The Mathews County Broadband Advisory Board shared the results of its countywide broadband survey with the Mathews County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. After hearing the report, supervisors took action on three requests from the advisory board.
Chair Judy Rowe reported that 1,220 people had responded to the survey with the information needed. This represented 24 percent of tax addresses, 31 percent of occupied houses, or 21 percent of the total units in the county, she said, calling it “a fair response.”
The survey included not just private homeowners, but also home-based businesses, commercial businesses, farms, post offices, and museums, said Rowe.
Results showed that 70 percent of the respondents to the survey have cell phones and hot spots—devices that don’t support online homework or business needs, said Rowe.
Approximately half of those responding have cable, she said, some of whom were satisfied with their service. Another 9 percent had fixed wireless, 2 percent weren’t sure what they had, and 10 percent had no service at all. There were also 3 percent of respondents with DSL service, which Verizon no longer supports, said Rowe, and 7 percent with satellite service, who reported dissatisfaction.
Mathews County Planning and Zoning Director Thomas Jenkins shared maps he created that show the locations of residences with Atlantic Broadband, and those maps revealed “glaring areas of no broadband,” he said, pointing out dark spots in the area of Peach Point, Fickle Fen, and Tick Neck roads in the Foster; the western edge of the county near the North River; Holland Point in Dutton, and areas in Moon.
Jenkins said he knew there were people close to each other, some of whom had service and some of whom had reported that the capital costs of connecting were prohibitively expensive.
“It could be a matter of how far you are from the main line,” he said. “Getting the last mile out to the long roads is the issue.”
Rowe said the survey shows a high rate of dissatisfaction among respondents, with just 31 percent satisfied with their service, 45 percent in need of new or improved service, and 19 percent who had attempted to obtain service but hadn’t been able to.
The survey also provides evidence that lack of broadband is impacting people’s decisions to live in Mathews, said Rowe, with some people saying they can’t move to Mathews full-time because the service isn’t available and some saying they had moved out of the county because for that reason.
Rowe said that the board of supervisors had made a commitment last June to bring reliable, accessible broadband to the county, and that such service requires at least 25 megabits per second of download speed and three megabits per second of upload speed.
“We need to cover every inch of our county,” she said. “There are lots of Midwestern states that are covered border to border. We should be able to cover Mathews County.”
According to the Fed Communications Commission, Mathews has over 90 percent coverage with broadband, said Rowe, but that’s based on a model that requires a provider to serve just one person per census block. She said Mathews has three census blocks.
In contrast to the FCC, Rowe said that data from Microsoft shows that Mathews has just 19 percent of people connecting at 25 mbps.
The affordability broadband is a problem in Mathews, as well, said Rowe, with the cost of connection fees the main problem.
“Most of us cannot pay the $2,000 to $15,000 quoted to some people,” she said. A majority of the respondents said were willing to pay a monthly cost of up to $60, according to Rowe.
An Ohio University study demonstrated that the annual benefit per household of broadband is $1,850, said Rowe. That could equate to a $10 million benefit countywide. In addition, the value of homes with broadband is generally around 3 percent higher than homes without the service, which is equal to around $7,000 in increased value for the average-priced home in the county, or up to $2 million extra in tax value.
After the presentation, supervisors voted unanimously to appoint and approve a policy team and a broadband management team, each with specific members and tasks. They also agreed to have a Request for Information prepared to seek responses from companies interested in being ISP partners and to adopt a hybrid approach to broadband development that would include the county sharing assets as well as making a capital investment.
The next meeting of the Mathews County Broadband Advisory Board is at 7 p.m. Monday at the Mathews Volunteer Rescue Squad building on Cricket Hill Road.