COLUMNS

Digital divide about more than minimal connections

Staff Writer
The Fayetteville Observer
Michael Lazzara

As state policymakers consider the future of broadband deployment and the digital divide in North Carolina, they would do well to keep in mind the historical and continuing importance of cities and town as centers of commerce.

Hundreds and even thousands of years ago, on all continents of the world, villages and towns arose as places of trade and commerce, growing to stimulate more trade by creating greater markets as more people were attracted to this economic activity. Whether it was roads, lodging or the security created by a village wall, those village- and town-dwellers came together to establish the infrastructure to ensure the continuing viability of these places as centers of commerce.

Fast-forward hundreds of years, and today’s crucial infrastructure for commerce to flourish includes high-speed internet.

Back in March, my fellow municipal officials and I publicly unveiled the North Carolina League of Municipalities’ well-received report on broadband access, Leaping the Digital Divide (nclm.org/media/broadband-policy-paper). As our report lays out, the issue of broadband access in North Carolina is complex, with no single solution for all communities. The report looks at the needs of real people created by a lack of access — from farmers struggling to connect to the global information crucial for marketing their crops to school children without adequate home connections who flock to public Wi-Fi hubs to do homework.

But as I made clear during that news conference, the lack of basic residential connections in rural areas is just one part of the story. The other part is about commercial districts in some municipalities — while able to access standard broadband speeds — not having the high speeds for businesses to flourish.

That’s bad for existing businesses in those towns and cities, and bad when it comes to recruiting new businesses.

In many cases, these are the same towns that saw textile and other manufacturing jobs head overseas during the 1980s and 1990s.

State policymakers simply will not be able to address an urban-rural divide in North Carolina without addressing this critical aspect of the state’s digital divide. And falling prey to easy rhetoric around vague, emerging technologies will only leave rural towns falling further behind the economic curve.

As our report makes clear, what’s needed and required is investment in fiber networks and the ability for private, entrepreneurial providers to tap existing public fiber networks. That’s a solution today, right now. These and other types of public-private partnerships are happening across the country, and a strong state policy response can enable more of them to happen here.

Towns and cities will continue as centers of commerce along any foreseeable horizon. We can leave it to variables of chance and private actors alone to determine which ones succeed or, acting together at all levels of government, assume our traditional role of providing required infrastructure so that every community has a better chance at success.

Michael Lazzara is president of the N.C. League of Municipalities and mayor pro-pem of Jacksonville.