“The only way to revitalize our coalfields is to have an open access middle mile network,” the senator said. Kentucky has a similar plan, and is benefiting from it, he said.
Walters predicted that the state could see as much as a $1 billion growth in the state's Gross Domestic Product in the first year it's implemented.
“Name another economic driver that can do that for $78 million,” Walters said. "We have such an opportunity to get to the top of the list (in high-speed Internet).
Private companies would purchase the “off ramps” of the fiber-optic interstate and fiber already constructed could be sold to the state, he said. Those companies would be responsible for the upkeep, he said.
“Companies don't make their money on the middle mile, they make it on the last mile,” Walters said. In fact, Walters said, the only reason companies now build the middle mile is because of government subsidies that make the enterprise profitable.
"Let's build a network and allow any company to get on it," Walters said.
Walters said businesses lose interest in locating to West Virginia not because of tort laws or tax structure, but because of the education system and the lack of high-speed internet connections.
He said that could be remedied in the southern coalfields where mountain top removal has created large, flat areas that could become home to information centers and data storage centers.
Walters introduced the same legislation this year, but the bill was double-referenced to the Transportation and Infrastructure and Finance Committees. While it passed unanimously out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which Walters chairs, it died in the Finance Committee.
Sen. Greg Boso, R-Nicholas, likened Walters' bill to the era when the federal government invested in the Appalachian Regional Commission to invest in the Appalachian Corridor road system.
"We see good growth and good development in those areas," Boso said.
He said he plans to introduce the same bill “on day one” next year.
• • • Joe Freddoso, Chief Operations Officer of Mighty River LLC, spoke about the development of a statewide network in North Carolina.
The impetus there, he said, was "the equity of access to education."
"I can't put a price on 2,700 kids taking advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), but I know that's going to make North Carolina better," he said.
Schools there have a 1 megabit per second per student minimum Internet speed, he said.
North Carolina, as the second most rural state in the nation, shares some geographic and topographic challenges as West Virginia, as well as counties with sparse population.
"Broadband makes every infrastructure that we have work better, including our people," Freddoso said.
©2015 The Register-Herald (Beckley, W.Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
