At AdkAction our goal remains 100 @ 100: that 100% of the households in the State of NY should have access to broadband speeds of at least 100 megabits per second. When the Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the merger of Time Warner and Charter to form Spectrum in NY, the PSC required Spectrum to add an additional 145,000 households and businesses to its network in rural NY. We applaud the governor’s appointment on October 30th of Rory Lancman as the PSC’s special counsel for ratepayer protection. One of Lancman’s first acts was to put Spectrum on notice that he is going to hold them accountable and require them to conduct a “top-to-bottom” review of all the addresses it credits for itself by February 2021.
At AdkAction, we have been working with towns and counties in the North Country to augment the PSC’s top-down audit of Spectrum’s buildout with a bottoms-up address-by-address review of Spectrum’s buildout. We look forward to working with Mr. Lancman and the PSC to ensure that every claimed household or business is in fact an “Eligible Passing” under the terms of the 2019 Settlement Agreement between Spectrum and the PSC, helping achieve the goal of 100% of the households and businesses in NY having access to broadband speeds of at least 100 megabits per second.
– Dave Wolff, AdkAction Broadband Project Lead
Recent Broadband News
Gaps in broadband coverage complicate at-home education
“As more school districts across the North Country cancel in-person classes and switch to online distance learning, due to a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases, many families living in more rural areas of the Adirondacks are facing major hurdles as they try to learn remotely at home during the pandemic.”
Watch the Mountain Lake Journal segment below, or at Mountain Lake PBS.
Extended Dave Wolff interview
See more of the Mountain Lake PBS interview with Dave Wolff to learn about a new measure of the positive economic impact of access to high speed broadband in rural areas and some of the existing challenges that are slowing the expansion of broadband in the Adirondacks:
Missed Connections
“Charter’s settlement with the New York Public Service Commission requires the company to add underserved or unserved upstate residences and businesses to its high-speed network without charging the new customers for infrastructure.
Now, officials representing Adirondack and Catskill communities are getting nervous. If Charter has inflated or miscalculated the number of hookups it has provided, it could leave some of their constituents without adequate service at a time when broadband’s importance to rural economies is rising.”
Read the full Adirondack Explorer article here
State accuses Spectrum of inflating list of required rural broadband connections
“A new broadband oversight czar in state government on Wednesday accused Charter/Spectrum of improperly crediting itself 1,800 addresses toward its mandated buildout to underserved and unserved internet users in New York.
“In a letter to Charter’s lawyer, Rory Lancman, the Public Service Commission’s special counsel for ratepayer protection, said if the company doesn’t correct the record he will go to court to force Charter to prove the addresses are valid.”
