"We're at the mercy of the process," said Alexander "Sandy" Mathes, the executive director of Otsego Now, the umbrella group that includes the IDA. "There's not much more we can do at this point."
The IDA has been partnering with the Middleburgh Telephone Company and Otsego Electric Cooperative on the funding application. Mathes said his agency has been poised to request a slice of the $500 million in grant money the state had planned to make available, but the program has been stalled again.
The latest speedbump for broadband came as a result of the state Public Service Commission's decision to approve the proposed merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable, which provides broadband and cable service to some Otsego County communities.
As a condition to that approval, the PSC required Time Warner and Charter Communications to install line extensions to an estimated 145,000 "unserved and underserved" houses in its franchised territory.
An additional condition is that the company must provide at least 100 megabits per second (Mpbs) service statewide by the end of 2018 and 300 mbps by the end of 2019. The highest speed now offered by Time Warner north of New York City is 50 Mpbs.
Still another potential wrinkle is that while the state has approved the proposed merger, it still must pass muster with federal regulators.
Noting she comes from a rural community, county Rep. Kathleen Clark, R-Otego, the chairwoman of the Board of Representatives, voiced frustration over the fact many rural residents will now have to wait years for broadband service.
"The children that go home from school and can't access the internet are at a serious disadvantage throughout this state, and it means that every student at that high school will now have to wait four more years." she said.
Time Warner and Charter Communications will now have 90 days to figure out where they want to extend service in order t o reach the state targets. After that is done, the grant money is expected to be made available across the state. Mathes had said recently that Otsego County stood a strong chance of getting the money it needs to bring broadband to rural residents.
Jim Becker, a Middleburgh Telephone Company executive, estimated there are 19,000 homes in Otsego County that are in unserved or underserved areas.
Becker said he believes it is unlikely that Time Warner will want to extend services into sparsely populated rural areas where it is more expensive to run broadband lines to homes.
He said his family-owned company, one of the few remaining independent telecommunications firms in New York, has been wiring houses in rural upstate New York for 118 years, and will be able to reach the houses in areas that Time Warner decides to pass up.
"I just don't see them doing the whole county," Becker said in an interview. "They are bottom-line driven."
©2016 The Daily Star (Oneonta, N.Y.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
