MADISON — A complex bill designed to speed up broadband internet access and extend it to more rural communities without reliable service has won Senate approval.

The bill, sponsored by State Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, passed the Wisconsin senate this week and comes as Green County continues its own work through an ad hoc county board committee to address the broadband issue in this region.

“Much of the rural areas in Green County …. don’t have access to adequate Internet service today,” said Ryan Camron, director of information technology for the county and chair of the county’s ad hoc committee on broadband service. “When we think about the need for access to health care, virtual learning, remote workers, etc., broadband becomes more of a service that is required verses needed.”

According to a statement from Marklein, the bill modernizes the Rural Broadband Expansion Grant program to direct state investments to communities without broadband, prioritize investments in higher speeds and matching funds; and to prevent what he called “wasteful overbuilding” of federally-funded projects. 

Based off data the county has collected so far in their studies of the issue, 65% of Green County residents and businesses don’t have access to minimum FCC broadband speeds of 25 mbps for downloading and 3 mbps for uploading, he said.

“Wisconsin has made tremendous progress in rural broadband expansion since we first started this grant program in 2014,” Marklein said. “I am very proud of our state’s investments. In order to continue our progress, each session we have fine-tuned the grant program to ensure that we are continuing to make smart investments and to reach communities that are not connected.” 

The bill, SB 365, as amended, eliminates the “underserved” category and redefines “unserved”, according to the statement. Under current law, he added, underserved is defined as areas that are served by fewer than two broadband providers. That means that a given location could have one provider with fast speeds and still qualify for state assistance. 

The bill also redefines “unserved” to be areas that are not served by an internet service provider.

“This complicated speed standard is incredibly slow and does not work for most consumers,” said Marklein. “This low standard also holds back some communities from receiving grants to improve service because it looks like they are served, but they are not. ‘Good enough’ service is not good enough,” Marklein said.

Those technical changes and others are designed to address a major connectivity problem in many rural parts of the region, including in Green and Lafayette Counties.

Acknowledging that broadband access is a key economic and social driver, the county also is seeking the public’s help to study the issue and what it would take to expand to more people. They have been urged to go to the county’s web site to a “speed test” that measures the quality of their Internet connection in a specific location. The site went live on Jan. 1, 2022.

The link to perform the speed test can be found at www.greencountywi.org.

In addition, the senate bill prioritizes fiber projects; and projects that bring at least 50% matching funds from other sources.

“If a community and telecommunications provider are willing to invest in a project, the state should give priority to a project where the locals are invested in the project,” Marklein said. “We must continue to fine-tune and target Wisconsin’s investments in rural broadband to reach the communities who are still waiting to be connected.”