As the pandemic swept through rural America, millions without reliable internet access at home were suddenly unable to keep up with work and school, forcing people to get creative.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, about one fourth of the nation’s rural population, or about 14.5 million people, don’t have access to broadband.
As the COVID-19 pandemic drove people out of schools and workplaces, that meant that millions of people were left in the cold, forcing some LSU students to do schoolwork in the parking lots of any establishment that had free Wi-fi.
That phenomenon keenly impacts Louisiana, where at least 400,000 households don’t have broadband access.
While LSU’s main Baton Rouge location, an urban campus, may not experience the pinch of inadequate broadband access to the same degree as more rural areas, other LSU campuses do. LSU Eunice, located in a town of 10,000 in rural Acadia and St. Landry parishes, had a harder time adjusting to online learning.
Nancee Sorenson, the chancellor of LSU Eunice, deals with the realities of the rural broadband crisis on a day-to-day basis.
“The subject of rural broadband is very near and dear to my heart, because of the negative impact that has on our students, on our employees and for the citizens of these very rural communities,” Sorenson said.
Soren said said that about a fifth of the school’s students experienced connectivity issues.
In many cases, students were unable to use online proctoring tools like ProcturU, forcing them to pay multiple times to take an exam. In other cases, students had to drive to campus to do their assignments in the parking lot.
Sorenson said that the school addressed the issue by dedicating $2 million in federal pandemic relief to solving student’s and faculty’s connectivity problems.
Documents provided to The Reveille by Sorenson show that the school spent $41,306 on internet services and $291,298,29 on hardware for students, faculty and staff, which ranged from laptops and Ipads to internet hotspots.
Unfortunately, hotspots can only do so much in a rural area.
“If you don’t have the connectivity to begin with, it doesn’t help you to be able to work from home or study from home,” Sorenson said.
That investment has helped to ease the digital divide at a school where as many as 40% of the courses are regularly taught online. But Sorenson said it’s not enough. She said that what the community really needs is the fiber optic cable that brings broadband access to an area.
“It’s just fundamental to the economic and workforce development of having great broadband connectivity,” Sorenson said.
The recently created Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity, part of the Division of Administration, is tasked with closing the digital divide in Louisiana, both in terms of access and digital literacy.
Veneeth Iyengar, executive director of the office, also known as ConnectLA, said that the pandemic shined a light on an existing problem.
“I think what we learned during the pandemic was that the amount of internet that was required to even facilitate an online educational platform was inadequate,” Iyengar said. “When we say inadequate, we’re talking about data transmission speeds, we’re talking about the quality.”
Iyengar said that while some experienced problems due to a complete lack of access, others suffered from inadequate internet quality.
“What we learned during the pandemic was that online learning severely impacted everyone though in different stages, but it was especially acute for folks that didn’t have it,” Iyengar said. “And when you didn’t have it, you suddenly saw people parking at McDonald’s or going through their local libraries to try to get access to basic broadband.”
One of the ways that ConnectLA addressed this problem was by pushing the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program, which provided $50 a month to help people pay their broadband bill.
In tandem with the Board of Regents, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and other stakeholders, they signed up 215,000 households for the program.
