ASHEVILLE – The COVID-19 shutdown revealed glaring gaps in high-speed internet access, especially among rural and minority communities, for both college and K-12 students. And in North Carolina’s mountains, the terrain makes access that much more a challenge.
“Inequities in our community relative to broadband are significant,” UNC Asheville Chancellor Nancy J. Cable says in the accompanying excerpt from a Zoom interview.
Among 150 students who remained on campus during the shutdown, Cable says, the most oft-cited reason was access to broadband.
Bill Sederburg, a former interim chancellor at UNC Wilmington who retired in Asheville, gathered a group of corporate partners several years ago to launch WestNGN Broadband, an initiative to build broadband access in Western North Carolina.1
UNCA Associate Provost Ed Katz and students from computer science and other disciplines have teamed with the group, Cable says.
“Our students have actually been helping with the negotiations with commercial cable companies, and then helping with the installation, and doing computer instruction for families, the elderly, and so on.
“COVID brings this out in bold relief. We can’t work fast enough on this,” Cable says. “While the majority have it, we can’t say we’re anywhere near to 90-95 percent in the West.”
Inner-city residents also have trouble affording broadband service, Cable says. So during the shutdown, UNCA students have been delivering food, working with the homeless population and developing a broadband network right in Asheville as well.
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