Supervisors Land on Broadband

Rappahannock County’s Board of Supervisors and Broadband Authority have made a smart choice; they deserve our support.

We understand why some of our fellow citizens may doubt the value of broadband to the county and question the expense.  New technologies that transform society may seem kind of ho-hum when they are first introduced.  Take electricity and the light bulb for example.  Installing it in homes when it was first invented was incredibly expensive.  And for what?  Initially just to get dim light from ugly light bulbs.  It's relative safety made sense for cities -- but for the countryside, what was its real value over conventional oil lamps?  Why bother?, some said.

How wrong they were.  Of course, it did not take many years for electricity to completely transform our lives - refrigeration, telephones, radios that brought the world to us, and so on.  Our lives quickly became inconceivable without it.

Similarly, today, many people may think of the internet as just a way to read emails and check the weather.  What's the big deal?  Who needs broadband for that?

Well, the truth is broadband is the transformative technology of our future, just as electricity was for the generation of the turn of the century.  They could not conceive of a world with a refrigerator and a television in every home.  Similarly, it won't take many years before our lives will be inconceivable without reliable, high-speed internet.  Our machines, our homes, our schools will all be organized around it.  

And if Rapp is not connected, it will not prosper. And not just in the future. Already today, our students are hugely disadvantaged if one in four cannot get internet at home.  Our aging population cannot see a doctor by telehealth when they have difficulty getting there in person. Our farmers cannot take advantage of the latest information about prices, markets and farm practices.  And our small businesses cannot reach more customers while staying rural.

That is why the Board of Supervisors made the right decision in moving forward with the regional broadband initiative.  Some have said that we can just rely on Starlink.  Well, Starlink is great, but it won't serve everyone and it is expensive.  And who knows what Starlink might do in the future - double its prices, for example?  It is never a good idea to have only one provider of such an essential service.

Some say that the current regional proposal is too expensive and we should just wait for something better.  Rappahannock is a tiny market, however.  Our best chance of getting reliable, reasonably-priced broadband is to hitch ourselves to something larger than ourselves.  If Rappahannock is left behind while the rest of the region installs broadband, who is going to bother to come around later to wire one little community?  More likely, we will be regret the opportunity we missed to get broadband when we had the chance. 

Of course, some people in the county will probably never need or use broadband.  That's fine.  When electricity came along, some people never used electric lights, or the telephone, or refrigerators.  But the next generation to move into those homes sure did.  And they were sure glad that electric lines had already been strung, even if those before them thought that it was too expensive and unnecessary.

So kudos to the Board of Supervisors.  Let's get this done.  And it deserves whatever it takes, especially if we can leverage major private and government funding resources.  That is a great investment in the future.