ARConnect officials meet with Community Matters; asks for community's help

ARConnect officials meet
with Community Matters;
asks for community's help

JASPER — Newton County is slated to receive a share of the next round of federal funding Arkansas receives to provide access to high-speed internet service. Glen E. Howie, Jr., state broadband director; Kamelle Gomez, digital opportunity manager and Joseph Givens project manager from the Arkansas State Broadband Office visited with members of Newton County Community Matters at its regular meeting held Thursday morning, June 26. Community Matters is a coalition of non-profit and faith-based organizations providing services to the people of Newton County.
Howie said the goal of his office located within the state Department of Commerce is to build and upgrade high-speed internet to unserved and underserved homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions in Arkansas by 2030. The project is identified as ARConnect.
ARConnect says Newton County has 5,300 identified locations in need of high-speed internet access. If all goes well, Howie envisions construction of the necessary infrastructure to begin within the first quarter of 2026.
However, the state broadband office is composed of only six staff members and two AmeriCorps fellows. Howie said community involvement will be required for that to happen. "We need you."
Howie has been at work in the office for three years. "This is where we are," he said.
The majority of the state has already been addressed by federal programs. Newton County is one of the few remaining counties yet to be included.
Newton County could be the best wired county in the country, but if the service is deemed by its residents to be unaffordable, or if residents neither have the devices to utilize the service, nor the skills to leverage its use in their daily lives, access doesn't matter as much. ARConnect is taking on access, affordability and opportunity all at the same time, Howie noted.
There are other federal programs involved in building out high-speed internet infrastructure across the state. Where ARConnect has 130,000 locations statewide, the USDA and other programs are responsible for administering another 220,000 locations.

Howie reviewed the numbers of locations deemed unserved or underserved. Unserved means the location has no service at all or the service is below US. standard set by the Federal Communications Commission. It defines high-speed internet, or broadband, as a service offering at least 100 megabits per second download and 20 megabits upload speeds. Locations without access to 100/20 megabits per second service are underserved.
Newton County's sparse population and its mostly mountainous terrain makes the cost of building out the infrastructure a deterrent, Howie said candidly.
"But this is a mandate," Howie reminded. According to a financial model, the cost to connect every location in Newton County would total $39.34 million. There would be a 25% cost share add-on to that amount.
Newton County was subject to a previous grant application filing, but federal rules changes cancelled out the grant award process.
The next Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant application period opens to internet service providers (ISP) July 7-14. ISPs are the conduits that connect users to the internet by utilizing technologies like cable, fiber, DSL, or satellite to deliver high-speed internet connections. Multiple applicants could be awarded a grant to service the county, Howie said. By Aug. 11, the grant award recipient(s) should become public.
Can coalition members contact individual ISPs and urge them to apply for the grant, asked Community Matters Chairman John Kent?
Howie replied in the affirmative.
A list of pre-registered ISP applicants is on the ARConnect website at https://broadband.arkansas.gov/bead/ . Only a few of the 48 listed companies are designated Newton County providers. These include: Cox, Hometown, Madison County Telco, Reynolds, Ritter, Wave Rural and Wind Stream.
The federal program allows ISP to have four years for construction, but Howie is calling for the project to be completed in two years, due to delays and changes made in the program at the federal level since Newton County was asked to participate almost three years ago. At least one Broadband Committee was formed, but fell apart due to lack of direction from the state.
Howie asked the county resident to re-organize a broadband committee and connect with peers in the community. Then to attack the three pillars of the project - access, affordability and opportunity in Newton County.