By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
With a population of nearly 82,000 people, Elmore County continues to grow every year. As more and more people begin to live in the region, internet access countywide will prove to be more needed than ever.
In 2019 the Elmore County Commission took it upon themselves to show their support for the growth of broadband infrastructure, which is not owned by them, but rather private businesses and the local electric cooperative.
To show that Elmore County was a great place to invest the county commission worked alongside the Economic Development Authority to conduct an accessibility study. The study included a citizen survey, which asked people about their current access to broadband at their home and business, GIS data, which told them where each business and structure was located, maps showing where dark and lite fiber could be located and data from the Elmore County Board of Education showing historical and anticipated student population growth areas.
“Together, the accessibility study showed us the locations of the unserved and underserved areas of the county and what percentage of our overall population have no access to a broadband signal at their home or business. It also gave us a better understanding of what it would cost to expand infrastructure in the county and told us which parts of the county it would be best to deploy wireless or wired infrastructure to facilitate broadband access,” said District 4 Commissioner and key contributor to the study Bart Mercer.
The county’s original plan was to focus on installing hotspots to fill those accessibility gaps once wired fiber had been installed but COVID disrupted that back in March of 2020.
Mercer explained the Elmore County Board of Education contacted the commission that month, asking for help putting together a plan on how to remotely deliver an education to students.
Luckily, the commission was able to use the recently completed accessibility plan to show where broadband hotpots should be installed that would serve the greatest number of students and citizens.
“The Board of Education provided us bus route information showing the population density of students along these bus routes, and overlaying this data onto maps produced with our Accessibility Study. We were able to strategically locate 25 hotspots we deployed in areas that were closest to the student population,” Mercer said.
Not only were they able to successfully find those 25 locations for students to work remotely, they also worked closely with the county EMA to widen the spectrum even further.
“The EMA sent out a notice to entities in the county on their contact list which included nursing homes, businesses, fire departments and our municipalities explaining if you have a public WiFi hotspot in your building, and you wouldn’t mind a student or citizen sitting in your parking lot using that broadband signal, to please contact us. This resulted in us identifying 63 additional public broadband hotpots sites across the county that would be accessible by students,” Mercer said.
In all, the project was able to find 96 broadband hotspots across the county, each of which can be viewed on their website https://www.elmoreco.org/.
Recently, both Mercer and Commission Chairman Troy Stubbs attended the National Association of Counties Annual Conference in Washington D.C., where they presented their findings to commissioners across the country. They were subsequently given an achievement award, which recognized the Elmore County Commission’s effort to expand broadband services, such as the deployment of WiFi Hotspots, and their assistance with virtual learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moving forward, Mercer says the commission will continue to closely monitor the level of data used in the 25 hotspots.
“The plan is, as providers install broadband infrastructure in the areas the hotpots are located,
we will relocate them to other unserved areas of the county,” Mercer said.
Ultimately, the project took a huge group effort.
“In order for this project to be successful it took a large group of entities working together in our county. We feel like it’s been a huge success,” Mercer said.
