Legislators meet with public over slow internet speeds
State Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Greene/Fayette listen as other members of the State House Consumers Affairs Committee question a witness about issues with with internet service in rural area of the state. The hearing held Wednesday at Waynesburg University was requested by Representative Snyder.
The State House's Consumers Affairs Committee including (from left) Majority chairman Rep. Robert Godshall, R-Montgomery, Minority chairman Rep. Peter J. Daly, D-Washington/Fayette and Rep. Pam Snyder, D- Greene/Fayette listen to concerns from community members about a lack of competition between internet service providers in some area of Greene county.
Members of the State House Consumer Affairs Committee met Wednesday at Waynesburg University to hear testimony about broadband internet access in rural communities.
Kelly Keruskin (front) of Jefferson and Deborah Morgan of Mt. Morris, voice their concerns to members of the State House Consumer Affairs Committee over slow internet speed and limited provider access reduces their ability to use internet services both personally and professionally during Wednesday's hearing at Waynesburg University.
WAYNESBURG — Greene County resident Deborah Morgan pays nearly $60 a month for supposed “high speed” internet service that barely works, she told state legislators on Wednesday.
“We were promised high-speed internet from the get go,” Morgan said during a state House Consumer Affairs Committee hearing on the Waynesburg University campus. “It started out pretty good. It has degraded incredibly.”
Morgan, a teacher who lives in the Mount Morris area of Perry Township, said her average download speed Windstream Communications is 1.7 megabits per second (Mbps) with the best access available between 3:30 a.m. and 7 a.m.
Her plan to retire and start a home-based business like the one she had living in Washington, D.C., is threatened by unreliable internet service, Morgan said. “It’s just wholly impossible to do business online with these kinds of speeds,” she said.
After hearing stories from consumers such as Morgan, state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson Township, a committee member, requested the hearing so that legislators have an idea of what Greene County and other rural parts of the state face when it comes to internet services.
“I’ve just had so many complaints from people,” Snyder said, adding that her daughters, who live on the family farm, could not use the Apple TVs she bought them because the service from Windstream was so bad.
Eventually, her daughters switched to Atlantic Broadband like her “and now they don’t have a problem,” Snyder said.
Another Jefferson resident, Kelly Keruskin, a library media specialist in the Jefferson-Morgan School District, said the best speed she can get from Windstream is 1 Mbps.
Saying where she lives is “a rural, but far from remote, area,” Keruskin recalled being surprised to learn that Windstream was her only option after moving to there in June 2015.
Keruskin said the slow internet speeds have affected her ability to conduct work or do simple online tasks and a phone call will boot her off the internet. Trying to send an attachment, she said, involved “interminable buffering.”
Another committee member, state Rep. Rob Matzie, D-Ambridge, Beaver County, said hearing Keruskin speak about getting kicked offline when a call came reminded him of the 1990s when dial-up internet service was the norm.
“Today, in 2016, it brings pause because internet access is a necessity,” Matzie said.
State Rep. Brandon Neuman, D-North Strabane Township, said it was “disturbing” to hear that students might not have access to the internet when they are being educated to compete in the 21st century workforce.
Neuman said Greene County’s issues are “probably not uncommon in other parts of Pennsylvania” and he hoped legislators would address the problem through policy changes.
With her company under the microscope, Jeanne Shearer, Windstream’s regional vice president of government affairs, said the company meets Pennsylvania’s minimum requirement of 1.544 Mbps and higher speeds can be accessed through a partnership with DISH Network.
A large portion of Greene County customers, 48 percent, have speeds of between 10 and 25 Mbps, she said. Consumers demand more speed, she said, but the more devices a home has the slower speeds can get, Shearer told legislators.
“Each device is competing for bandwidth,” she said.
Brian Harman, a division vice president for Windstream, said his company broadband speeds can be affected by their rural locations and distance from serving nodes as well as the number of users.
Windstream, Harman said, serves rural areas that other companies do not and that means outlying residents might not see the high-speed service they want. “That will impact the speeds by which you can download,” he said. “Distance does play a factor.”
Andrew Place, a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, lives on a Greene County farm and said he knows firsthand the connectivity issues residents face with cell phone coverage and internet service.
“I understand. I get it. I live here and I bring that voice to the PUC,” Place said. “I hope this is the beginning of the conversation and not the end.”