Cameron County has extended the deadline for residents and business owners to take its Internet and Connectivity and Broadband Survey and related internet speed test.
County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said the deadline was extended to Nov. 5 to get maximum participation from the public. The results of the survey from the survey will be used in the county’s application to the state for federal funds — being made available through the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill — to support enable technology and broadband infrastructure improvements in communities across the country.
“We’re trying to gather the information … to confirm what we all know to be the reality of the technological divide, which is many people in the county either don’t have access, or have poor access, to the internet,” Trevino said. “This became painfully obvious to us when the pandemic hit and we were utilizing virtual and online teaching for our kids.”
Meanwhile, the infrastructure bill provides “quite a bit of money” to fix the problem, he said.
“Our goal is to gather this information and when we submit our application for the federal funds through the state, hopefully our application will be more successful because we’ll have data backing up our application for the funding,” Trevino said.
The county intends to use the federal funds available instead of footing the bill itself, though “obviously we’ll have to have some skin in the game, which we always do” he said.
Likewise, the county does not wish to go into the internet-provide business but instead will partner with an existing provider to operate and maintain whatever new system is created, Trevino said. On a side note, he said a program already exists that provides funding for low-income households to have internet access: the Affordable Connectivity Project.
“Many of our families here in the county are low income,” Trevino said. “They probably qualify and they could be receiving free internet service today, even without us embarking on this infrastructure project. That was something I learned as we started working on this. It’s very good.”
Meanwhile, he encouraged all county residents and business owners inside and outside city limits to take the survey and speed test. Public participation has been relatively good so far, according to the consultant conducting the survey, though the county wants to get as much input as possible, Trevino said.
“We want to have as much participation as possible,” he said. “The more information the better the information that’s going to be used to back up our application process.”
Trevino said the whole thing takes only a few minutes and that a lot of people will be surprised by the slowness of their internet connection.
“When you’ve got a family or four or five and you’re all using your phones or your Macs or your computers, or you’re streaming, that’s going to slow things down even more,” he said. “That’s why we’ve got to improve on our technological infrastructure. We’re behind.”
Links to the survey and speed test in English and Spanish can be found at the Cameron County website or at tinyurl.com/CameronInternet.
