06/07/2014

More in Ohio can get high-speed Internet

More in Ohio can get high-speed Internet

   The number of households that now can send emails, shop online and watch YouTube videos soared in Ohio in the past 30 months, a new report shows.

   Nearly 87 percent of Ohio households have access to high-speed Internet service, according to a survey released this week by Connect Ohio, a group that promotes Internet access. That figure is 25 percentage points higher than in a similar survey taken in October 2011 and is better than the national average of 78.6 percent.

   Nearly 99 percent of Ohio households have access to the slower broadband service with a download rate of 768 kilobytes per second.    Availability doesn’t necessarily mean households buy the service, but in Ohio, 72 percent do. That rate slightly surpasses the national average of 70 percent, Connect Ohio officials said.

   The results — in particular, the 25 percentage-point improvement in access to service — are good, said Stu Johnson, executive director of Connect Ohio.

   The increase “is evidence of Ohio’s providers investing in increased capacity,” Johnson said. “There’s been tremendous investment from all of our (telecommunications companies) and service providers — AT&T, Frontier , Century Link.”

   Between 2011 and 2013, for instance, AT&T invested more than $250 million in its wireless and wired networks in the Columbus area alone.

   However, the progress has come in providing faster Internet speeds in areas already served, he notes. “The percentage of Ohioans with less than (768 kilobytes) availability remains unchanged,” Johnson said.

   Southeastern Ohio is among the areas considered underserved.

   Many residents and businesses in Ohio’s rural Appalachian counties still lack access to broadband Internet service, said state Sen. Joe Uecker, chairman of the Ohio broadband and technology caucus.

   “Accessibility issues still exist, particularly in Appalachia,” Uecker said. “Stakeholders must continue to focus their efforts on this area to promote economic development and educational opportunities in the region.”

   Connect Ohio’s maps indicate that the county with the smallest percentage of households with broadband service available is in Appalachia — Noble County, at just 62 percent. By comparison, Franklin County has 99 percent available.

   “We are a data-savvy state in our urban environments,” Johnson said. “It’s much easier to increase capacity than to get that initial service hooked up.”

   But even in urban areas, where Internet access is available, some households do without Internet access.

   “It’s price,” Johnson said. “The non-adoption we find in Columbus is all about price. If we were to roll out a very cheap product in Columbus, we’d move the needle significantly. But we could do the same in Appalachia and wouldn’t move the needle, because there, it’s also about digital literacy.”

   Most home Internet users would find a download speed of 25 megabits per second more than adequate for their needs. At that speed, it would take less than five minutes, for instance, to completely download a feature film, according to industry statistics.

   The slower 768 kilobytes per second, by comparison, would take 51 minutes to download the same movie.

   Nonprofit Connect Ohio, a subsidiary of Connected Nation, has tracked the adoption of broadband technology and computer use in Ohio since 2010 and produced color-coded maps that show where high-speed Internet service is available or adopted.

   Among the findings of the new study:

   • Since October 2011, the number of Ohio households with access to broadband service of at least 10 megabits per second download has risen 16 percentage points, to 90 percent.

   • During the same period, the number of Ohio households with access to broadband service of at least 50 megabits per second download has increased 22 percentage points to 83.7 percent.

   • The lightning-fast speed of 100 megabits per second download is available to 8 percent of Ohio households, an increase of 7 percentage points since October 2011.

   • Ohio ranks 22nd among states in broadband coverage, according to the National Broadband Map, which is created and maintained by the National Telecommunications and Information Agency.

   This is the ninth broadband availability study released by Connect Ohio. tferan@dispatch.com