shelf without an action plan afterwards and the resources to make it happen. I am very excited that CTC is going to be working with us.”
Dershem added, ”this is pretty important stuff. This is the electricity of the 1930s when we were trying to electrify a lot of rural America. Well, we are providing information technology to rural American now.”
This story appears in the Nov. 11-17 edition of the Centre County Gazette.
