CUMBERLAND — Broadband can create jobs and allow small businesses based anywhere to compete nationally and worldwide, said Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications Corp.
Broadband is “essential to our future prosperity,” Hovis said. Thin glass tubes, referred to as “fiber,” can carry an immense amount of digital data and have “theoretically unlimited capacity” constrained only by the speed of light, Hovis said.
“As a region, you represent astonishing buying power,” Hovis said. And better broadband access can bring new investment to Allegany and Garrett counties, she said. Hovis is heading up a comparable project in Garrett County.
Hovis spoke to the Allegany County Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Committee on Wednesday morning in the chamber’s board room.
Hovis is the consultant for Allegany County’s Broadband Feasibility Study funded by a grant agreement between the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Allegany County Board of Education, said Rebecca Rupert, the co-chair of the chamber committee.
Hovis’ company has been headquartered in Maryland since 1983 and works exclusively for local, state and federal governments and nonprofits.
While the study will focus first on the needs of the educational system, the study and obtaining increased broadband access in the area will benefit the business community as well, Hovis said.
There is a great deal of unused potential in broadband because of lack of information.
“I work for the board, but I am really working for all of you,” Hovis said. Education and economic development are like this, Hovis said, holding up two fingers tightly together.
Broadband is a new way of thinking about infrastructure, but needs to be thought of as just as important to the local economy as highway access.
“It’s a foundational utility of our economy,” she said.
The feasibility study should help facilitate coordination between the private and the public sectors, Hovis said. Allconet was “15 years ahead of everybody else,” Hovis said, and while times have changed, the idea was a visionary one, she said.
Broadband networks are hard to build and expensive, so public/private partnerships can be important in broadband development, Hovis said.
“There’s too little investment in broadband because there is too little return,” in rural areas, Hovis said. She was explaining the difficulty in getting providers to build broadband networks in rural communities. Broadband is the most important selling point in commercial real estate, Hovis said.
Just like rural electrification in the 1930s and the national highway system, it will take a leap of faith to spur investment, with the belief that it will make a major difference, Hovis said.
“The more stakeholders the better,” said Stu Czapski, the chamber’s executive director.
The study will include a survey of residents and businesses.
“I will ask about telecommuting, recovery services, downloading of manuals,” Hovis said. The survey had a 46 percent response rate in Garrett County, and she’s hoping for a similar response in Allegany County, Hovis said.
Hovis said she’s in the information-gathering stage of the study and is seeking input from anyone about the region’s broadband service and needs for the future. Her commission is to do an analysis of the gaps and opportunities in broadband access. The study will help to leverage grant money for better broadband in Allegany County, Hovis said.
Maryland received more than $115 million last fall through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act to extend broadband access across the state, particularly in rural areas. The project is called One Maryland Broadband Network.
Hovis said her study will help Allegany County benefit from the state’s program. The 20 or so business leaders who packed the chamber boardroom all stressed the important of broadband access to their businesses in a discussion after the main portion of Hovis’ presentation. An ATK officer said his company is looking at projects like virtual engineering, so broadband is essential.
The target completion date for the study is June 1.
Contact Matthew Bieniek at mbieniek@times-news.com
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