High-speed internet access has become one of the great divides between urban and rural America. Without it, commerce and communications are stifled. With it, people in many professions can work as easily in Mississippi as they can in New York City.
Brandon Presley, the public service commissioner for the northern third of Mississippi, is on target in his push to speed up the deployment of high-speed internet so as to keep this state from falling further behind economically from the rest of the country and to enhance the quality of life of the people who live here.
Presley’s idea is to let the state’s rural electric cooperatives, such as Magnolia Electric Power, get into the broadband business. A state law designed to protect the turf of cable providers and other telecommunications companies currently prevents this. Presley will ask Mississippi legislators in the 2019 session to remove the ban.
The cooperatives are a perfect fit for such an initiative. They were formed almost a century ago because the major providers of electricity didn’t want to run power poles and lines out into the country, where the distance between customers made the proposition less profitable.
The same dynamics — large areas of thinly populated land — have left sections of Mississippi with slow, dial-up internet connections, if they have the service at all. Although the current broadband providers have been rolling out their service to rural parts of the state, the progress has been slow. As a result, Mississippi has the highest percentage in the country of residents without at least moderately high-speed internet — 28 percent.
If Mississippi’s law is changed, that does not mean the electric cooperatives will rush into the broadband business. Chances are, though, at least some would give it a try. They have a lot of the infrastructure in place already, and the federal government has set aside a pot of money to help them defray the initial costs.
The companies that now control broadband services will probably oppose Presley’s initiative. No one likes more competition. But these companies haven’t shown that they care all that much about serving the areas where the electric co-ops have the bulk of their customers.
The bottom line is that universal high-speed internet coverage needs to be a public-policy goal in Mississippi. If the electric cooperatives are willing to help the state get there, they should be empowered to do it.
