What if rural broadband was more than just access to Netflix? In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Mickey Slimp – a consultant with the Deep East Texas Council of Governments – sheds light on the importance of broadband all over Texas, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as internet connectivity has become an essential part of everyday life.
Slimp shares insights on current efforts to address broadband issues, the challenges of inaccurate mapping, and his vision for rural broadband: revitalizing communities.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. You may be aware of the discussions about expanding and enriching rural broadband in Texas, but you may not be aware of all the implications of not having it. Joining us now is Mickey Slimp, a broadband consultant with the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. Welcome.
Mickey Slimp: It’s good to be here today.
Mike Landess: Some of the everyday folks I’ve talked to about rural broadband think it’s a great idea, but it’s not a priority. One person even told me, “I don’t care if they get Netflix in Floydada.” It’s more than that, right?
Mickey Slimp: It is more than that. So it’s an essential part of life these days. It’s like electricity. COVID brought it out that school activities — you couldn’t participate in schools, you couldn’t see your medical provider. There are a lot of things that were impossible if you didn’t have internet connectivity.
Mike Landess: And so, how is this being addressed now?
Mickey Slimp: Well, it’s being addressed, and there’s some good attempts going at it now, so much better than it was 5 years ago. So there’s a lot of funding that’s coming down from the federal government over the next 3 years. There’s some that has already been released in the tens of billions of dollars, and the Texas Legislature just passed a bill recently to put $1.5 billion toward broadband. So–
Mike Landess: Does that have to be approved by voters in November?
Mickey Slimp: It does have to be approved by voters. It goes through a constitutional amendment. So, knock on wood, we’ll see that come through.
Mike Landess: Does it surprise you that it’s taken so long for people to get the hang of this? I mean, understand the importance of this? Did it take the pandemic to make it happen?
Mickey Slimp: It did take the pandemic to make it happen. I think that’s a good insight. It has taken a long time. I have been working in this field for 20-plus years. And we’d hoped that this would have occurred about 10 to 15 years ago. There were some attempts to get it to happen, but it never passed through the way that it needed to. And so I think now that’s a lot more legitimate. There’s a lot more activity that’s going to see some fruition, and I don’t know that we’ll get 100% when the next 5 or 6 years are done, but we’re going to be pretty darn close.
Mike Landess: Now, when you were interviewed by Texas Tribune in a story about the efforts to provide rural broadband in Texas, the subject of inaccurate maps came up. Tell me about that.
Mickey Slimp: We’ve been doing, uh, looking at what the FCC did on their mapping program, that’s the Federal Communications Commission, and also what the Texas Broadband (Development) Office has put forward in their work with this. And so we did surveys in a number of counties. We did onsite reviews in a number of counties, and it was not a random sample. It was not scientific in that fashion, but it was enough people to give us some good insights. And so, one of the most interesting finds that we had was over in Sabine County, which is where Center, Texas, is. About 26% of the people who walked in the door to talk to us — not because they didn’t have internet or they did have internet — but just 26% of the folks who came out were not even listed. Their address was not even on the map. So census data for this region is not good. The 2020 census was, I’ll say, inadequately done because of COVID, and so we were missing a lot of folks. Part of the FCC map was also including census data from 2010. So, indirectly not intentionally, but because they were accepting stuff from broadband providers who had been awarded money under the 2010 census, they had data that was 10, 15 years old now. And so that caused issues. And we had one place where we were trying to show areas, census blocks, portions of counties, census blocks that had fewer than 80% of the people, households, having internet service. So we needed to show 20% or more not with internet service. We showed some places where more than 200% of the households did not have internet service. At one point, there was almost 300% of the households, and it was because of bad census, bad entry data upfront. And in the meantime, they built subdivisions in there. They’ve done a lot of construction in those areas, so new homes are there, and they’re not on that map. Now we’ve had a chance to do corrections. We submitted hundreds of corrections to the map. And so some things have been added. But that for us, too, was also incidental, because people who came to see us and had concerns came and shared that with us, so we were able to turn those in. A lot of folks who do not have internet also do not have the information to come in and talk to us, and so they’re missed in the process.
Mike Landess: Where do you want to see things in 3 years? You talked about the future a moment ago. Tell me about your vision for the future 3 years from now, concerning rural broadband.
Mickey Slimp: You know, it’s a slow-moving process, and that’s one of the rough things, because even with the funding coming out now, it’s going to be 3 years before we start doing a lot of the construction to get to people. It’s actually a 5 to 7-year process that we’re really talking about. So we’re gonna have pockets of East Texas and deep East Texas that will be seeing internet service come in within the next 2 years. But you’re gonna have a large swath area that still is working at the same level that it is today. And so, it’s going to be interesting. Within 3 years, I’m hoping that our schools will have much greater capacity to get internet service. I’m hoping that we’ll have medical clinics deployed and able to do tele-health to the home. And that’s the critical last mile that we have to have to really make this work. To the home, I think we’ll be up to a 60, 70% of the population having good internet service. You know, not internet service at all, but good internet service where you can feel good about doing video, having multiple people in your family working online at the same time and getting a connection you don’t have to worry about. Five to 7 years, I’m much more optimistic. And I think we’re going to be there, where we’ll have 95% of the population having access.
Mike Landess: Is there anything you’d like to add?
Mickey Slimp: I think it’s just really important because these areas of education that you’re dealing with most often and health is very important. But we have also a lot of places in this region where people are leaving the region. Because they can’t get wages and they can’t work. There’s no jobs in that immediate area for them right now. It’s a double-fisted thing. First thing is, starting your own business now requires internet. So the entrepreneurs can’t come here. Children graduate school, what can they do? They’re going to go someplace where they can work and can get money and can pay for a family and those kinds of things. So they leave and go to the cities, go to other places to do that. So you see all of that causing a decline in rural areas. You see companies not coming into those areas because they can’t simply get the connectivity and they can’t, you know, it’s great quality of life in terms of the environment, having all the recreational things that nature provides, but they’re in the other recreational things are missing because of the lack of broadband, the sports lacking, because of that. So I think we have a really good chance to upgrade and recreate our entire rural region around us with broadband.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been Mickey Slimp, broadband consultant at the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. For more information on rural broadband, you’ll find a link on our website, KVUT.org. There you’ll also find this interview to hear again or to share. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
