Judy Rowe of Grimstead has spent years fighting to bring broadband to Mathews County. She attended school board and supervisors’ meetings, talked to legislators, and made numerous phone calls to cable and Wi-Fi companies. All seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Then two years ago something changed. The Mathews County Board of Supervisors, faced with yet another desperate appeal from Rowe, agreed to establish a Broadband Advisory Board and make Rowe its chairman. That was all she needed, and she hasn’t stopped since.
Rowe immediately began to pull together a diverse group of individuals to form the core of the board, along with additional people with interests in various areas that would benefit from broadband. Crucially, Rob Quartel, a businessman and entrepreneur with experience in cyber technology, offered his help, and Rowe had all she needed to forge ahead.
Since it was established, the board has sponsored a community-wide survey to determine the need for Wi-Fi and won four major grants to support broadband in the county. Two grants came from CARES Act funding—one to erect an array of eight Smart Poles in underserved areas of the county, and another to purchase Mi-Fi units that people can check out at the library. The other two grants, totaling more than $4 million, will provide broadband access to more than 600 homes, or over 10 percent of all the homes in Mathews.
Rowe’s mission began 12 years ago, when she was asked to help the Mathews Boys and Girls Club get the technology for after-school tutoring for students. She said she was appalled to find how many of the children couldn’t do the material they were assigned because they didn’t have internet access at home.
It wasn’t always about money, she said, because the service simply wasn’t there in some parts of the county. It amounted to nothing less than discrimination, both economically and geographically. On top of that, she said, the county was missing out on sources of revenue that can be generated when individuals and businesses have internet access.
“One professional couple I talked to wants to move to Mathews, but they have to have high-speed internet for the jobs, so they can’t,” she said. “People want to get out of crowded cities and come here, but they can’t get service.”
After a day when she spent three hours helping her grandson do an online math assignment that he didn’t understand at first, the retired math teacher wondered what it must be like for a parent without such a background who might be helping two children or more, with perhaps a single computer to share among them.
“I wondered how many children in Mathews were not able to improve their grade,” she said. “There were always 30 to 35 percent of children who didn’t have the internet … When they got to high school, it had an impact on their GPA.”
“I was told in the beginning to plan on 10 years,” said Rowe of her committee. “I said we haven’t got 10 years. We need to do something now.”
After having proved they can get the job done, board members are ready to take on new challenges. They’re currently negotiating with cellular companies to build two major towers that would provide access to large areas of the county, and subcommittees are working on such issues as tele-health and tele-education. Rowe is there to helm every meeting.
She said she won’t rest until it’s done.
“There are so many people that need this,” she said. “It is so necessary. It can’t come soon enough.”
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