The Marshall County Commissioners reviewed information Monday morning surrounding the Broadband Readiness study.
The county received a $50,000 Broadband Readiness Planning Grant in July 2019 to complete a planning study throughout the county. According to Culver Town Manager Jonathan Leist, a planning grant committee member, an online and paper survey was conducted to get information from the public about broadband service.
“We had 547 people in Marshall County respond to it and provide information about what kind of broadband service they’d like see and what kind of service they have,” stated Leist. “Most of them did speed tests so we were able to collect that data as far as what speed they actually get in their home for uploads and downloads. We also met in person with a few businesses, schools, and that kind of thing to get a really good sense of what is available in Marshall County, what kind of speeds people had, prices they were willing to pay for service – that kind of stuff.”
Dave Lettiere from Data Communication Leaders gave a quick summary of those surveys.
Lettiere commented, “In all, more than 90 percent of the respondents with access cited lack of availability, cost, and low bandwidth options available.”
Lettiere also gave information about broadband access statewide.
“Lettiere continued, “As of 2017, 67.4 percent of Indiana residents in rural areas had access to fixed wireless broadband, while 98.5 percent of Indiana residents in urban areas have copper or fiber access demonstrating an obvious disparity between the two groups. Although fixed wireless is a great solution, it is not scalable to the necessities driving the demand for increased and reliable bandwidth.”
The Marshall County Broadband Planning Committee believes that broadband infrastructure is a critical resource to improve the quality of life. It will also ensure investment from current and future businesses, and maintain anchor institutions and non-profit organizations. The committee feels that broadband is a relevant educational resource as it provides training to students and future leaders of the county.
The committee recommends moving forward with an option that establishes preferred governmental policies to encourage infrastructure investment by service providers, providing tax exemptions on infrastructure investments, streamlining the building permit process, and creating an annual reporting process to track development progress by service providers.
Other options were seriously considered, but this recommendation will get the process started to get reliable broadband to the area. Marshall County has partnered with the State and Purdue University to work on getting funding earmarked for broadband improvements.
A public hearing concerning the plan was held with no comments provided.
To keep with the forward progress, the commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to accept the broadband readiness plan.
