The power of rural Wi-Fi

When the Obama administration recently declared high-speed Internet a “core utility,” as important to modern life as water and electricity, it confirmed something most of us already recognize.  Access to the Internet is fundamental for anyone who wants to participate in the economic, cultural, and social life of our nation.

For those of us in rural areas, access to utilities has always been a challenge.  New York City had electric lights in the 1880s, half a century before the Tennessee Valley Authority brought basic power to the rural south.  And gigabit broadband service is now widely available in our urban centers, while some rural areas struggle to access the Internet at a tenth that speed.

{mosads}Internet providers are working hard to wire even the hardest to reach communities, but the problem is more complex than simply running new fiber far and wide.  Rural properties are so large and cover so much ground, that even when the Internet reaches a customer’s front door, the separate challenge of getting service to the fields, outbuildings, and remote worksites where it is also needed remains.  

This is no small problem – broadband isn’t helpful if it doesn’t reach the places where working people need access to the web.  It’s the difference between bringing the Internet to a school building, and reaching all the way to classrooms and student desks.  But wiring every milking shed, grain elevator, or logging camp where rural business is done simply isn’t feasible.  

Fortunately, wireless Wi-Fi services are helping America’s rural citizens bridge this gap.  Just as urban hot spots are proliferating – there are roughly 10 million public Wi-Fi access points in the United States today, and nearly 50 million worldwide  – rural wi-fi is bringing the smartphone revolution and all the benefits of the modern broadband Internet to the wide open spaces where rural Americans live and work.

These long distance Wi-Fi networks are flourishing from Alaska to Wisconsin, and everywhere that rural communities struggle to connect.  Rural health care is being revolutionized as Wi-Fi driven “medical telepresence” brings the most advanced experts to the virtual bedside of rural patients nationwide.  And the Administration has wisely boosted rural education by calling for a 75 percent increase in Wi-Fi funding over the next five years. 

But rural Wi-Fi’s promise faces a problem that is familiar to all of us who live in rural areas – a resource shortage.  Just like water and electric power, there is only so much Wi-Fi “spectrum” to go around.  As more users and higher bandwidth activities start clogging up the limited frequencies available for Wi-Fi uses, service sputters and slows.  In urban areas, this is already the reality – open your phone in a downtown district and you will often see 15, 20, or 30 Wi-Fi networks competing for space.  At large stadium events or crowded campuses, Wi-Fi inevitably sputters and degrades.  And as more high-volume uses like telemedicine and “Internet of Things” networked machinery come online in rural areas, we can expect the same.

Fortunately, however, the answer is simple – make more Wi-Fi spectrum available and maximize the efficiency of the spectrum we are already using.

Congress is already considering legislation to accomplish the first goal – a bipartisan bill by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) would set in motion a process to release new spectrum for Wi-Fi.  All senators and representatives who speak for rural areas should support this legislation to bolster Wi-Fi.

The second goal – using existing spectrum more efficiently – is more complex.  The biggest threat right now is a cellphone-based technology called “LTE-U” that engineers have warned could crowd out or “talk over” Wi-Fi signals.  In the past, new technologies have always learned to co-exist and cooperate, and I believe this is possible with Wi-Fi and LTE-U – but only if all the companies and organizations involved get together and solve the problem.

The best thing would be for an independent group like the IEEE to set technical standards for these technologies to co-exist and cooperate, just as it did for the original rules that paved the way for Wi-Fi in the first place.  But if that doesn’t work, there must be some mechanism to ensure that no one technology destroys the promise of another – and that wide-open, accessible Wi-Fi remains strong and available to all. 

The broadband Internet has changed American life in so many ways and – if we protect and nurture it – Wi-Fi has the promise to ensure that no one is left out from this vital modern day miracle. 

Ritchie is the executive director of the League of Rural Voters.