An already-existing digital divide in Boulder County has widened during the COVID-19 pandemic, as jobs became remote and students moved online for the first time last year. But the pandemic also has pushed Internet and device accessibility to the forefront and accelerated a response.
Peri Shaplow, chief marketing officer for Boulder-based MandaraRx Inc., a CBD product brand that does business as Mandara CBD, has worked from home since March. Most of the time, her internet connection works fine, but other times outages cost her hours of productivity.
Last Monday, Shaplow was in the middle of recording inventory when she lost connection for two hours.
“In this environment, I think it’s really shined a spotlight on how much we all rely on the internet to do our jobs,” Shaplow said. “I think walking into an office every day, it was just almost something I took for granted that the internet was going to be on most, if not all days, working at 100%.”
Whenever she can’t connect her computer to the Internet, she works off of her phone using 5G broadband cellular networks. Working on a small screen is less than ideal, she said. She has more better days than not, but still looks forward to returning to an office setting.
Shaplow said that as a startup company, Mandara CBD already had some remote work as a part of its structure. Even so, she didn’t think about reliable broadband for the home before going fully remote. Shaplow said that sometimes it feels like she is playing tug-of-war for connection with her spouse who is also working from home. There’s a noticeable lag during video calls, she said.
“The broadband Internet that I have in my personal home was not something that I really considered very much. Of course we tend to think about our internet and our broadband service as relates to like, can we still watch Netflix? Can two people be on their phones at the same time,” Shaplow said. “This new world that we live in, I would say, making sure that I’m able to work at home at the same level that I was working, and speed that I was working at the office is incredibly important.”
Mike Zawitkowski, CEO and founder of Boulder-based Acorn Analytics Inc., a data-science firm that helps organizations become more data-driven, switched to a fiber network after having internet outages early into the pandemic. He said that the difference was night and day.
“For whatever reason, outages were a constant part and it was very nerve wracking to not know whether a critical conversation I was having with a current or prospective client or having a sensitive conversation with one of my employees was going to get interrupted because it got dropped,” Zawitkowski said.
He said that he’s lucky to live near a fiber-optic network line, but not all of his employees and clients do.
Lack of broadband access can be a barrier for those seeking remote opportunities. FlexJobs Corp., a Boulder-headquartered subscription job board site that connects employers with candidates for remote and flexible work, saw a spike in work-from-home opportunities. In 2020, there were 20% more remote job listings than the year prior, according to Brie Reynolds, career development manager for FlexJobs.
Last year’s website traffic from job seekers also saw an increase of 50% more than 2019.
The demand is there, but some website visitors are reluctant to apply for remote work because they lack reliable broadband, Reynolds said.
“We have seen that some folks will be interested in remote work and the main thing that holds them back is a lack of high speed broadband internet,” Reynolds said. “If they just had that, they would be able to do it because they’ve got the skills to do the job. They have the interest and the ability to work from home. They can set up the home office, they’ve got all of the other pieces in place but it’s just this one thing and it’s really disappointing because it’s something they really don’t have control over. It’s more of an infrastructure issue than something you can personally make magically appear.”
Scott Cook, CEO of the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce, has not received many negative comments on broadband from Longmont business members, he said in an email. He added that having NextLight Internet, Longmont’s municipal high-speed fiber-optic broadband Internet service, is “a good thing, especially now.”
Right before Gov. Polis announced the Stay-At-Home order in March, NextLight got to “test-run” a high amount of usage, said Scott Rochat, public-relations and marketing specialist for Longmont Power and Communications and NextLight. NextLight saw one of its highest usage during a snowstorm on March 19 and continued running smoothly, he said.
Internet utilization in 2020 increased around 20% to 30% due to higher individual consumption and new customers, according to NextLight executive director Valerie Dodd.
“We were absolutely positioned to accommodate the increase in utilization because of our fiber network,” Dodd said. “The real opportunity for us during the pandemic was to make our service even more affordable for some of those households that may not be able to afford the higher speeds, or some of our service at all.”
NextLight increased its entry-level package of 25-megabits per second (Mbps) connection to 100-Mbps uploads and downloads speeds last month at the same cost. The upgrade to 100-Mbps also applies to the Sharing the NextLight program, which provides free connection to income-qualified families for children from pre-K through college who live in Longmont. Dodd said there are about 65 families using Sharing the NextLight.
The speed upgrades extend to the reduced cost for income-qualifying customers for $14.95 a month that was launched last year in March. NextLight was planning to provide a solution for low-income households prior to the pandemic, Dodd said, but COVID-19 sped up its release. About 500 to 600 households are using the income-qualifying offer.
“We were wanting to launch that offer and planning to launch that offer, but as soon as the pandemic hit, we pulled the trigger more quickly than expected,” Dodd said.
Longmont is 90% fiber-enabled through NextLight’s network of the city and provides broadband to 22,500 households and businesses, Dodd said.
This semester, the St. Vrain Valley School District is sending a high speed WiFi Internet signal from towers into communities without broadband access in a partnership with Cisco Systems Inc. Families, using the municipal Internet provider, according to Michelle Bourgeois, chief technology officer for the district. NextLight didn’t confirm its involvement.
The district plans on starting the program with a mobile-home community near Colorado Highway 119 and Interstate 25 and areas surrounding it, where 85% of the students are free- and reduced-lunch recipients. There are about 150 students that don’t have internet access, Bourgeois said.
Boulder may not be a “Gig City” like Longmont, but the city has its own plans to build fiber internet infrastructure.
Boulder broke ground early in the year on 65-mile fiber-optic backbone, or middle mile, contracting Boulder-based Zayo Group Holdings Inc. for the buildout.
Dennis Kyle, senior vice president of Zayo Networks’ Mountain Region, said that the pandemic introduced disruptions in construction, but it has already reached 19% completion and is in phase one of nine. Completion of the buildout is set somewhere between May and July 2022, Kyle said. Zayo also may maintain the fiber-optic backbone for the city after it’s built.
In the short term, the network will be for the city’s use and provides service to government buildings, but it could eventually support gigabit-speed Internet services to homes. Having the backbone will make it easier for Internet service providers to expand in Boulder because they won’t have to assume as much costs with construction, introducing competition, Kyle said. More internet service providers means a better price for the consumer, he added.
“It’s hitting areas that, economically, Comcast, CenturyLink, etcetera, would have a hard time bringing high-capacity Internet service to,” Kyle said. “By putting in this middle-mile network, this metro backbone, it reduces the cost for everybody.”
One Colorado Internet service provider, Denver-based Live Wire Networks, quickly expanded its presence in Boulder in 2020 through a Boulder Valley School District program ConnectMe, originally a pilot initiative, started in 2016 with Live Wire to place small towers on top of school buildings to provide broadband Internet for free- and reduced-cost lunch-qualifying students. Towers were installed at a few Lafayette schools, expanded into Boulder, and is now approved to build on all BVSD schools.
The ConnectMe partners announced plans for a districtwide expansion in April 2020. Jim Hinsdale, president of Live Wire, said that decision was made prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but there is now more urgency to complete build outs.
Hinsdale said that it will build on 45 schools in a three-phase period. Live Wire has completed installations at eight or nine of the 14 schools in the first phase, he added.
“As we started the program, we were getting maybe three to five orders per month. Now it’s a lot more than that,” Hinsdale said. “I was kind of amazed. Getting into this program, I did not realize that there were that many families that just couldn’t afford a $100-a-month, you know, Comcast bill or $150-a-month Comcast bill.”
Building out a backbone is moving in the right direction, said Ted Rockwell, the immediate past chair of the board of directors for the Boulder Chamber and director of marketing for the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. However, he hopes that future Internet service providers won’t place an unobtainable price tag on high-speed broadband.
“This is an essential item at this point. The pandemic has taught us that the internet is the backbone of business, and it’s the backbone of education, and it’s the backbone of the community. And as a result, that fiber optic connection or high speed internet connection shouldn’t be seen as a luxury item.”
Along with access to devices and adequate Internet, computer literacy is a crucial aspect in minimizing digital divides, said Lara Van Matre, program coordinator for Bridging Digital Divides, a Sister Carmen Community Center Program in Boulder County.
“I think that a skills deficit is a bigger problem that people really realize as well,” Van Matre said.
Bridging Digital Divides advocates for Internet and device accessibility, but also teaches free classes to adults on computer literacy.
Classes have Spanish-speaking instructors. Van Matre said populations that are more likely not to have a computer or Internet access at home include Latinx, low-income, those without a college education or high school degree, the disabled and the aging.
Before the pandemic, classes were held in person at various BVSD schools and various community centers in eight-week workshops in Boulder, Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville and Broomfield. Bridging Digital Divides offered Chromebooks to learn on, child care and dinner, making it easier for parents to stay enrolled in the course. Bilingual volunteers could provide one-on-one support during classes.
Since moving classes online during the pandemic, graduation rates declined. In-person classes had a 95% graduation rate compared to the about 70% graduation rate for the online classes, Van Matre said.
Van Matre said that many students have little to no experience with computers, and lack knowledge that many people take for granted. Classes often go over basics in early classes, such as setting up an email account.
“It is just so daunting for someone who already feels that they’re far behind or, you know, have a lot of catching up to do,” she said. “It’s very hard to try to do it when the only contact, actual demonstration they have is me going and dropping off a Chromebook, using my phone as a hotspot to run them through how to basically get connected to their online classes, and then just being there as a phone support.”
An incentive for the in-person classes was that after graduating, participants could take their Chromebooks home for a reduced price. Chromebooks were loaned out upfront for the virtual classes, which may have impacted recent graduation rates, according to Van Matre.
After attempting eight-week workshops online with classes twice a week, Bridging Digital Divides moved to an ongoing once-a-week support group and continues taking new registrations rather than having an enrollment period.
Bernardo Padilla and Miriam de Santiago lead classes for Casey Middle School parents through Google Meets. Santiago said that parents ask for help with accessing BVSD’s parent portal on Schoology. Since the pandemic began, she said, participant questions surround job applications, online billing and taking trade skill classes.
“Basically we show the person how to navigate the Internet. We are not professionals, but we try to do our best,” Santiago said.
Santiago and Bernardo Padilla have two sons in the BVSD, Marcus and Andres Padilla.
With multiple family members video conferencing at the same time when school was in session, Santiago experienced Internet lags. Sometimes, she lost connection for 10 or 15 minutes. Though she has experienced frustrations with broadband, Santiago said that there’s families who have worse connections or don’t have access to the internet at all.
“If my life is complicated right now, then for other people it’s more complicated,” she said. “Not everybody has the same opportunity to have everything.”
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