The calendar year now says 2020 and will be 2021 next

week, but for many rural residents of Wisconsin, it might

as well be relatively early in

Barack Obama’s second-term, or else late 2013. That’s the last time the nation’s average internet speed as listed at statista.com was below the

top speed that many in rural

Wisconsin can still expect in

the best of times according

to a 2020 Forward Analytics report, that speed limit of

10 Megabytes per second, or “Mbps.” The national average in 2013 was 9.64 Mbps. Then again, some have no internet access at all, which can be rather problematic in a world that the kids are expected to learn virtually and heightened _nancial stressors mean parents may not have the time to help children with schoolwork.

The numbers for the speed of rural broadband as of 2019 are available in a Forward Analytics study of Wisconsin, by county. To arrive at speed and broadband rankings, the

Forward Analytics study used

an algorithm with a weighted average that assigns different “weights” to each internet speed as pertaining to the overall score. These are those

speeds by county, and resulting ranks, with the caveat that survey parameters count a census block where one person has access to means that the entire block has access, rural as well as in the city, and can thus overstate access in the countryside.

That being said, within the

local four county area a full

68.5 percent of Chippewa

County residents enjoy internet speeds of 25+ Mbps, while 31.2 percent have internet access with speeds ranging from

10 to 24 Mbps and 0.3 percent enduring speeds of less

than 10 Mbps, while 0.1 percent (1/1000 of the Chippewa County population) having no internet access of any kind. Put together this makes Chippewa the best of the four in question (Eau Claire, Chippewa, Taylor, and Clark), coming out to rank at 27th or just below the top third of Wisconsin’s 72 counties when it comes to rural internet speeds.

Shifting from Chippewa County over to Clark, meanwhile, just 49.1 percent of County residents have access to internet speeds of 25 or more Megabytes per second (Mbps), while 42.6 percent have internet speeds ranging from 10 to 24 Mbps and 8.2 percent enduring speeds of less than 10 Mbps. Sharing the _nal category with Chippewa, 0.1 percent or 1/1000 of Clark County residents (take the decimal and move it two spaces left for conversion), that is, one out of a thousand Clark County residents have no access to internet in the digital age—meaning a rank of 52nd out of Wisconsin’s 72 Counties. This puts Clark just below the middle third in terms of Wisconsin rural broadband access. But wait–there’s Eau Claire! Shifting southwest to Eau Claire County in the lower southwest quadrant of our local comparison, 66.8 percent of rural Eau Claire County residents have access to speeds of 25 or more Mbps for internet. At the same time, 19.2 percent of Wisconsin residents have between 10 to 24 Mbps for their internet connection, while 6.6 percent have internet with less than 10 Mbps for speed and a whopping 7.4 percent have no internet broadband access. Final score? 56th out of 72 counties for Eau Claire. Last but not least, there’s Taylor.

Coming in at 63rd out of 72 counties or just

above the _nal nine in state rankings (these being Dunn, Waushara, Iron, Green Lake, Forest, Douglas, Marinette, Jackson, and Richland counties), 45.0 percent of Taylor County residents have access to broadband internet or 25 or more Mbps, while 44.0 percent have access to internet ranging between 10 to 24 Mbps in speed. 10.6 percent of Taylor County residents have access to internet at speeds less than 10 Mbps, and just 0.3 percent or 3/1000 of the total Taylor County population, has no internet access at all. The top three counties in Wisconsin, by contrast, are Racine, Sheyboygan, and Milwaukee respectively Counties, with Dane County hosting the state capital coming in at 18th place for rural internet access. After diagnosis of the problem though, comes cure. With speeds lagging behind in rural areas as opposed to more closely settled (urban) ones then, what are the options to _x things, using present technology?

One is satellite, used for the most remote

areas and available anywhere on earth. By using a geostationary satellite with an orbit tied

to a speci_c area of the planet, satellite internet

knows virtually no bounds statewide, but tends

to be pricy ($150/month) and has certain other drawbacks like development status (latency). Following upon satellite and a little more ‘down to earth,’ meanwhile, are _xed wireless towers, which can bring the world wide web across hilly or forested areas but also has development and some reliability setbacks to its use, not being the most reliable or “future-proof” internet connection option. Fixed tower wireless also has

limited speed options and is subject to weather

effects. The best options then, may be _ber and cable/dsl, as _ber can handle nearly any transmission speed, while cable and dsl (the latter which uses existing phone lines) use existing infrastructure to access the internet, though

cable and _ber both have cost drawbacks. In the end, a mix of options and solutions will be

needed to solve the broadband internet dilemma.

Until then, internet speeds will continue to lag in rural Wisconsin, and elsewhere.