‘CNMI in very good position to get grants to improve broadband access’

With the availability of computers and internet connection in the islands, the Commonwealth is in a “very good” position to receive federal funds that would facilitate more accessible and affordable broadband services for the public, according to the results of a survey conducted by the global non-profit group One Economy Corp.

The survey is part of the CNMI’s first ever broadband mapping program aimed at developing and maintaining a comprehensive, interactive, and searchable nationwide map of existing broadband capability and availability throughout each state or territory.

Results of the survey, funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the National Telecommunications Information Administration, are currently being discussed in town hall meetings conducted by One Economy Corp. representatives with their local partners on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.

Daniel Calarco, director of international programs for One Economy Corp., said in an interview last Thursday that the CNMI has a lot of “pre-requisites” in place such as computers and laptop as well as internet wiring in households, making it easy for them to turn on the internet connection.

For the survey which One Economy conducted last year, Calarco said they interviewed 867 respondents on Saipan and 100 each on Tinian and Rota.

The survey revealed that 99 percent of Saipan respondents have access to the Internet, which he described as “way above the national average.” Meanwhile, Tinian had 5 percent who said they didn’t have access while 17 percent from Rota claimed the same thing.

Calarco said Internet users are currently paying between $50 and $60. “What that says to us is people consider the internet to be very important,” he told Saipan Tribune. “They really want to have it but at the same time, the wages here are low so it’s very difficult for people to afford the internet. So people are making sacrifices to be able to purchase internet at home. They say they want it but they’re very high rates and that for a lot of people, it’s just unaffordable.”

The broadband mapping process, Calarco said, will enable them to recommend ways to bring the prices down so that people can get internet access “at a price point that makes sense for them.”

With this finding, Calarco said the only thing that needs to be done is improving the “middle-mile” broadband capacity which entails increasing cabling competition going to Guam and the mainland to provide users adequate Internet connectivity.

He noted that customers are currently paying higher for internet services because of the shortage in this middle-mile broadband capacity. “It’s really going to be likely that improving that kind of access will improve [internet services] here,” said Calarco.

Calarco encouraged the public to attend the town hall meetings they will be conducting until April to ensure that the data they collected are “accurate,” “make sense to people,” and “reflect the reality” in the islands before they report back to the NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission and say that there are areas in these territories that are unserved in terms of broadband access.

“We’re having people fill in gaps, if there are any,” he added.

Calaco said all data will be part of the CNMI’s digital blueprint for CNMI which is expected to be released by the end of the year. The finalized blueprint will show their recommendations to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the FCC, which are both concerned “that there are people in America that don’t have [Internet] access.”

Calarco arrived last Monday with One Economy program manager for mapping initiatives Colin Richardson. They conducted a town hall meeting on Tinian the following day. He said Rota’s meeting had to be moved this week due to flight schedule issues.

Richardson, on the other hand, emphasized on the need for Internet users to participate in the internet speed test at www.measurementlab.net/run-ndt which uploads data directly into the federal broadband map data.

“The purpose of this is to be able to see whether the speeds that people get match up with the speeds that providers say they are giving people. The more people that take this speed test, the more data we’ll have-hard, quantifiable data we’ll be able to show the FCC and the Department of Commerce,” he explained.

Calarco added that Internet users should take the speed test in different times of the day and in various locations to better help the study.

Given the challenging task of getting more people to attend town hall meetings, Calarco said there will be a winner of a Flip video camera in the town hall meetings they host. The incentives were donated by Cisco, he added.

Calarco urged the public to take part both in the broadband mapping program’s planning phase, which ends this year, and the actual mapping phase which goes on until 2015.

“There’s no guarantee that any of our recommendations will be funded but at the very least, there will be a Department of Commerce-funded study that says if you are going to be making investments in CNMI internet, these are the ways it should go as determined by One Economy and the Department of Commerce study,” he said.