Share your thoughts on Westerlo internet service with the Broadband Research Committee

To the Editor:

People who live in Westerlo and people looking to settle someplace nice agree Westerlo’s a great place to live.

However, any evening you can see cars huddled around the Westerlo Library as parents and kids connect with the Internet through the library’s Wi-Fi hookup. Any day or evening, people living here or conducting business here struggle with slow or non-existent internet service. Any day people looking to settle in Westerlo think twice about buying a house here because it doesn’t have good internet service.

There was a time when the internet was exotic stuff, but that’s long gone. Internet connectivity has come to be nearly as vital as electrical service and maybe even more vital than telephone service. Westerlo’s low population density and rolling, hilly land have kept many internet service providers from coming in here, either at all or to large parts of town not on the very short Mid-Hudson Cablevision line or with good line of sight to connect with terrestrial (e.g., New York Air) or satellite (e.g., Wildblue/Exede) services.

This is a big problem and solutions are not obvious, but Westerlo now has an active committee to find those solutions. This is the Broadband Research Committee, chaired by Dotty Verch. Dotty also chairs the town of Westerlo’s planning board, from which she’s seen how big is the need for reliable, affordable high-speed (“broadband”) internet service for everyone in Westerlo.

This committee had its first meeting last month, on April 26, just after the regular planning board meeting. I’m on that committee, along with Mike Sikule (with his long history of thoughtful participation in town concerns), , Bob Wilcox (who’s on the library’s board, happy the library is an internet resource for the community, but hopeful more people will be able to connect at home), and Eric Markson (who inherited property in Westerlo, is building a house, and wants to run two businesses there but has run head-on into problems getting any sort of broadband internet service there). Ned Stevens and Doyle Shaver of the planning board stayed after that meeting to participate in the BRC meeting.

In getting to know each other and describing our experiences getting internet services, we quickly saw there’s much to be done. This includes:

— Finding a way for MHC to reach more people without charging them thousands of dollars; the franchise agreement between the town and MHC is due either to be renewed or replaced, so now’s the time to work out what to require of MHC;

— Trying to persuade Time Warner Cable, which serves neighboring towns, to come into Westerlo. Contrary to widespread wrong information, MHC does not have a monopoly on cable service in Westerlo;

— Seeing what can be done to improve the coverage and reliability of terrestrial-radio services, specifically New York Air;

— Looking into ways to improve availability and affordability of cellular Internet service (for example, Verizon);

— Investigating ways to make “micro cells” of Wi-Fi or other wireless connections to people just off the ends of cable lines;

— Working with town, county, state, and federal governments to see what can be done to compel or support better Internet service in rural areas like ours; and

— Coordinating with neighboring towns to find answers and better jawbone (pardon me; motivate) providers and officials.

The BRC welcomes public participation in its meetings. The next will be Tuesday, May 24, at the Westerlo Town Hall, just after the regular planning board meeting, so probably starting about 7:45 p.m.

Please come! Now’s the time to share your experience, questions, and suggestions about better internet service with your neighbors at the BRC meetings, and with government officials and service providers we’re working to bring to these meetings.

Leonard Laub

Westerlo

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