Carbon County hosted its two virtual town hall meetings for municipal officials to learn more about a rural broadband survey that is being conducted for the county at this time on Wednesday evening.

The town hall sessions included Dr. Andrew Cohill of Design Nine, the company hired to complete the survey, as well as county commissioners and a handful of municipal elected officials.

Cohill outlined the work his company is doing for the survey, including reviewing the market, analyzing current internet service provider offerings, sending out surveys to residents and businesses, evaluating technology options and partnership options, looking at financing and more.

He said that so the company has received approximately 1,300 responses to the surveys so far with more coming in daily.

Cohill said that the survey aims to help the county better understand what services are already provided and what challenges there are for the private sector; adding that the county has made it very clear that they don’t intend to become an internet service provider.

Cohill spoke about various options that may need to be used to best serve the underserved of the area, noting that there is no “one size fits all” approach when it comes to broadband services.

He pointed out that a combination of wireless hot spots, wireless services and fiber services may be what is needed to achieve the goal for expanding broadband.

Cohill also told the group that one of the challenges for private sector providers is building new or upgrading outdated infrastructure due to the cost.

Because of this, grants could be secured to help construct wireless towers where needed.

Design Nine plans to look at all internet service providers in the county and see what is currently available, but as of the meeting, has not yet done this analysis.

He said the company is looking at where the towers are and what kind of fiber is available in the county, but noted at this time, he is not aware of any fiber to the home in the county.

Two of the municipal participants questioned this fact.

One said that he has fiber in his home for broadband service and fiber is already laid in some of the towns.

Fred Kemmerer, chairman of the Franklin Township supervisors, said that Blue Ridge has over 400 miles of fiber already laid in Carbon County so he felt Design Nine was misrepresenting this fact.

Kemmerer also questioned why Design Nine didn’t first meet with the internet service providers before coming to municipal officials to discuss the study; and also how it could possibly hurt already existing providers which have spent millions setting up the infrastructure and providing services.

He said that he felt Design Nine was providing a disservice by not providing the complete information about the internet service providers to municipal officials.

Cohill said he believes competition is a good thing and has seen that when competition is introduced, customer service typically improves and costs to customers go down.

He added that Design Nine plans to meet with all internet service providers.

Kemmerer then asked Commissioner Chris Lukasevich if a roundtable discussion between officials and internet service providers could take place so that it is getting direct information.

“I think it’s only right to have the people that are already in our county and all over it already, our neighbors and our people who are working for these companies to be represented in such a dialogue that’s going to affect them, if in fact, it would be dropped in their service,” he said.

Lukasevich said that all providers are going to have an opportunity to speak with Design Nine, but he feels a round table with municipal officials and service providers is putting the “cart before the horse” and said it is easier to get municipal leaders together than the internet service providers.

He also said he didn’t get the connection between the survey and the internet service providers.

Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein asked Cohill about building infrastructure for the broadband services for providers and then who would be responsible for maintaining it.

Cohill said that it is up to the county to look at the study results and determine what the best fit is for the county and how to move forward, and one of the decisions may be that the county isn’t ready to move forward.

Lukasevich asked that once the study is completed, what would typically be the next step, like creating an advisory committee.

Cohill said that many communities who have done this type of study, an advisory committee or task force made up of county and local officials, as well as other entities were created.