Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Digital Equity topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Broadband Ohio: Route 30 middle‑mile will make last‑mile service cheaper; 60,000 Ohio households still unserved
Summary
Broadband Ohio said the Route 30 middle‑mile highway for Internet will lower costs for last‑mile providers and help close the digital divide; the agency cited progress since 2020 and an estimated 60,000 households that remain unserved statewide.
Peter Votenberg, chief of Broadband Ohio, told Richland County officials the Route 30 middle‑mile project is intended to act like a highway for Internet traffic, lowering the cost and technical barrier for local providers to reach homes.
"Think of it like local roads versus highways," Votenberg said. "When we put this highway in, ... it makes it much less expensive for a lot of our community anchor institutions to be able to run their Internet." He told the room that Ohio had about 300,000 households with slow or no Internet in 2020 and that "today ... we only have about 60,000 of those households that are left fully unserved."
Votenberg said the project crosses counties and requires multiple partners, and he emphasized public‑private partnerships as the primary means to get infrastructure built. He also said the contract tied to the Route 30 build is intended to be commercially available to other providers for a 20‑year period, which officials said should help keep middle‑mile capacity open to multiple last‑mile providers.
Questions from commissioners touched on affordability (whether bills will fall for consumers) and congestion during large events; Votenberg said middle‑mile lowers the cost to connect homes but does not guarantee a nationwide carrier will change retail pricing, though smaller local providers will find the economics more viable.
