Imagine taking graduate school classes at McDonald’s.
Jackie Mundt does it all the time.
The Pratt County, Kansas, communications executive and farm wife isn’t studying for a master’s degree in hamburgerology or McNuggetstry. Mundt uses her local lovin’ it spot as a classroom and occasional workspace, since her farmstead lacks access to hard-wired high-speed internet and broadband cellular service.
Besides her place of work, the Kanza Coop of Iuka, Kansas, the Golden Arches offers free wi-fi service, so Mundt can listen to lectures and cohort discussions, take exams and hold online meetings to discuss the progress of her thesis with her department chair.
Mundt, a Wisconsin native who met her Kansas-born husband while both worked in California, said she would rather be furthering her education from the comforts of her desk at home, striving to complete a master’s in agricultural education and communication from Kansas State University.
“We want to live on the farm and raise our family here, even though we met in a big city in California, and worked in big corporations, and traveled all over the world, we still wanted to be close to our small town roots. What I wasn’t prepared for was being in a place where the internet was not accessible.”
Ironically, Mundt’s thesis is on how rural bloggers and social media stars have become thought and opinion leaders for the rural audience. Her review of literature on the topic requires her to use the internet almost exclusively.
“I’m looking at sites like Farm Babe and Food Babe and how they now lead thinking in rural America,” Mundt said, who lives 15 miles away from her wireless hotspot.
Mundt’s unhappiness with her internet and cellular service took her to Washington, D.C. last year as a member of Leadership KFB, sponsored by the Kansas Farm Bureau.
“It’s one of the great benefits of being in Kansas Farm Bureau is they have excellent connections. We were in D.C. for a Leadership KFB trip that allows us to interact with legislators,” Mundt said.
As part of that trip, Mundt and her cohort met with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, who grew up in Parsons, Kansas. Pai has developed a reputation for working to find ways to shrink the digital divide.
“Fortuitously, we thought we’d use our connections to meet up with him,” KFB CEO Terry Holdren said. “During the course of our conversations, Jackie spoke up about how she was trying to finish her master’s degree and has to go to McDonald’s because it has the most reliable wi-fi and cell phone coverage in the area in order to communicate with her professors.”
Too common of a story
The tale Mundt wove for Pai of the extremes she endured to earn her degree became a story representing every rural resident of Kansas and the country. Their meeting started a dialogue between KFB and FCC staff and with the staff of Sen. Jerry Moran, R-KS, who sits on the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet.
Through various conversations, they all discovered hope and frustration.
First, there’s federal funding available—$4.53 billion through the FCC’s Universal Service Fund—which all U.S. telephone users pay into to improve service to underserved areas of the country—to help telecommunications firms in build-out of projects like expanded cellular service and fiber-optic cable to the farm. There’s also $600 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development funds available for building high-speed fiber networks to farmsteads like the Mundt’s.
Second, and unfortunately for places like the Mundt family farm, their carriers can’t have that funding for a build-out.
No road map
Why can’t they have such service expansion? Because, according to what’s called a “mobility fund map” the FCC uses for determining such things, they already have great cell phone service.
That set Moran off to find out why the FCC is using an inaccurate map to determine service availability in rural Kansas and elsewhere across the country.
“The FCC has developed two maps,” Moran told a recent KFB leadership breakfast. “The one Farm Bureau is most focused on now is the mobility map showing where there is service and where there isn’t service. Surprisingly, Kansas has service almost everywhere—according to that map.”
Moran’s statement set off a round of laughter in the room, knowing most rural Kansans, living far from Interstate highways and away from large cities, have marginal cell phone service at best, and with a few exceptions, particularly in northwest Kansas. They are unable to access high-speed fiber optic internet service, as some local phone companies, such as the one serving Mundt’s immediate area, are large and publically traded, rather than a cooperative, which makes installing up-to-date services too expensive for shareholders to bear, a decision Mundt said she can’t blame them for, since it’s a business decision.
“Have you lost a call or been unable to make a call because you don’t have service? That’s not what their map shows,” Moran said. “The FCC admits their map is flawed, but there is an appeal process to correct it. That’s what Farm Bureau has engaged itself with on this.”
Moran told the crowd they shouldn’t have to lobby to get government to fix a problem it invented.
“Good government suggests that we don’t create a bad product and then say, ‘You taxpayers, you citizens, fix it.’ That’s where we are with this. If the FCC had a good map to begin with, then they listened to AT&T and Verizon on where they had service,” Moran said.
“It isn’t surprising that information isn’t as accurate as it needs to be when decisions are made about how much money goes where to support broadband and cellular service. Thank you for doing something you shouldn’t have to do. It’s absolutely necessary for our ability to compete in a global economy.”
Holdren soon discovered KFB was the only organization other than the phone carriers who were challenging the accuracy of the maps.
“We knew the maps weren’t true, so we decided that someone like us had to stand up and say these maps aren’t accurate. It’s a fairly cumbersome process,” Holdren said. “It requires us to list specific phones on specific plans and how those phones are used. They needed it to be surveyed by people who knew the process.
“We wound up with over 1,500 persons submitting over 3,000 tests to show Kansas is not properly covered. We’re in process of verifying those inaccuracies according to the FCC’s guidelines. Hopefully, we’ll succeed in our challenge.”
Moran gave KFB credit for their advocacy.
“Availability of broadband and other technology is based on maps that are accurate and not flawed,” Moran said. “KFB decided this was important, and there is no other organization that is engaged in making sure Kansans have access to the technology devices of today that will make agriculture more effective and efficient if we have access to the broadband that allows equipment to operate those technologies.”
The deadline for submission of the data to challenge the FCC’s map is Nov. 26. Holdren said KFB is tying up the loose ends of their challenge of the FCC map.
“At least we’ve started a dialogue with the FCC, and in some cases with the carriers,” Holdren said. “Because there has to be a better way for average Kansans not only to get excellent broadband service, but to participate in the regulatory process.”
Mundt puts it more succinctly.
“Access to the internet has now become a basic right, much like the rural electrification of America. Do you think it’s OK for someone to live without power anymore? No. We need to think about it the same way. It is an equalizer to giving people access to education, to culture, to health care and being able to connect with the rest of the world.”
To learn more about the FCC mobility fund map challenge process, visit https://www.fcc.gov/mobility-fund-phase-ii-mf-ii.
Larry Dreiling can be reached at 785-628-1117 or [email protected].
