Richard Knox: Coop board got the message; expand broadband, please

To The Daily Sun,

This spring, a small group of New Hampshire Electric Cooperative members launched a grass-roots campaign to get the member-owned coop to add “facilitating broadband” to its stated purposes. It was a long shot, but we were so frustrated by the slow, sketchy internet service in rural towns like ours that we decided to give it a try.

It succeeded beyond what we dared hope. This week (July 8)the NHEC announced that it has applied for $6.7 million from Governor Sununu’s recently launched Emergency Broadband Expansion Program, funded by $50 million in federal pandemic relief funds.

The coop is also throwing in $3.8 million to launch a spinoff venture that aims to extend broadband service eventually to all its 84,000 members in 115 towns. Part of that will supplement the hoped-for state grant to build two pilot projects in Colebrook and Lempster (the town where NHEC planted its first utility pole back in 1939).

This is the same company that opposed our proposition to get the broadband issue on the ballot of its annual election, warning members that it would distract from its primary mission to keep the lights on, and could raise electric rates.

What caused this remarkable turnaround? Well, when the votes were counted 64.4 percent of voting members approved the broadband proposition. Moreover, they elected a strongly pro-broadband candidate to its 11-member board, replacing a nay-sayer.

The broadband vote fell 2.6 percentage points shy of the two-thirds needed to change NHEC’s bylaws. But far from losing the battle, the grass-roots effort scored a big win. The coop board got the message, and voted unanimously to get into the broadband business.

I will be surprised if NHEC doesn’t get the money it seeks from the governor’s fund. Beyond that, the Coop contemplates applying for a grant from the $20.4 billion federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.

The result of all this promises to be 21st-century internet service for thousands of rural New Hampshire dwellers. That will be a boon for businesses, distance learners, and everybody who will be able to have remote medical checkups and monitoring of their diabetes, blood pressure or other chronic conditions. It will boost real estate values and tax revenues in towns that currently have poor or no internet service. It will also give much-needed competition to pricey internet service providers.

So my colleagues and I who make up N.H. Broadband Advocates want to thank the 845 coop members who signed our petition and the thousands who voted for better internet service. You made it happen!

Richard Knox, Chair

N.H. Broadband Advocates

Sandwich