Wichita will apply for grant to make broadband more available to residents

The city of Wichita is poised to embark on a significant expansion of broadband availability to close what officials call a “digital divide” that currently exists within the city limits.

While internet service providers such as Cox and Comcast offer broadband to most of the city, officials say, there are still many people who can’t afford the service.

“Being on the internet today has moved from a state of a privilege to a state of basic human right,” said Michael J. Barnett, Smart Cities coordinator for Wichita. “In today’s era, internet access is now required.”

About 19% of households in Wichita did not subscribe to a broadband service and about 11% did not have a computer, according to 2015-2019 Census data.

City officials plan to apply for a grant from the Kansas Department of Commerce’s Office of Broadband Development to help strengthen the broadband infrastructure in Wichita.

The state has $5 million in grants available for infrastructure buildouts, said Stanley Adams, director of Broadband Initiatives for Kansas. No individual grant can exceed $1 million, and the program requires a 50 percent match.

Wichita officials have until Jan. 7 to apply. They’re still working out the most cost-effective way to provide broadband, Barnett said, as well as where the matching portion of the grant will come from.

One possibility is to create partnerships to address some of the underserved areas of the city, said Mike Mayta, Chief Information Officer for the city of Wichita.

For the past few years, the city has made 20 internet hotspots available for checkout at no cost at the Atwater and Colvin neighborhood resource centers. Demand was so high that AARP stepped in and agreed to expand the program to include the Evergreen Neighborhood Resource Center in northwest Wichita.

Before the pandemic set in, “we couldn’t keep those in stock,” Barnett said. “They were always being checked out. We had a turnover time on shelf of, in some cases, less than three hours.”

But providing free hotspots for check-out two weeks at a time, he said, is the equivalent of “putting a Band Aid on a bullet wound.” The hotspot only helps one family or one individual at a time.

“And then once that person turns it in, now they’re no longer receiving help or assistance,” he said. “It’s definitely a diminishing returns solution.”

City officials intend to develop “a cohesive and comprehensive solution that really is not going to just solve one area, one small segment of the population” and have it in place sometime in 2021, Barnett said.

“We’re trying to look at the city of Wichita as a whole, identify the zones of socio-economic depression, identify the areas where individuals do not have access to the internet, and figure out how to move forward in a way that we can ensure that they not only have access to reliable internet, but also have access to learning materials and assistance to help them transition into this new, changed world that we are now all living in,” Barnett said.

The AARP became involved in the hotspot initiative, Barnett said, when an analysis showed roughly half of the households who used them had someone who was 55 or older. Any solution, he said, will need to include education on how to use computers and navigate the internet for those who are not familiar or comfortable with the technology.

The day is coming, Barnett said, when broadband access will have to be regulated in some fashion like other basic utilities such as water and electricity.

“We do need to look at it that way and it needs to be governed that way — at some level,” Barnett said. “You’ll have kids who will be ostracized and bullied because they don’t have the latest season of blank on Netflix, or because they weren’t able to play Fortnight last week. And while that’s quite sad, it still is quite true.”

Getting together the wide range of entities necessary to develop a comprehensive solution may resemble rolling a boulder up a hill, Barnett said. Yet the pandemic has provided an unexpected opportunity.

Lockdowns forced changes in the way countless companies conduct business. Working remotely will be far more common in the post-pandemic world than it was before COVID-19 hit, experts agree. Companies are looking for more cost-effective locations and people on both coasts are looking for a lower cost of living and a higher quality of life.

Kansas Department of Commerce officials have already reported a surge of contacts from companies looking to relocate operations.

“Wichita as a region has the opportunity to attract economic development and populations from all across the country and the world — of individuals who do not necessarily need to be in the office now, and are looking for a place like this place,” Barnett said. “It’s great to raise children and has good foundational values and has services that they feel that they want to receive.

“But we have to do the work to make sure that we are a place they want to come.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2020 at 6:01 AM.