ARNOLD – Governor Jim Pillen, on a Thursday whirlwind tour of central Nebraska, stopped in the Arnold Community Center to network with the community and to help the community with its network.
On his 3rd of 5 stops during his “Connect Nebraska” announcement tour, Pillen highlighted the need for increased broadband connectivity across the state as vital to the continued economic prosperity and growth of rural areas throughout the state.
“The bottom line is we’re a special people, from the river to Harrison, and we need to recognize we’ve got to make our decisions based on what’s good for Nebraska, not just for our bedrooms.”
Pillen’s initiative, introduced during the earliest days of his term, looks to expand broadband services by allocating $405 million of federal money toward the development of internet infrastructure in underserved parts of the state.
The idea, Pillen said, is far from a mere subsidy for internet infrastructure; Connect Nebraska hopes to use the money to empower Nebraskans to make their own decisions around broadband access.
“The people of every community are the best people to make the decisions for their communities to be successful, and the state’s job is just to support that.”
The aim of the broadband initiative is to generate competitive bids for underserved areas, thus hopefully making service to more sparsely-populated areas of Nebraska a priority for internet service providers.
Pillen also unveiled the hand-picked crew that would give the initiative its wings: Nebraska Department of Economic Development’s K.C. Belitz, Nebraska Department of Transportation Director Vicki Kramer, and Nebraska’s first-ever State Broadband Director Patrick Haggerty.
The team will set to work over the coming months and years to reevaluate service maps and current infrastructure; older internet service maps had been based on previous, arguably outdated census data.
Naturally, populations drift, but wires and signals do not, which has left a great deal of central and western Nebraska in the dark. In the updated maps, there has been a glaring need across swaths of rural Nebraska for affordable, high-quality internet signals.
Amber Ross of the Central Nebraska Economic Development District (CNEDD) said that internet access is imperative to the economic growth of central Nebraska, particularly when it comes to the region’s primary industry.
“It’s important not just for scrolling on Facebook or those kinds of things, but for the agricultural, precision ag, telehealth, and telecare opportunities that it can provide as well. It’s not just the simple things. Our whole world is connected now, and we need to ensure our communities are connected as well.”
CNEDD Deputy Director Carla Kimball agreed.
“Broadband puts us on a level playing field as everyone else, and I think about that every time we talk about broadband.”
The process is still murky, but the goal is clear: to provide central Nebraskans with what has, over the past 20 years, become more akin to clean water than a luxury good.
Throughout the remainder of Pillen’s administration, and most likely in some form beyond, the group will be working to overcome the well-known hurdles of supply chains and eastern hollering necessary to make broadband access a given for the Sandhills and Panhandle; in some way, though, it will all connect to Arnold.
