Alex Santos, 12, was curled up on a beanbag Friday afternoon at the Patagonia Public Library, his tablet’s screen illuminating his face in the unlit room.
The Patagonia Middle School seventh-grader, who said his family is unable to afford Internet at home, said he comes to the library on the weekend to keep up on Facebook, Instagram and the latest music on Spotify.
Asked what it would be like without the library’s free wireless Internet, Santos said: “I would be less connected to my friends.”
Due to economic reasons and the limited reach of broadband service, many county residents are without Internet access or have slow or unreliable connections that make streaming videos and other data-heavy online tasks a challenge. It’s a situation seen in many rural areas across the country.
Assistant librarian Cynthia Berk said that as many as 30 people come into the Patagonia library weekly to use the Internet, many of whom do not have service at home.
“They can come here and get Internet 24 hours a day for free,” she said. “Why pay for it?”
However, for nearly a quarter of the county’s population, the question of whether to pay for residential broadband Internet – defined by the Federal Communications Commission as any service providing download and upload speeds of at least 25 megabytes and three megabytes per second, respectively – is moot. According to the FCC, 11,496 of the nearly 50,000 residents of Santa Cruz County live in areas where no such service is available.
In neighboring Pima County, which has roughly 20 times the population, just over 77,000 people are without broadband access, an example of the “digital divide” between rural and urban communities criticized in the most recent FCC Broadband Progress Report.
A 2015 FCC map shows that the vast majority of rural areas in Santa Cruz County are without broadband Internet access, and even some urban areas in both Rio Rico and Nogales do not enjoy such high speeds. But even having access to high-speed services does not mean residents can afford them. While roughly half of county households have a connection of at least 200 kilobytes per second, less than a fifth have download speeds that exceed 3 mbps, according to 2013 FCC data.
Marty Newell, the chief operation officer for the Kentucky-based rural advocacy group Center for Rural Strategies, said that the biggest barrier for rural Internet access is the fact that large companies are less inclined to invest in telecommunications infrastructure, like the phone and cable lines that carry Internet connections, in less-populated areas.
“They tend not to pay much attention to the last head of the holler, as we would say in central Appalachia, the last little bit where there are fewer people and not as much money to be made,” he said.
Scott Stace, whose company Bluespan started providing Internet in the county this year and now has several hundred subscribers, said he also faces demand constraints when trying to expand service. The company uses a technology called fixed wireless, in which wireless signals are beamed to users from towers.
“If you go into an area, and I spend $100,000 on a tower, I’ve got to know that I’m going to have enough subscribers to support the costs... of that tower,” he said.
He also said that he does not “have a willing partner” at the county level to help him gain access to tower sites, like Red Mountain outside of Patagonia.
Representatives of CenturyLink and Mediacom, the two largest providers in the area, did not respond for requests for comment.
‘When it’s working, it’s fine’
While their Internet speeds may be slower than those in urban areas, some rural county residents said that what they have meets their needs.
Jody MacManus, who lives near Canelo where there is limited Internet service through existing phone and cable lines, said her satellite Internet connection was enough to run a real estate appraisal business, though periodic outages sometimes got in the way.
“When it’s working it’s fine,” she said, echoing the opinion of another east county resident. “It’s adequate.”
Steve Vendituoli, whose home outside Sonoita has access to CenturyLink DSL Internet through a phone line, said he left the company earlier this year out of frustration with what he said were declining download speeds, especially for movie streaming services like Netflix. He also described trying to end the service as a “nightmare,” and said the company charged him for months after he had returned the router.
He and his family now get online with a cellular service, though he added that the steeply discounted rate he enjoys through his employer would not be available for other rural residents.
Jessica Cobb, who recently moved out of Patagonia to a rural area near Patagonia Lake, said that while her family couldn’t get CenturyLink or Mediacom, satellite Internet was available. Nevertheless, Cobb’s family decided to go without Internet more as a lifestyle choice than a budget issue. When she needs to get online, she just stops by the Patagonia Library.
“The library is a great place. It’s a wonderful place to be,” she said.
Help with homework
With tough economics getting in the way of access, Karen Fasimpaur, a Cochise County-based coordinator with the Center for Rural Strategies, said that local governments should look to improve access at public places like libraries and schools.
She also said that some rural communities have even established their own broadband networks to bring service to people left out by private providers.
On Friday afternoon at the Nogales Public Library, where wireless Internet has not been available for months but a bank of computers lets patrons get online, Pierson Vocational High School student Sebastian Navarro was rewarding himself with games and music videos after finishing his biology assignment.
The 16-year-old, who does not have Internet at home, said he goes to the library almost every day.
“(The Internet) helps with homework,” he said. “It can give you a lot of information.”