About a month ago, I posted that I had forwarded information to Mr. Ashcraft, the county administrator, in regards to funds that were being used from the Stimulus Package for rural broadband, highspeed internet. (that was the longest run-on sentence ever)
Mr. Ashcraft responded and said that he would forward to leadership for consideration. Last week I received a quick e-mail from Mr. Ashcraft just touching base to let me know that the information was useful. I am thankful that the County Administrator followed up with me. It’s important for citizens to know that their county government is working on this issue.
About a year ago, I posted about how the lack of high-speed internet effected Caroline Virginia. That post resulted in about 80 comments (some were loss in the transfer from wordpress.com to this self-hosted blog), showing us how critically important this is to Caroline County. We’ve explored the vast issues with Comcast, in providing broadband. We’ve also explored the academic impact that is being suffered as a result of access to internet, and with the educational impact of the current economy, even more need will exist for this resource.
The Caroline County, VA webpage, has setup a page with information on how you can get involved in you’d like to meet and work toward getting better county-wide access, and what the county’s priorities are.
Supervisor Floyd Thomas wants high-speed Internet access throughout the county. And to figure out how, Thomas leads a diverse committee through meetings and ideas to move our rural community into the age where technology dictates our everyday lifestyle.
Members include Caroline County local government leaders, IT personnel, leadership from county schools and the Sheriff’s Office. Additional attendees are representatives from MetroCast, Comcast and Verizon.
Because of the rural nature of Caroline, high-speed internet presents the most difficulty in the low-density areas where housing is not tied to a subdivision and are in some areas, miles apart. Economically it is not feasible for internet providers to run the lines needed for high-speed access and until major growth in these areas happen, companies will not consider it.
The Technology Team meets once a month. At their last meeting on March 25, they developed their top 3 immediate goals:
- Gather the information needed for county offices to connect to the schools technology already in progress of being completed.
- Providing high-speed internet access to the growth areas of the county such as Route 1 and I-95.
- and then focusing on providing high-speed to the more rural areas.
One of the issues we haven’t explored greatly here, but will in the future is the impact on house value and situs (area preference) that high-speed internet has on Caroline County. Many clients of mine and Jennifer’s over the years have specifically ruled out Caroline as an area to move to based on the lack of internet access. Hopefully this will be resolved in the very near future. We’re thankful for the efforts of our leaders to work toward a resolution.
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I think they were supposed to have another meeting yesterday, but I haven’t heard anything about it yet. Usually Portsia Smith from the free lance star covers it on her blog.
We have an update now in Belmont. A resident in our neighborhood went through the cost of installing a wifi network in our neighborhood and he launched the service this week (www.belmontva.com), and I must say the service is excellent. He installed several access points throughout the community and anyone with a wireless card can use the internet (after you create an account). I’m not sure something like that would work in Lake Land ‘Or because of all of the trees, but the internet speeds have been great for us even during peak hours. The gaming side of things still has some quirks to work out but he’s working on that. It has been nice to be able to download and upload pictures.
Hopefully the county still gets their act together and gets moving on this issue.
Lake Caroline update-still no time frame from comcast as to if or when it will ever switch over to digital and provide high speed service. How sad is it, with the federal switchover mandate this summer, that you can pick up more HD with a set of rabbit ears than you can with a comcast cable receiver? Don’t bother with VABB. 1000% price increase in bandwidth overage. From $5/GB to $.05/Mb. Are you listening, Verizon?
Just to add on VABB, if you’ve recently subscribed to VABB and imprisoned yourself to their pricey 12 month contract (only 4 mos left on my sentence) just a word of advice–secure your wireless routers. If you don’t, your neighbors could use it for wi-fi and use up precious bandwidth. It probably goes without saying, but if your a noob to broadband like me, don’t just hook up the VABB radio to your router and start surfing. About 5 months ago, I got a bill from VABB for $120. Come to find out, 2 people were “wi-fishing” off of my connection, and put me 4Gb over my bandwidth limit. This was 5 months ago, before the new overuse charges. If that had happened this month, it would have cost me another $200, money VABB would be more than happy to accept. So make sure your routers are secure and hang those wi-fishers out to dry. Who knows, maybe it’ll free up some speed crippling cybertraffic in the evenings.
Kevin,
We’re still dealing with Hughesnet and can’t wait for another option. I’ll pay the early termination to get out of the contract, so long as there is another option.
It seems that everyone is taking advantage of the lack of true broadband.
Our hope is that the county leadership will do anything within reason to get us connection to the real world.
The lack of connection is a big reason several people decide to not buy homes in Caroline. A significant factor in fixing the financial issues in the county is doing what we can to making housing more attractive.
Matthew Rathbun’s last blog post..Dumb by association…
Matthew- We are moving from Land’Or to Lake Caroline. We have Comcast now, but understand that won’t be available at Lake Caroline? What is the trouble with Hughes? Erratic speed? Drop-out with rain or weather? If we have to switch to dial-up, who has the best one in the area? Thanks so much. Mike
Mike,
Hughes.net is a horrible system for many reasons, but I’ve found from others that all satelite systems are bad. The tech support and customer service is the worst I’ve ever encountered and I used to work in technology. There’s a strong language barrier, as the support services are outsourced over seas.
The speeds are very dependent on the weather, but that I understand. There are random outages that don’t seem to have a lot to do with the weather. The price is high for the level of service, but essentially they are preying on those who are fortunate enough to be serviced by broadband. There just isn’t any other choice until Caroline can get caught up to 2009.
I can answer the question about Hughesnet. Basically, you pay a lot of money to use the service, and depending on the plan, you pay a lot for it. My plan is the 1.5Mbps (megabytes per second)download plan with up to 425Mb per day.
Every time you go to a website anywhere from a few kilobytes to megabytes is downloaded. Flash content, videos, and dynamic content only add to the size. (It takes mt kids about an hour to hit the 425Mb per day threshold.)
Once you hit this limit (they call it their Fair Usage Policy) you are slowed down in speeds until you’re “caught up” in usage. This means if you hit the daily limit at 7AM, your connection will slow to a crawl until after 7AM the next day.
Supposedly, you’re only slowed down to 56Kbps (dialup speed). The reality is that you’re slowed to 33Kbps or under.
Even without hitting the daily limit, I’m lucky to get 768Kbps upload speeds and 50Kbps upload.
Dialup may be your best bet if you have a landline phone with unlimited long distance.
David P.,
If you would, could you talk to this neighbor and find out what the setup costs were for the tower, and what he connects through? I’ve done some research, but I don’t have the 11k+ for a tower.
I’ve been contemplating contacting various companies to see if they’d be willing to set their own tower up on the back side of my land. I’m sure if I did though, the county and/or state would come up with some excuse to stop it like,” The EM field around a tower would cause an upset in the fight patterns of the Yellow-Jacketed Warble Bird, and maggots wouldn’t mature properly.”
I’ve heard talk about a recent deal with comcast and a few months ago I signed a petition in the lake caroline newsletter to send to comcast, any updates?
Corey,
I just had a conversation with Gary Wilson over at Econ Development. Verizon and Comcast are still saying that Caroline is not profitable enough to proceed, just yet.
I think it’s crap, but there are some other options going on from Caroline that sound promising, just long term.
Gary has agreed to write some information for CarolineVABLog.com and I will post it as soon as I get it.
Its utterly insane that there are still no viable broadband options here in caroline. Having lived in lake caroline since 97′ I can remember thinking to myself “next week/month/year there’s going to be broadband!”, yet over a decade later still nothing. Its sad that the 3g on my cell phone is best internet you can get for the most part here. I could always get a 3g card from verizon, but their usage prices are atrocious. I’ve been told that the county is up to its eye balls in debt. Ladysmith looked to be booming a few years back but you can see first hand how the recession has brought the development here to a halt.
I am at the very edge of Verizon’s DSL service in Lake Land’Or. While this is not the FiOS connection that I need so I can work from home effeciently, at least I have a 1.5MB down connection. Working in the IT industry and having to deal with this kind of connection rate is very frustrating. I’ve called and complained to Verizon for the past year, and I finally heard the rep. say on my Dec. 4 call what no one else could give an answer to when asked, “When will FiOS be installed.” She said that all the information she had was that it is “…not currently available and not currently planned.” Now the good news is that previous to the Verizon call, I contacted Comcast to inquire about their services. Although high speed is not currently available now, they are planning to update their lines in June/July 2010, according to the rep. I spoke with. In the competitive spirt, I made it quite clear to Verizon that I will promptly drop all my services with them (that’s phone, internet, TV-Direct TV, and 5 mobile phones) and move to Comcast if they provide services before Verizon. I guess I’ll believe it when I have it!!
John / Corey:
I had a lengthy conversation with Gary Wilson from Econ Development the Monday before Thanksgiving. He had tons of useful (but not promising) information. He said that he would email me a summary report to post on this blog, but even after a reminder I haven’t heard anything back from him.
Verizon is mostly a hopeless cause according to everyone I’ve spoken to. I’d like to convince everyone to do two things… 1.) cancel all Verizon phones and services in Caroline until they get high-speed installed and 2.) Let the county supervisors re-election be dependent on their success in getting this basic utility to the community.
I don’t think either are realistic, but it’s a nice dream.
Gary did say that Caroline has passed a public/private ruling that would allow the county to provide the service. Their fear was that if they somehow found the money for hte infrastructure that comcast or Verizon would just come in and do it cheaper. Evidentally Metrocast began offering high-speed in Port Royal and all of a sudden Comcast became interested and now they are getting both options.
All in all everyone seems apathetic.
What I want to know is how can remote areas in Alaska have HSI, but we here in Caroline can not. We will never attract the type of growth that is financially beneficial to the county until we get High Speed Internet services through out the entire county.Other Rural areas in the USA have it. Maybe its time we elect board members who can get this done.
I just found out this weekend from friends of mine that live on RT. 2 that Metrocast has been laying Fiber along Rt. 2. He has a new FTTH box in his front yard! I will be calling Metrocast for more information on their expansion plans.
Steve,
I completely agree. Broad-band is essential for growth and education. Many of our clients decide to not buy in Caroline because of the lack of internet. I personally haven’t decided if the county’s hands are as tied as they appear to be. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt, as I know that they’re working on it, but many people that I have talked to are making the internet issue a consideration for the BOD elections next year.
John,
My understanding is that Metrocast is installing down 301 and Rt. near Port Royal. This prompted Verizon to also decide to provide competition in that area.
Matthew Rathbun´s last blog ..Bringing Disclosure to the Lending Process
I been seeing A lot of Metrocast trucks working near the high school went and talk to come of the people they told me that they are upgrading the network for Fiber to the home however they do not have a franchise agreement for ladysmith because of Comcast Iwould like to say Lets get Comcast out and Metrocast IN…
Richard:
That’s correct. I ac tually called Metrocast about service for Ladysmith and was told that there is some territory agreement. Basicall, where ever Comcast is, Metrocasr isn’t. Comcast is saying that they are planning upgrades this summer. We need to find out whethger or not it’s fiber. I’ve already told Verizon that if Comcast gets their upgrades out here first, I wll drop my over-10 years of being a customer (phone, internet, TV(Direct TV), and cell phones (notice the s). Verizon smply needs to stop siting on their thumbs and do what’s right!
At any rate, a sincere Merry Christmas to everyone!!
I wonder if that territory agreement extends into ruther glen, at any rate it looks like summers our best bet over here around ladysmith.
Ok I found out that The Incorp. HOA’s actually have the right to ask how ever they want into there communities because the land is not easement-ed by the county but by the HOA’s I suggest that we get the HOA’s together and tell who ever is first is the one. Comcast will not provide fiber to the home just to a fiber node then coax out because of the cost. In any rate I feel that we need to get some sort of group together and make a voice.
The lake caroline/land’or POAs issued a petition for high speed internet for people to sign in their monthly newsletter about a month or so ago, all in all close to about a thousand people signed it between the two communties. So at least on an administrative level they are putting some effort into it for the first time that I can remember. Funny that Sparta may get fiber before lake caroline/land’or.
This is the problem with HOA’s–lack of effective communication!! I’m in Land’or and did not see let alone hear about a petition! 1000 signatures between the two (Caroline & Land’or) is insignificant in the larger scope of the business community. Our petitions are a joke–you want a real petition, have the members of the board and committees go door to door and get at the very least 3/4 or more of the homeowners signatures. That would show Verizon, Comcast, Metrocast, whomever, that we are serious about FTTH and that it is financially viable for the business to invest in upgrades. Sorry to go off here, but I do not budge on the addage “If you are going to do something, do it right the first time and finish the job!” How many homes between Caroline and Land’or–3000+? And we send over a measly 500 signatures each–come on HOAs, get it together. This is why we need real leadership in HOAs and not a bunch of power-hungy nobodys trying to make up rules and other junk …….sorry, stepping off the soapbox now.
Seems like the work Metrocast was doing has slowed down a great deal, either because of weather or……..
Metrocast has been installing along Nelson Hill Road (SR 722) in Milford as well. I think it’s pretty wild that our 10 acre/house Rural Preservation district may be getting broadband internet before the lake communities do. They are actually laying cables in front of corn fields!
Hi gang: I just posted an update from Caroline’s Economic Director on Internet access in Caroline: http://www.carolinevablog.com/caroline-county/high-speed-internet-in-caroline-county-an-update-from-the-county/
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