TIFFIN, Ohio — Access to high-speed internet has always been difficult for people living in rural areas, and the COVID-19 pandemic pushing more people online highlighted the issue.
Seneca County is working to make sure its residents no longer struggle with this.
After months of work collecting surveys and working with local internet providers, the Seneca County Broadband Study found that 83% of the populated area and 34% of all households in the county do not have access to broadband internet.
The study also shows that one-third of students in the county don't have the same access to online resources.
This limits what kinds of businesses can be brought into the local economy, Tiffin Seneca Economic Partnership CEO and President Aaron Montz said.
"It's tough to get a business, especially a technology-based business or one that really involves a lot of bandwidth, to locate in any of these rural areas because they do not have the capacity," he said.
The law firm Ice Miller LLP gave a presentation on the study findings in partnership with the North Central Ohio Regional Council of Governments and laid out possible solutions for the Seneca County Rural Broadband Task Force to implement.
Some options include: incentivizing the expansion of fiber optic lines, allowing telecom companies to use existing county infrastructure to keep costs down and setting up fixed point-to-point wireless broadband.
And the completed study should help the county be a front runner for potential federal and state funding for those upgrades, as it shows how many public and private groups are involved.
"I think that they're ahead of the curve compared to a lot of jurisdictions and a lot of counties and will put them in a position of being more in the driver's seat to be able to be a significant player for those opportunities at the federal and state level," Ice Miller partner Chris Miller said.
The task force will reconvene soon and begin looking for solutions that work best for the Seneca County community.
"The state, the government loves to see cooperation between public and private partnerships, and cooperation with our universities," Seneca County Commissioner Tony Paradiso. "And I think we have that, and so we're pretty excited."