(TNS) — RALEIGH — Cumberland County’s state Rep. John Szoka and state Sen. Wesley Meredith filed legislation this week that aims to bring high speed internet to communities that lack it.
“We have a lot of people that do not have access to broadband. We need to have that,” Meredith said.
Szoka and Meredith’s proposed law would be called the BRIGHT Futures Act. It would allow local governments to partner with private companies to expand broadband connectivity. Further, it would permit the North Carolina Department of Commerce to issue grants to underwrite projects that expand digital infrastructure in rural areas.
People in rural parts of Cumberland County suffer because broadband internet is unavailable to them, Szoka said in interviews this week and at a news conference on Thursday. Even in cities such as Fayetteville, there are areas without broadband, he said.
For example, Szoka said, students in the Beaver Dam area of southeast Cumberland County have fast internet at their schools, but can’t get it at their homes. This makes it hard for the students to do research at home for their homework, he said.
And a man from Linden in northern Cumberland County had to move his video-editing company to Fayetteville, Szoka said, because the internet provider in the Linden area did not offer a fast-enough connection for the man’s business needs.
“Things like that are exactly what this bill is designed to overcome,” Szoka said. “It’s not acceptable for people in areas like my district in Linden, or in any other rural area, to be limited in their opportunities because companies, some companies, have not yet determined that it’s either cost-effective or profitable to serve them. And we just can’t afford to leave our rural areas behind in the gigabit revolution.”
The internet connections offer other societal benefits, Szoka said. As examples, he said the connections are needed for telemedicine for doctors to remotely examine patients, for devices to help doctors remotely monitor the health of people with chronic disease, and for devices to remotely control energy use in homes and businesses to save money.
The monitoring devices that Szoka referenced are part of “the internet of things” — gadgets, tools or other items that are connected to the internet to be monitored or controlled remotely.
The “BRIGHT” in the BRIGHT Futures act as an acronym referring to broadband, retail (as in retail online services), the internet of things, the power grid, health care and training and education, Szoka said.
The bill includes plans to create a new grant program at the Department of Commerce to assist the growth of businesses in the BRIGHT market segment.
The legislation’s prime sponsors include Rep. Brenden Jones of highly rural Columbus County. President Bill Clinton visited Columbus County in April 2000 to call for expansion of the internet to rural areas as a tool to boost their economies as their old manufacturing and agricultural bases declined.
Fayetteville City Councilman Kirk deViere attended Thursday’s press conference. He has been pressing to grow internet and related business opportunities in Fayetteville.
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest also endorsed Szoka and Meredith’s legislation. North Carolina has been bringing fast internet to all its classrooms, he said, and now it needs to reach all people’s homes to give them business and education opportunities.
Small government conservative organizations such as the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh often criticize programs that use tax dollars underwrite private enterprise.
But this idea has merit, said Mitch Kokai, a senior political analyst at the foundation.
“I think it has the opportunity to lead to some good things for rural North Carolina communities, but the devil is really going to be in the details,” he said.
The legislation should have safeguards to prevent the program from giving one internet provider an unfair advantage over its competitors, Kokai said.
And there should be safeguards to ensure that tax money doesn’t pay for something that an internet provider would otherwise build on its own, without the program, he said.
©2017 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
