The Voice of America recently did a story on Loudoun County, calling it the place where the In-ternet lives. There are more than 18 million square feet of data centers in and around Ashburn, and that development is headed west. Buddy Rizer, the execu-tive director of economic devel-opment for Loudoun County told VOA reporter Dora Mekouar,

"It's amazing when you think about the amount of fiber that's in the ground...Both sides of the road pretty much have fiber troughs in them. And now we're putting some fiber in the middle of the roads as well. "We want to continue to build on that fiber network." That's a good thing for Loudoun, eastern Loudoun at least, but the state of internet connectivity in western Loudoun is poor to fair at best--and that is a sorry state of affairs.

Rather than take substantive action to get our rural areas ac-cess to reliable broadband Inter-net, we get lip service from the Loudoun Board of Supervisors, where the chair recently said that Internet connectivity should be considered a utility. Her state-ment was part of an announce-ment for the installation of "dark fiber" intended to wire schools in western Loudoun. Our supervi-sor ran on the platform of Inter-net access for rural Loudoun that sounded good, but we are still waiting, although he recently said something about us maybe having service within 10 years. Rumor has it that the fiber currently being installed on 611 in St. Louis will supply Banneker School with solid Internet ser-vice, but homeowners (taxpay-ers) are not included, and will still be stuck with meager radio, satellite, or cellular based solu-tions that work, sometimes.

There are Internet groups on broadband in Loudoun where folks talk about the best way to get 5mb service, and most com-ments in articles on the topic in the online local media are filled with trolls who mock those of us in western Loudoun --"It was your choice to live out there, deal with it...", or making the issue political--please, Internet service should not be linked to one's po-litical affiliation! All of this is a symptom of the lack of leader-ship from the BOS, even as they attend receptions and cut ribbons for each new, fiber-served data center added in eastern Loudoun.

I was one of the earliest cus-tomers of one of the local wire-less services, which was able to provide 1mb service, sometimes. In the early days it was accept-able, and I was able to really build my music collection when few others used the service. As time went on and more people were added, the service slowed, I stopped downloading music, monthly fees were increased, and by 8 PM each night, there was of-ten no service at all, despite the nearly $100/month fee charged. Fed up with paying for no service to a company, we switched to a fine small company that has ac-tually given us decent bandwidth for streaming, but the speeds are nothing close to what folks get east of route 15, and I worry what happens when our new provider gets too many clients.

With the COVIC-19 pandem-ic, the need for solid bandwidth in western Loudoun has become even more critical as many peo-ple telework and school kids take their classes online. The emer-gency has reinforced the notion that utility status for broadband is warranted. I know the cost of broadband solutions for western Loudoun could be expensive, even though mandatory in these present days. But hasn't the time come, especially when there are trillion-dollar bills being signed by the President for COVID-19 relief, for us to be included in the 21st century?

As technology changes, per-haps this fiber is not the answer for western Loudoun after all. Cellular technology has come a long way, and will continue to improve, so maybe cellular is a better solution for the rural vil-lages, hamlets, and farms. I'm ok with that, as long as something happens soon, and why shouldn't it-- Loudoun County is touted as a Global Center of the Internet and yet a substantial segment of the County has nothing but slow, poor Internet service worse than places I have been in the third world.