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Cain, Clifford
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at Blue-White
Game 1B
VOLUME 131, No. 3
STAY CONNECTED CENTREDAILY.COM
Rural areas of Pennsylvania, such as Madisonburg, above, have limited access to high-speed internet service.
State’s broadband crisis:
More than an inconvenience
BY SARAH PAEZ AND LAUREN
MUTHLER
CDT staff writers
For those in rural Pennsylva-
nia without access to broadband
internet connections, the litany
of complaints is endless. School-
kids can’t do their homework
assignments. Families can’t
stream television shows. Rela-
tives don’t want to visit.
And that’s only the social
component. Property prices
don’t appreciate as fast as in
areas where broadband is avail-
able, according to real estate
agents. Rural residents can’t
easily start online businesses or
telecommute to better jobs in
towns and cities. They can’t seek
Tech revolution in
agriculture is leaving
some farmers behind
BY TIM JOHNSON
tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com
Hundreds of thousands of
American farmers wrestle with
balky — or nonexistent —
internet connections, the
exasperating modern-day
equivalent of the stubborn mule
that wouldn’t pull a plow.
Farmers who lack rural con-
nectivity increasingly lag in a
tech revolution that offers ro-
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online training at home to en-
hance job skills.
About 6% of the state’s pop-
ulation — around 800,000 peo-
ple — is reported to experience
these shortfalls, according to the
Federal Communications Com-
mission. But the number is likely
much greater due to imprecise
reporting by providers under
government standards, tech-
nology policy expert and Penn
State professor Sascha Meinrath
said. He put the true number of
Pennsylvanians without broad-
band at probably closer to 11
million, or a “supermajority” of
the state’s population.
The FCC defines broadband
SEE BROADBAND, 5A
bots, drones, sensors and self-
driving tractors to farms lucky
enough to have robust broad-
band. It is a rural digital divide
on America’s farms that threat-
ens to grow wider.
Some farmers scrap for what-
ever limited connectivity they
can pull together. That is the
case at Valley Wide Farm, a
small dairy operation in Penn-
sylvania’s Centre County where
SEE AGRICULTURE, 4A
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Police:
Bodycam
video of
shooting
doesn’t exist
BY BRET PALLOTTO
bpallotto@centredaily.com
Activists sought the release of
body-camera footage shortly
after a police shooting killed
Osaze Osagie, 29, last month in
State College.
But that footage does not exist,
the Centre Daily Times has
learned.
Although State College plans to
implement full-time body cam-
eras for officers, the borough
department is among four police
agencies in Centre County —
Mehdi Salehi/For the CDT including Penn State, Bellefonte
and state police — that still oper-
ate without the devices.
Ferguson, Patton and Spring
townships each began using them
at some point between June and
January. Their respective police
chiefs — Chris Albright, Tyler
Jolley and Mike Danneker — said
the cameras have very few, if
any, drawbacks and voiced satis-
faction with them.
The cameras are “worth their
weight in gold” and are becom-
ing more common throughout
the nation because they lead to
greater transparency, more pro-
fessionalism, more accountability
SEE BODY CAMERAS, 3A
Centre Daily Times file
ABBY DREY adrey@centredaily.com Sgt. Shawn Morrison shows his
Jen Snyder talks about the difficulties her family has with broadband new body camera in June at the
access at their Madisonburg home last month. Ferguson Township Police
Department.
. ....................................................................
Pennsylvania
Priorities Summit —
Focus on Rural
Broadband Crisis
What: Experts throughout
Pennsylvania will convene for a
summit to develop strategies to
address the rural broadband
access issues.
When: 10 a.m. April 24
Where: The State Theatre, 130 W.
College Ave., State College
Info: Attendance is free but
registration is required at
TIM JOHNSON tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com
http://bit.ly/2Ga1G6o
Jerrel Brubaker of Buffalo Valley Farmstead sits in the cab of his
.....................................................................
modern tractor with self-steering functionality. Brubaker says he could
spray-paint the windows black on his tractor and it could still plant
rows of crops perfectly using auto-steer.
6C Classified 1D Opinion 6A
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CENTREDAILY.COM
FROM PAGE 1A
BROADBAND
as 25 megabits per second
for download speeds and 3
megabits per second for
upload speeds, while the
state of Pennsylvania says
broadband is 1.5 Mbps per
second and 128 kilobits per
second, respectively.
While speeds are gener-
ally faster in urban areas
like Philadelphia and Pitts-
burgh, people in rural areas
of central and northcentral
Pennsylvania find that
doing simple tasks like
typing in web applications,
downloading video or large
files and streaming televi-
sion shows can be next to
impossible.
Deneen Keller, a teacher
with the Penns Valley Area
School District in rural
Spring Mills, said only one
person at a time can use
her Verizon DSL internet at
her home in the Seven
Mountains. Her husband, a
consultant running his own
business, often has to use
aerial imaging through
Google Earth, but he can’t
do it at home.
“It would take literally
overnight if not more just
to download (Google
Earth),” she said.
Keller said the only other
options she would have for
internet are satellite or a
cellular data hotspot — two
things that are more costly
than her current service
and similarly unreliable,
she said. Currently Keller
and her husband pay $50 a
month for speeds that
don’t meet the federal or
state definition of broad-
band. And Keller said she
would pay more if it meant
she had better service.
Some rural residents also
believe their areas are
being passed over for eco-
nomic opportunities be-
cause they lack reliable
broadband connectivity.
“To me, Pennsylvania is
what I consider to be a
through state,” said Doug
Dodson, who works in
information technology at
Penn State and lives in
Spring Mills. “... People
drive through Pennsylvania
to get to these high-tech
destinations” in New York
and Virginia.
But Dodson, who wants
Pennsylvania to be “the
Keystone state for tech-
nology,” said that will hap-
pen only if the Pennsylva-
nia Legislature gets serious
about bringing broadband
to all areas of the state and
if the state’s many munici-
palities can provide that
service.
TELEMEDICINE FACES
BARRIERS IN RURAL
AREAS WHERE NEED IS
HIGH
Others said broadband,
were it available, would
broaden the health care
offered in rural areas.
“You’ve got a lot of rural
clinics that can’t access
high-res(olution) photos …
When you don’t have con-
nectivity, you don’t have
access to all of the attend-
ant online resources, the
ability to share your MRI
with a second set of eyes to
get a second opinion on
something,” Meinrath said.
Doctors and other health
care workers in rural com-
munities also feel the dig-
ital shortfall.
Dr. Robert Gillio, the
medical director for pop-
ulation health at J.C. Blair
Hospital in Huntingdon,
and his wife, who taught
online nutrition classes at
Penn State, faced obstacles
doing simple tasks for
work, he said.
“There were times I
wanted to get online and
connect with someone
using technology, and I
ended up getting in my car
and driving to the Sheetz or
the hospital and use their
internet,” he said. “As the
caregiver on a snowy day
with a foot of snow and I
wanted to check in on
somebody or they wanted
to reach me from the hos-
pital, it was impossible.”
Unreliable broadband
access also has made it
difficult to implement
some of the programs Gil-
lio’s been working on,
including one where care-
givers visit patients with
chronic illnesses or com-
plex medical conditions.
In-home checks can in-
clude testing blood sugar,
blood pressure, heart rate
or oxygen levels, and trans-
mitting that information
back via an iPad or cell-
phone to a primary care
doctor or specialist.
That service can be a
matter of life or death for
some patients, Gillio said.
“For patients that need
close monitoring, they’ll
end up critical in the ER or
dead, opposed to slight
modifications with a phone
call or a Skype call,” Gillio
said. “Your patients at risk
will die. Blood sugar could
be 450 and no one would
know it. And they’ll be
dead by morning.”
Experts like Peter Streck-
er, the regional program
coordinator for telehealth
at the UPMC Susquehanna
health system, say health
care costs are too high, and
telemedicine offers cost
savings, especially in rural
areas where clinics and
hospitals have closed.
Tim Schoener, vice presi-
dent and chief information
officer for UPMC Susque-
hanna in Williamsport, said
offering telemedicine is
“critical” to UPMC’s over-
all success.
But for patients without
high-speed internet, access
is limited for the more than
400 telemedicine uses
employed by UPMC.
That limit was clear
when Schoener and Streck-
er had a home visit with a
wheelchair-bound patient
in Linden, two miles out-
side Williamsport.
The patient needed to
connect via video confer-
ence with his specialist in
Pittsburgh ahead of up-
coming surgery, but was
unable to with his unre-
liable DSL connection,
Schoener and Strecker said.
They were able to use the
Verizon 4G hotspot on
Schoener’s phone to con-
nect and make the meeting
happen, but that often isn’t
cheap.
“With regional band-
width, one location can be
perfect, and the next not,”
Strecker said. “We have
physicians that still have
beepers because they don’t
have cell coverage.”
ARE RURAL STUDENTS
BEING LEFT BEHIND?
A lack of broadband
means challenges for rural
students, too. They scram-
ble to finish homework
during school so they don’t
have to take it home where
slow speeds make some
assignments impossible.
Rural students nationally
are less likely to attend
college than their urban
and suburban peers, ac-
cording to data from the
National Center of Educa-
tion Statistics.
Students in Penns Valley
feel the effects deeply.
“If I were to be doing
homework and my mom
needed to be on it for like a
conference call for her
work, then I would have to
get off because it’s so
slow,” said Lanna Rummel,
a junior at Penns Valley
Area High School who lives
the Seven Mountains area.
Online learning benefits
teenagers who need a boost
from tutoring sites like
Khan Academy, do-it-
yourselfers who need in-
struction, technicians and
mechanics who need a
visual walk-through of
procedures, and others,
said John Windhausen,
executive director of the
Schools, Health & Libraries
Broadband Coalition, an
advocacy group based in
Washington, D.C. And as
colleges move toward of-
fering online classes, many
students rely on an internet
connection for basic in-
struction and face-to-face
time with professors.
For instructional videos
and live-streamed classes,
a steady internet connec-
tion is essential.
“If you’ve got a distance
learning lecture that’s all
fuzzy and choppy, then
people stop watching,” said
Windhausen.
Keller sees how a lack of
home broadband would
affect inquisitive kids who
Cellphone towers can be seen in the distance on Centre Hall Mountain over the farmland
of Madisonburg. Pennsylvania’s broadband crisis affects education, medicine and more.
want enrichment activities,
she said.
“I do feel that there is
definitely an advantage if
you’ve got a student who’s
very inquisitive and wants
to know more. They’re
definitely going to probably
spend more time on the
internet, researching the
things that interest them,
or resources that might
support their learning,” she
said.
RURAL AREAS LAG IN
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
An absence of broadband
has helped propel rural
flight in the Coudersport
area, said Wanda Shirk, a
retired English teacher in
that region. School enroll-
ment in her area dropped
by half, she said.
“Everything is moving
online. Everyone has to
apply for jobs online now.
You can’t do it with pen
and paper anymore,”
Windhausen said. “You
have to apply for Social
Security and Medicare
online.”
Others concur that fail-
ing to have internet con-
nectivity can kill job pro-
spects.
“Telling a potential em-
ployer that you don’t have
a phone, that you don’t
have internet, that you
don’t have a way for them
to get in touch with you is
the biggest disincentive for
an employer,” said Mignon
Clyburn, who served nine
years as an FCC commis-
sioner before leaving in
2018.
Business owners shun
any idea of expanding to a
community with no reliable
internet service, said Brad
Smith, president of Micro-
soft. Nineteen percent of
Americans live in rural
communities, but only 6%
of science and technology
jobs are located in rural
counties, he said at a forum
in December.
Jen Snyder, who owned a
farming business in Penns
Valley with her husband
Tom, said they struggled to
upload and download doc-
uments quickly, especially
when it came to payroll.
The couple repeatedly
asked Verizon to extend
DSL service to their area of
Brush Valley Road, but it
stopped just miles away at
the Millheim Narrows, they
said.
The business closed in
2009, which Jen Snyder
attributed to declines in the
agricultural economy. But
with businesses becoming
more reliant on technology,
she said, the lack of broad-
band in Penns Valley could
hurt new business devel-
opment. And as rural banks
close their doors, money
management is increasing-
ly moving online, accord-
ing to a 2018 Wall Street
Journal report.
“Rural Americans have
not yet recovered from the
job loss that began with the
2007 recession,” said Barry
Denk, director of the Cen-
ter for Rural Pennsylvania.
“... If rural America lags in
broadband connectivity,
then that makes it a less
viable and attractive place
to do business.”
There are 4% fewer jobs
now compared to before
the recession, according to
a report from the Federal
Bureau of Labor Statistics,
he said. Broadband and
technology could be used
to facilitate job growth by
connecting products and
services to markets.
Cindy Boardman, an
agent at Pine Creek Real
Estate in Galeton, said
potential buyers have one
thing at the top of their
minds when they inquire
about rural property.
“That’s one of the first
questions they ask: ‘Do we
have access to high-speed
internet from this proper-
ty?’ ” Boardman said.
Experts agree that broad-
band boosts property prices
from 2 to 3 percentage
points up to double digits.
“You can have adjacent
communities, one with no
access or low access, one
underserved or unserved,
and then one with ade-
quate service, and I think
the one with adequate
service is seeing home
prices upward anywhere
between 10 and 20% high-
er,” said Paul Breakman, a
senior director at the Na-
tional Rural Electric Coop-
erative Association, a trade
group headquartered in
Virginia.
Boardman said she be-
lieves many of the hunting
camps that dot the forested
lands of north central
Pennsylvania would see
improvements once broad-
band arrives. Rural home-
owners also might upgrade
their properties.
“You can put up home
security systems with cam-
eras and extra lighting,”
Boardman said.
‘DISPARITY’ BETWEEN
RURAL AND URBAN
COVERAGE IS
‘FRUSTRATING’
Some rural Pennsylva-
nians feel jilted by provid-
ers and the government
from the lack of broadband
providers and the quality of
service in their area.
“I don’t expect, you
know, the government ... to
just blanket provide in-
ternet service,” said Dod-
son, of Spring Mills. “But
the disparity between what
the urban areas have avail-
able to them and what’s
available out here is in-
credibly frustrating.”
The Snyders, who live in
the small town of Madison-
burg, use a Verizon Jetpack
— a cellular data hotspot —
as their household internet
access.
“In the summertime it
doesn’t work well any-
where because there’s so
many more leaves on the
trees,” said Tom Snyder,
who works for an Amish-
owned business in Penns
Valley.
From their position in
the valley, the Snyders can
see the tower on Centre
Hall Mountain — just 10
miles away — that provides
wireless broadband cov-
erage to Centre Hall and
nearby Spring Mills. In
Madisonburg, getwire-
less.net is the only fixed
wireless provider, with a
tower in Rebersburg, get-
wireless President Dan
Myers said. The area’s
other options are data hot-
spots or satellite internet
like HughesNet.
“If you have a point of
contact tower, if you’re in
one of those hills when you
can’t see the point of con-
tact, you’re out of luck,”
said Jen Snyder.
Myers said it’s true that
if there is a tree or a hill
blocking the house’s line of
sight to the wireless tower,
his company won’t be able
to provide service. The
company typically per-
forms a geospatial analysis
to see whether a potential
customer’s house has a line
of sight to its tower, he
said.
Fixed wireless service is
a cost-effective alternative
to laying fiber-optic cable
in rural and other under-
served areas, said Mike
Wendy, communications
director for the Wireless
Internet Service Providers
ABBY DREY adrey@centredaily.com
Association, based in
Washington, D.C.
Usually the companies
are smaller than major
service providers like Veri-
zon and Comcast, compris-
ing about 10 employees
apiece to serve 1,200 to
1,500 customers, he said.
They also serve customer
bases “in areas big provid-
ers have chosen not to go,”
he said, because of low
population density or to-
pography challenges.
One of the biggest bar-
riers to fixed wireless pro-
viders, said Wendy, is ac-
quiring a license to provide
service “in an exclusive
swath of frequency that
allows you to keep other
people off it.” Unlicensed
providers, he said, usually
deal with frequent interfer-
ence in their service areas
because they are often
sharing space with radio
waves from several trans-
mitters.
Sometimes one needs
only to cross a road to
travel from an area with
broadband service to an
area without. Maps of serv-
ice by the major providers
can seem arbitrary.
“We have a lot of people
who bought homes and
there’s like connectivity
100 feet away and where
the providers ... are simply
refusing to move a line
another 100 feet,” Mein-
rath said.
Major providers will
assert that they serve an
area but then demand high
fees, sometimes upward of
$10,000 or $20,000, to
run a line to an actual resi-
dence, he said.
“It’s crazy, right? So in a
lot of rural communities,
you’ll have this kind of
rent-seeking in terms of the
monthly fees but also this
notion that the local folks
should pay the capital ex-
penses for build-out,” he
said.
A Verizon spokesperson
declined to comment. But
Comcast, in a statement,
said it’s expanding service
in parts of rural central
Pennsylvania.
“We’ve invested more
than $5 billion in our Penn-
sylvania network since
2011, which today enables
us to provide broadband
service to more than 99%
of the homes we pass in the
commonwealth, including
service areas in central
Pennsylvania,” said Robert
Grove, vice president of
communications for Com-
cast’s Keystone Region.
The region includes parts
of northeastern, central
and western Pennsylvania,
the Maryland panhandle,
eastern Ohio and northern
West Virginia. Grove said
the company is always
looking at opportunities to
extend service in that area.
An ongoing upgrade will
bring “internet to about
3,700 additional homes in
rural areas of Fayette and
Somerset counties,” he
said.
“There are some low-
density areas where provid-
ing service is simply not
economically feasible, but
Comcast remains commit-
ted to working with com-
monwealth and local offi-
cials to review ways to
serve additional communi-
ties,” Grove said.
WHAT CAN
GOVERNMENT DO?
Centre County is looking
at public-private partner-
ships to bring broadband
service to people in the
region who lack broadband
entirely or deal with slow
speeds.
“It really comes down to
a quality-of-life issue,” said
county commissioners
News 5A
Chairman Michael Pipe.
“We don’t have a mandate
or regulation from the state
or feds to do broadband —
it’s not a core mission of
ours — but quality of life
is.”
In late November, the
county put out a request for
proposals for companies to
install equipment on three
county-owned 911 commu-
nications towers that would
provide broadband to un-
derserved areas in the
county — one on Centre
Hall Mountain, one in
Woodward in Haines
Township and the other on
a tower behind the Willow-
bank building in Bellefonte.
“We thought that that
was a good way that we are
not taking on too many
liabilities but we are utiliz-
ing our current infrastruc-
ture to be able to provide
some higher-speed internet
but still allowing the pri-
vate sector to bid on the
project in an open way and
then also carry their mis-
sion out — which is to pro-
vide internet,” Pipe said.
In February, the county
entered contract negotia-
tions with internet provider
Centre WISP Venture
Company, based in In-
novation Park, to lease the
towers for broadband cov-
erage.
Once contract negotia-
tions wrap up, the company
will start phase one of the
project by installing equip-
ment on the Centre Hall
Mountain, aiming to have
service up and running by
September, said owner
David Gibbons. Centre
WISP will set up equipment
on the tower in Woodward
soon afterward, he said.
“The combination ...
should provide coverage to
the vast majority of the
(Route) 192 corridor and
the Route 45 corridor,” he
said. That includes hard-to-
reach areas like Madison-
burg and Rebersburg, and
areas northwest of Spring
Mills like Millheim and
Aaronsburg.
The last phase of the
project will install equip-
ment on the Willowbank
tower to provide fixed
wireless internet to Belle-
fonte, Pleasant Gap, Miles-
burg and areas of Buffalo
Run Road in Benner Town-
ship.
The goal, said Gibbons,
is to provide connectivity
between 20 and 40 mega-
bits per second. But often
in rural areas, topography
and low population density
pose problems to providing
the fastest service. Areas
located closer to the towers
will have stronger connec-
tions with fewer service
disruptions, he said.
The best thing potential
customers can do, Gibbons
said, is visit the company’s
website centrewisp.com
and sign up to receive up-
dates on the project. That
way, the company knows
where the demand for
service is located and can
“focus their energy,” he
said.
“(High-speed internet) is
the highway of this gener-
ation and future gener-
ations. Just like the road
system of the early part of
the 20th century,” said
Dodson. “The difference is
... technology moves so
quickly, that if we aren’t
ahead of the game, it is
going to take a lot more
money and a lot more time
and there are global im-
pacts to us being left be-
hind as a nation.”
Reporter Tim Johnson
contributed to this report.
This series was produced
with financial support from
the Knight Foundation. The
Centre Daily Times
maintains full editorial
control of this work.
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