Illinois broadband on the move—and showing no signs of slowing down, right to the last mile

Lou Carlozo
Published: March 7, 2011

NAPERVILLE, Illinois, March 7, 2011 – As the SkokieNet librarian for the Skokie Public Library, Frances Roehm runs a tight cybership. She has to: Even though she’s part of a library system that’s won national awards for its efficiency and depth, there are days when the broadband network she relies on is no match for thousands of seniors, school kids and library-goers who use it. And use it. And use it. 

“We have 300 computers in our building and days where we don’t have the capacity to handle what’s going on, said Roehm, one of 100 people on hand Monday as Broadbandillinois.org hosted presentations by four awardees who secured funds through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “It is so slow, and we have to be able to support the capacity to handle everything, from the time we open in the morning until the time we close at 9 p.m. It’s non-stop.”

That was why Roehm felt moved to speculate what the future might look like if Illinois follows through on its ambitious broadband plans, from increasing capacity to building out that all-important “last mile” of connection to rural and isolated users. “If we had bigger capacity, we could get more people in. There is a need for it, and I don’t see any end in sight,” she said. “But I am grateful we have this $350 million in funding. I think it’s wonderful, because the need is there, it’s costly, and we have to deal with it every day.”

Similar questions about the future of broadband access dominated all discussion Monday at Northern Illinois University’s Naperville campus, site of the Broadband Illinois regional meeting. But it’s not as though that day-long summit proved a capstone in the efforts to get Illinois connected—far from it.

For even once the state realizes its ambitious goals to bring broadband to the most rural areas—even while bolstering emergency services, public education and economic opportunity—hard work will be needed every step of the way, from laying down all that digital pipeline to making sure the new resources are getting used, and jobs created.

“When you find out you win $12 million in funding, that’s quite exciting,” said Charles Wu of Convergence Technologies in Burr Ridge, one of the four awardees who made presentations Monday. “But there are strings attached. You have to go through accounting audits, government audits, and we can’t just take funding out of the company without prior approval.”

Wu added that a huge challenge will come with building out last-mile components, particularly in the most under-served areas of Chicago’s south suburbs, where his company is based.  “The cost of pulling a T-1 line is astronomical in those areas,” Wu said. “With construction, there’s a fixed cost to build. When we do fiber, it costs $5 a foot to lay that fiber down. It’s literally all labor, and when we put up a tower, we have zoning costs, we have to put up a tower, we have to dig a hole in the ground.”

There is good news, though: “The RUS [rural utility service] funding enables us to build infrastructure that not only benefits ourselves, but other people in the region that we’ve able to leverage,” Wu said.

Pitched energy among the 100 attendees was tangible, particularly after all four award winners finished their presentations. Many of the conversations reflected two buzzwords—jobs and revenue—but still others raised many questions about the last mile.

“This whole last mile component is a big part of our job,” said Jeff Eden, Outreach Director at Partnership for a Connected Illinois (PCI). “The whole question is how we’re going to address this component, and bring it together with the middle-mile component and the mapping component. It’s really a boots-on-the ground operation. We look at where broadband is not, and go after solutions. In many of these rural areas, access is the problem. If the library doesn’t have Internet, the people in the community probably don’t have it either.”

Randy Jenkins, regional director of the USDA’s Broadband Initiatives Program [BIP], supported that view with a practical example: “In rural areas, the last mile lets you download the book. In some areas, that is the library.”

“As we move down this road, we have to take stock of the assets already in place,” said John Lewis, director of NIU’s Regional Development Institute and a host for Monday’s event. “There are a lot of community organizations with [networks] already in place. So maybe we can think of some way to tie all of those organizations together in a way that’s efficient and cost effective.”

That begins, as it turns out, with Tuesday, as broadband leaders in Illinois get back to work at another important summit: the quarterly meeting of the Broadband Deployment Council meeting in Chicago, which will feature Lewis among the speakers.

With all that remains to be done, much also remains to be said about how broadband will unfold in the Land of Lincoln. But in terms of wrapping up Monday’s meeting, and the agenda beyond, no one said it better than PCI chairman Charles Benton.

“There’s been a lot of talk about the economic impact, and the infrastructure investment by the federal government was made to help with jobs and jump-start the economy,” Benton said. “But the non-economic bottom line is something we have to think about, too. I’m a big believer in doing good and doing well, and it’s a wonderful bottom line for living and contributing to society. So the social measurements of these investments are important too. If you look at the metrics, rather than just the ideological grounds, we can make investments and commitments based on what works. And that’s really the American way.”

 Photo by Lou Carlozo