CORNWALL — How much internet is enough for Cornwall? A new survey launching in January will ask town residents to help map places where current providers leave gaps, and to test the speed of commercially available connections against their advertisers’ claims. At stake, survey sponsors say, is the risk that the town will fall behind in property values, losing the ability to attract young families and web-dependent businesses in an increasingly connected world.
The Cornwall Internet Expansion Committee, a nonprofit 12-member ad hoc group of web-savvy Cornwall residents, intends the survey to document alleged dissatisfactions with broadband internet availability. Committee members Gary Steinkohl and Johan Winsser told The Lakeville Journal that Cornwall, among other rural towns, not only suffers from slow web connection speeds due to near-obsolete coaxial cable infrastructure, but also still has areas that have no internet wiring at all. (According to Winsser, Cornwall was the last town in Connecticut to get cable television.)
When internet use exploded in 2020 as schools shifted to remote learning, doctors adopted telehealth and in-person meetings became Zoom sessions, Cornwall’s connection problems were laid bare. Excruciating download delays and unstable links resulted from cable’s limits on the volume of data and number of concurrent users copper wire could serve.
According to Winsser, a retired telecommunications expert who formerly planned networks for Verizon, some Cornwall families were recently forced to choose between pursuing their livelihoods and their children’s school lesson because of speed limitations of their internet service.
Winsser says that these days, download speeds greater than one gigabyte per second are becoming available in many urban areas, yet Cornwall’s are believed to hover around a tenfold to a hundredfold slower.
While Optimum advertises a 300-mps cable plan, in reality some using it fail to achieve even 100 mps download speeds (and slower uploads) because of limitations on their in-home connections and modems, as well as heavy traffic from other users.
Committee members crafted the survey, which will be available online, so that residents would perform and report actual internet speed tests as well as describe how they use the web.
Results will be aggregated to protect anonymity, although address information will be used to locate streets and roads where the gaps are greatest.
With these results, the committee hopes to have a solid evidence platform from which to advocate for changes — whether to help negotiate with cable companies, underpin testimony to governmental authorities considering intervention and/or subsidies, or explore the feasibility of a municipal cooperative utility that would install and own fiber lines that commercial vendors may be reluctant or slow to provide.
Despite multiple requests over the past two years, including efforts by elected officials, “nobody seems to get back from Optimum or Frontier a concrete development plan” for fiber investment in Cornwall, according to Steinkohl. Because of this, area towns are exploring their options. Norfolk will hold a referendum on a municipal fiber proposal early in 2021, and the Sharon Connect Task Force recently closed a survey of its residents’ internet interests.
Steinkohl and Winsser take pains to point out that the volunteer committee’s only agenda is to help the Cornwall community come together for better connectivity. Guidance to community members is available from the committee’s experts for improving speed using existing cable and DSL connections, for example. They welcome community input, but stress that they’re looking for well-documented facts that will help them objectively evaluate options for the future.
