Joe Sam Queen
NC Rep. Joe Sam Queen (Jackson, Haywood, Swain) is a primary sponsor on HB 1122, a bill to provide affordable broadband access in NC. He hosted a video call meeting on Thursday morning, May 21 to discuss the bill that would appropriate $35 million in nonrecurring funds in the 2020-2021 fiscal year to expand broadband to rural and underserved areas of the state. Additionally, the bill includes $5 million to deploy the Homework Gap Initiative and expand WiFi hotspots.
Solutions for students
“The pandemic has really highlighted how important broadband is in our state and in our rural districts and we really believe we need to greatly hasten our deployment of high speed broadband across our state,” said Rep. Ray Russell (Ashe, Watauga), also a primary sponsor of the bill.
Queen said there are more than 300,000 students across North Carolina who either don’t have a device or aren’t connected to the internet at home, which has made the recent months of virtual learning a more burdensome for those students. “In my area there are 100s in each county,” he said.
The Homework Gap Initiative part of the bill would provide for the NC Department of Information Technology in coordination with NC Department of Public Instruction to administer a pilot Homework Gap Grant program to provide internet for students and teachers who don’t have internet at home.
Queen acknowledged that the homework gap funding is a short-term solution, but added it’s essential to provide those WiFi hotspots to students and follows the recommendations of Gov. Roy Cooper.
Grant funding would provide for school districts to purchase equipment, and provide more WiFi hotspots with school buses. The bill also includes funding to administer the grant program and evaluate its success.
“This really now is a social justice issue,” Russell said, adding that a child who lives in a holler in Ashe County should be granted the same access to academic materials online as every other student in the state.
In a related effort, the bill directs funding to the GREAT program, which stands for Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology. This program would provide grant funding to providers to expand low-cost internet with speeds of at least 25 megabits per second and service to underserved areas.
Similar to the need for greater student access to high-speed internet at home, the pandemic has shown the need for greater internet access at home to access telemedicine, the representatives said. The bill includes language for health benefit plan coverage for telehealth.
Changing state regulation
One of the biggest sticking points noted by local government and the desire to expand rural broadband has been state regulations that restrict local governments from taking part in the effort. This bill would lift those restrictions.
Right now, our state is prohibiting government from being a part of the solution we need to allow them to be, Queen said.
This bill would authorize counties to provide grants to providers for high speed internet. It would also amend article 23 of NCGS 153A giving cities and counties the authority to construct and lease facilities and/or equipment for broadband service. If passed, governments would still be restricted from being the providers of the service.
The bill would also allow the NC Utilities Commission to issue requests for proposal from utility providers to establish a Universal Broadband Smart Meter Program. It would also allow NC Department of Transportation the authority to construct conduits for telecommunication cable in the state right of way.
The bill has 70 sponsors in the House, passed its first reading and has been referred to the committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations.