Internet access has become too costly for many

In some Columbus neighborhoods, 31% or more of the households don’t have internet access, with many households saying their biggest hurdles are the price of monthly services and devices.

“What we need to see are a better variety of internet packages, in the $15-$20 a month range,” said Carlie Boos, executive director of the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio. That would create a more equal playing field in the Columbus area in terms of access, she said.

Residents living in Linden, Franklinton, the South Side and the Eastland area are among those with the least access.

The lack of access not only affects access to jobs and education, but makes it more difficult for people in this age of pandemic to access health care and information, she said.

“When COVID-19 started, the alliance knew it needed to get baseline data month to month,” Boos said.

Many seniors don’t have the digital literacy and hardware needed during this age of telemedicine to speak with doctors online, she said. And that also makes it harder to connect with family members trying to check up on them remotely through video apps.

A survey of the housing alliance’s members – including developers, property managers, financiers, members of the philanthropic community and housing advocates – found that all thought that monthly services costs were a major impediment for residents to connect to the internet. Some 83% said the lack of affordable devices also played a role.

Other hurdles included upfront hardware costs (75% of those surveyed said they thought this was a problem), lack of knowledge about programs (75%), digital literacy barriers (67%) and poor credit (58%).

Only 33% of respondents believed that unconnected homes were a barrier.

The housing alliance is hosting a community discussion about the problem at noon on Friday called “Dead Zones, A Conversation on the Digital Divide, Housing and COVID-19,” at www.facebook.com/ahacohousing.

Matt Martin, the community research and grants management officer for the Columbus Foundation, will moderate the event. Earlier this year, the foundation created the Central Ohio Digital Divide Fund with $500,000 in seed money.

More donations have boosted that to more than $1 million, Martin said, with one grant going to I Know I Can, a local nonprofit group working to boost access to college for Columbus students.

The foundation also hired AECOM, an international civil infrastructure research and planning company, to do an analysis of the community’s broadband access.

Martin said the analysis’ biggest finding was “we have good coverage across the city. The same is true for the entire county.” But households without devices and service remain a barrier, he said.

“What we’re realizing is as a community we need to think about it more strategically, comprehensively,” Martin said.

The foundation provided a grant this summer to Partners Achieving Community Transformation, a community group working to improve the Near East Side, to survey residents’ needs there.

One thing that was discovered was that those interviewed landed on a $20-a-month price point per month for what they considered affordable internet service.

At Stygler Village in Gahanna, National Church Residences has teamed up with the AARP and Consumer Cellular to provide senior residents with free smartphones and cellular service for one year while receiving training.

Suzanne Lightfoot, 79, said she was happy with her flip phone.

“Yes, it is difficult to learn new technology,” Lightfoot said. She said she doesn’t get on the computer at Stygler Village because “I really don’t know how to use it.”

Sam Orth, the city of Columbus’ technology director, said while many don’t know what it’s like to live in a world without broadband, many in Columbus do.

“The digital divide is real for our residents. It’s not imaginary,” Orth said.

Columbus City Council recently passed legislation to reimburse the Columbus Partnership with $500,000 in federal CARES Act money to pay for broadband equipment and services for Columbus students, a pilot program serving 200 households in two neighborhoods.

Orth said more needs to be done.

“The larger issue is broadband affordability,” Orth said. “We know many households don’t have high-capacity broadband. It can’t just be affordable, but also high capacity.”

In today’s market, Orth said that cost should be $15-$25 a month for 30-50 megabits per second of bandwidth capacity.

“We think that low-income families should get the same capacity as everybody else,” he said. “It’s going to take both public and private investments for that to happen.”

Boston-based Starry Inc. plans to enter the Columbus internet market soon and has been in touch with the affordable housing alliance here.

Virginia Lam Abrams, Starry’s senior vice president of communications and government relations, said that the company works with affordable housing owners and public housing authorities in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Denver to offer service to residents for $15 a month with 30 megabits per second download and upload speeds. Residents would not have to meet eligibility requirements other companies have, she said.

“It’s an ultra low-cost, broadband access program,” she said.

Pat Losinski, CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library system, said the library had 1.6 million reservations for computers in the library system in 2019, showing the need and the lack of home access for many.

“Broadband’s the fourth utility,” said Losinski, who leads a working group of local leaders trying to better access in the community. “It’s pretty unconscionable to have a large number without access for work and school purposes.”

Columbus City Councilman Rob Do-rans, who chairs the council’s technology committee, said he also has always considered broadband access as a utility, and people forced to work at home because of the pandemic have exposed the deep inequities in access.

“We’re not looking for Band-Aids, but long term solutions,” Dorans said.

Orth said the well-being of the Columbus area is at stake. He said one thing the community has going for it is 1,000 miles of fiber-optic cable over Franklin County. “A lot of larger cities don’t have the access we have,” he said.

“It’s going to take some time,” Dorans said. “I wish I could tell you we can solve this quickly.” mferench@dispatch.com

@MarkFerenchik