Gov. Moore, Day visit Salisbury with federal officials in push to broaden broadband program

During the pandemic in order to complete assignments, kids in Somerset County boarded the school bus and were driven to parking lots near WiFi hotspots to connect to the internet, which they lacked in their homes. On Tuesday, Lower Shore residents boarded another bus to bring internet access home.

Three employees of the Federal Communications Commission manned the Wicomico County Library’s Mobile Learning Lab as individuals signed up for the commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which offers a $30 a month benefit for internet access to low-income households. The three FCC employees were among a contingent of federal and state officials in town to help expand access to the program, and by extension, the internet.

“The state of Maryland can do better,” said Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development Jake Day, during an afternoon event at the Wicomico Housing Authority, in front of the parked bus, which sat next to the Stone Grove Crossing apartments in the city’s Westover Hills neighborhood.

Day, the city’s former mayor, who joined the administration of Democratic Gov. Wes Moore earlier this year, said only 30 percent of eligible households across the state are currently enrolled in the program.

Moore, Federal Communications Commission Chair in town

His boss, Gov. Moore, and the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, attended a training session at Salisbury University earlier in the day to increase program participation.

“Presence matters,” Moore told a room of more than 60 local attendees on hand to learn how to help enroll residents in the program, which began in December 2021.

More: Boarding the bus to the 21st century: Somerset County brings broadband to over 1,000 locations

Since then over 20 million households nationwide have enrolled in the program, including nearly 250,000 households in Maryland. Nationally, $72 million in grants have been distributed as of this month.

During a news conference at the university alongside Moore and Rosenworcel, Day called the program “an investment in our neighbors, especially here in Salisbury.”

He said 3,200 households were enrolled in a city with a little over 13,000 that were eligible, meaning almost three of five (59 percent) eligible households are not currently connected with the program. In Wicomico County, over 6,000 households had enrolled in the program as of the end of June.

Washington County, in Western Maryland, saw over 7,000 households subscribed at that point.

Across the state, Day said there were over 500,000 eligible, but unenrolled households, and urged greater participation, alluding to the child “going back to school next week who will need internet access to do their homework.”

More: Broadband expansion brings points of connection to remote Maryland homes, businesses

More to internet accessibility than just affordability, Day says

In an interview after the press conference, Day said there was more to internet access than simply the Affordable Connectivity Program.

“Infrastructure and affordability and public awareness, all go hand in hand,” said Day, noting 21,000 locations statewide — “businesses, farms, homes, public housing units” — that still are not connected with the infrastructure for internet.

Somerset County Engineer John Redden, who attended Tuesday’s training, has been working on reducing that number of unconnected locations in the state’s southernmost county over the last few years as a member of the county’s ad hoc broadband team.

“The event was interesting and FCC did a great job presenting,” said Redden, in an email afterwards. “They truly want all U.S. residents to have affordable broadband, but not all residents have reliable fiber broadband yet.”

Last year, the county received over $10 million in grants to further this buildout with a pair of companies.

Valerie Connelly, a vice president at one of those companies, Choptank Electric Cooperative, said 90 to 95 percent of the 514 locations set to be connected from last year’s $4.6 million grant are already set up in Somerset County. The remaining places, thwarted in one instance by a railroad, should be finished by November, she said during a phone interview on Monday.

Connelly said Choptank is getting the typical 40 to 45 percent industry “take rate” on individuals who are signing up for service after it becomes available post-installation.

In Somerset, the state’s poorest county when it comes to per capita personal income, the $30 a month federal benefit and a $15 a month state benefit through the Maryland Emergency Broadband Benefit make up some of the amount for the company’s lowest rate for service at $84.95 a month for 100 Mbps.

Connelly said, when those benefits are combined with the company’s $15 a month offered for those who qualify for energy assistance and are low-income, this can bring the total cost to under $25 a month for residents.

Affordable Connectivity Program benefits may run out, FCC official says

Those benefits to bring down costs may not last forever though.

“As recently as May of this year, Chairwoman Rosenworcel publicly stated the FCC anticipates exhausting current ACP funding within a year,” said Paloma Perez, an FCC spokesperson, in an email. “The Commission continues to remain hopeful that Congress will appropriate additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, and we will continue to work with Congress to demonstrate the positive impact of the ACP in every part of the country —from rural to suburban and every community in between.”

Day said he anticipates the state benefit will exist for at least the next year

“I think it will survive longer than that because I think that people will see the effect that it has,” said the city’s former mayor, in the interview after the press conference.

Connecting people to internet benefits, and infrastructure

The task of connecting people to the benefits is one thing.

During the Wicomico Housing Authority panel event featuring Secretary Day, April Ellis, a Maryland resident in the nursing field, said that if the people don’t know about the benefits, they can’t be involved.

Matthew Heckles, the mid-Atlantic regional administrator for the federal Housing and Urban Development, said connecting people to the internet infrastructure is the bigger part of the process.

“The infrastructure is the bigger piece of it,” said Heckles, in an interview after the event. “Once you do that, it stays.”

Work on infrastructure in Somerset County continues

In Somerset County, the work to build out the infrastructure continues, not only with Choptank, but with Charter Communications (operating as Spectrum), the other company that received an internet infrastructure grant in the county last year.

The company planned to use the $8.5 million in state funds to expand its fiber-optic network to more than 700 locations, primarily in Frenchtown-Rumbly, Hopewell, Kingston, Manokin and Marion Station, but have not yet started construction on that project, according to a spokesperson for Spectrum, Scott Pryzwansky.

After receiving a state grant in 2020 and a federal grant in 2021, the company is scheduled to reach nearly 400 county homes and businesses on the other projects by the end of September, said Pryzwansky, in an email.

Bringing the bus to the people to help them sign up for the program flipped around what happened in Somerset County during the pandemic when the schoolkids rode the bus to get to the internet.

It also exemplified what Rosenworcel, the commission’s first female chair, said at Salisbury University during one of the more than 800 events that the commission has held promoting the program.

“When we have digital equity programs that combine with programs to get the word out about ACP, that combine with the work of educational institutions and economic opportunity institutions, we wind up making sure that this program does more good in every community,” she said during the press conference.

The state’s first Black governor added his view: “Programs don’t individually change people’s lives.”

“It’s about how are you creating an ecosystem that’s actually meeting people where they are,” he said.

Dwight A. Weingarten is an investigative reporter, covering the Maryland State House and state issues. He can be reached at dweingarten@gannett.com or on Twitter at @DwightWeingart2.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Moore visits Salisbury with federal officials for broadband program