Broadband Assessment

Yes, it is long. We acknowledge that – but we’re still asking people to take the online assessment because we need the eCheckup data to uncover gaps, barriers, and opportunities on where we stand, what we are missing out on, and where we need to be.

We need granular data from the eCheckups to better understand how competitive local residents and businesses are – and what we could and should do so all can fully benefit from needed digital infrastructure.

We need to identify on a countywide basis where residents and businesses are unserved or underserved by broadband communications to guide the development of a strategy to deliver reliable and affordable broadband services to these communities.

Although the assessment is long, over 85,000 other residents and businesses have completed the eCheckup. We want to hear your voice.

The assessment is called the eCheckup because just like an annual medical checkup, there are a number of things to go through to have a full understanding of the patient’s health – or in this case, are our businesses and households using broadband and online practices to their full potential? If not, what are they missing out on?

We are gathering data to get a better understanding how our residents and businesses are connected to the internet and using online applications. Like pixels of a picture, the more people who complete the eCheckups the clearer the picture we will have of local broadband needs. We want to have as clear a picture as possible of what returns can we expect from an investment in digital infrastructure - for our businesses, for residents, and for our locality and region.

Every question on the eCheckup is important to understanding the status of broadband internet connectivity and utilization within your community. If the eCheckup is incomplete, we will take into account those responses, but to be fully counted we need every question answered.

In order to be entered into the prize drawing EVERY eCheckup question must be completed.
(This statement is only valid if a prize drawing is implemented.)

The eCheckup will take about 2 months to complete. We expect to make results available to city officials and the public shortly after the eCheckup is complete.

Your county officials will follow-up about where and how to hear the results from the eCheckup.

We understand that it may be difficult for some to complete the online eCheckup due to internet connectivity issues. There are computers available at the local library and we are planning to host events for the public to complete the eCheckup at community locations. Stay tuned for more information!

While we prefer that the eCheckup assessment is taken from your main computer at your home or business, there is a mobile phone version available. This can be accessed from the same link displayed on this website.

Improving the internet service is a hot topic now, so you will likely see other state and local surveys about this topic. The eCheckup assessment is important for because it focuses on issues specific to your community. The results from the eCheckup will provide community officials with information to improve internet service and get additional funding for your community.

The data will be used to identify broadband communications gaps, barriers, and opportunities of local residents and businesses. Using the data in aggregate, we can better understand:

With the granular data we collect through the eCheckups, we can then partner with local economic development, education, health, agriculture, workforce development, and other agencies to customize and develop outreach and programming to better assist households and businesses – as well as apply for external funding.

With the data we collect we will create a baseline of data for benchmarking progress, assessing benefits, and evaluating economic and community returns on investment.

Fiber is future proof. It’s what local residents and businesses need to be relevant in an increasingly online world. Satellite are not substitutes for fiber’s capacity. Currently, the ability of satellites to provide capacity to serve large portions of the population is in question. For example, “at its current maximum of 12,000 satellites, Starlink will never have enough capacity to truly service more than 485,000 subscribers worldwide at full capacity”
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200928/09175145397/report-notes-musks-starlink-wont-have-capacity-to-truly-disrupt-us-telecom.shtml

Digital infrastructure is about more than better internet access. It encompasses a broad range of future services for education, health, and smart community to everyone’s home. This infrastructure also enables new economic activities and stimulates local innovation for services yet to be known. Having the capacity to deliver the future as well as a degree of local control over digital infrastructure benefits everyone locally.