How rural Wise County got smart about high-speed internet

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Broadband internet in rural areas has a major obstacle: the high cost of fiber optic cable. Wise County found a smart way to work around this barrier using...

With affordable wireless technology, the county achieved broadband.Here is a fact worth celebrating: rural Wise County to our northwest now has 99% broadband internet access. Smart government decisions, federal funding and the right partnerships made this happen. This is a transformational project for a mostly rural county northwest of Dallas.

Broadband access remains a challenge in Texas, and local governments must find solutions that make sense, but finding a cost-effective fix to a 21st-century need is a goal worth reaching. Just two years ago, the state ranked 32nd out of 50 in internet adoption, according to census data. InWise County Judge J.D. Clark led a public-private partnership in an initiativeWise had $1.

The broadband infrastructure cost $2.6 million. It was built in seven months and completed last summer. It now delivers download speeds of 100 megabits per second and an upload speed of 20 megabits per second — the minimum threshold for broadband per federal guidelines — to almost all of Wise County. By comparison, Aiken cited a two-year project that relies on fiber-optic cable in a Nebraska county that will cost $17 million to serve 950 people.

Rural residents need high-speed internet access as much as anyone. But getting it to them at scale is expensive. We applaud Wise County for working to deliver an important service in a way that can lower costs.. Dallas Morning News editorials are written by the paper's Editorial Board and serve as the voice and view of the paper. The board considers a broad range of topics and is overseen by the Editorial Page Editor.

 

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