Duanesburg residents to voice broadband concerns

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

In Duanseburg on Creek Road Annabel Felton with her two daughters Eleanor, 15-years-old (right), and Julia, 14-years-old, work on their laptops on Monday afternoon, Jan. 18, 2016. The family, and neighbors, are fighting to try to get broadband access o...

Emailing a document without worrying about the file size, leisurely watching Netflix, doing research or just browsing the Web with unlimited, high-speed access — that’s what Annabel Felton wishes she and her family could do.

The Feltons live on Creek Road in Duanesburg, which is one of many in the town without broadband or high-speed Internet access.

“My husband and I built our house here on Creek Road in 1996,” Felton said. “For the past 20 years, we’ve been waiting for Time Warner to run lines down our road, but it hasn’t happened.”

Town officials are holding an informational meeting Thursday evening about the town’s broadband situation and steps to improve it.

Town Supervisor Roger Tidball said he has invited representatives of Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam, state Sen. George Amedore, R-Rotteram, and U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, to attend the meeting.

“We have a lot of areas where there’s no broadband and for the future of the town and its residents, we need to see what can be done,” Tidball said. “We want the representatives to hear right from the residents.”

“People don’t want to buy a home without access to cable and Internet, which hurts our ability to grow the town,” board member John Ganther said Monday. “We want to be proactive to get information to keep on pushing the broadband rock and, hopefully, fill in the gaps.”

Tidball said the meeting could shed light on available funding to wire roads that have less than 20 houses per mile, which is the standard density cable and Internet providers require to pay for the construction to extend broadband service to an area.

“The town’s franchise agreement with Time Warner Cable will be up in a few months, so we can also discuss what could be done to improve coverage with them,” Tidball said. “Thursday will give us a better idea of where we’re going.”

Board members from the neighboring town of Princetown were also invited, as some of their residents also battle the same broadband issue.

The Feltons have a Verizon hot spot, which gives the family Internet access at home, but only with 30 GB of browsing data each month before overage charges kick in.

“We all need broadband service as it has become a public service,” Felton said. “Today, it’s almost like telling someone they don’t need electricity.”

A lack of fast Web connection has become an issue for the family, as Felton’s daughters, who are in eighth and 11th grades, have limited access for assignment research and other schoolwork.

In the future, the Duanesburg Central School District is interested in doing “flipped classrooms,” Felton said, where students watch a video or do a lesson online from home and come into school to do homework with the teacher.

“You can’t do flipped classrooms when the children in your school don’t have access to broadband,” Annabel Felton said.

Expanding broadband has been a statewide discussion since last year, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo discussed $500 million to be used to increase high-speed Internet service throughout the state in his 2015 proposed budget last January.

On Jan. 8, the state Department of Public Service announced the governor had approved the merger of Time Warner Cable with Charter Communications, which will connect 145,000 more homes and businesses in the state to high-speed Internet access.

“I want to be one of those 145,000,” Felton said. “At Thursday’s meeting, I hope to impress upon my elected officials that it is beyond time for them to provide funding for extension of broadband throughout Schenectady County, and we need to be wired sooner rather than later.

“What I would like is to sit and binge-watch one of those shows everyone’s talking about,” Felton said with a laugh. “But with the entertainment aspect aside, this affects my home values and my children’s education.”

Felton said Duanesburg and other county residents need to “raise a ruckus” about expanding broadband coverage.

“If we don’t have broadband, we’re not going to have young families moving into our community,” Felton said. “They won’t buy houses here or support our schools and it will impact our tax base.

“We need this,” she continued. “We need this for the well-being of the future of the town and the community.”

Duanesburg’s broadband informational meeting is Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Duanesburg Volunteer Ambulance Corps, 130 Cole Road, Delanson.

Reach Gazette reporter Kate Seckinger at 395-3113, [email protected] or @KateSeckinger on Twitter.