Don Sudduth of East Texas Advanced Cable Solutions speaks about the lack of an affordable broadband connection the business has had at its Winona location on Monday August 21, 2023. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories on the push to expand broadband access in East Texas. Read the first part here and the final part here.

WINONA — East Texas Advanced Communications Services installs business phone systems. Fittingly, most of its business used to take place over the phone.

“This phone used to ring, ring, ring,” owner Cindy Gann said as she looked at the handset sitting on her desk. “Well, now everybody’s going to email.”

Cindy Gann and her husband, Randy Gann, didn’t always have internet access at their business in rural Smith County. But like other small business owners across rural East Texas, they’ve leaped into the digital age out of necessity.

“If you don’t have a computer nowadays, I don’t know what we’d do,” she said. “Our business depends so much on the internet.”

Americans are doing business online more than ever before. But the world wide web isn’t always accessible for rural businesses. High-speed internet infrastructure hasn’t reached some parts of the region, and some business owners say they’ve struggled to stay connected.

As the internet increasingly becomes tied to commerce, some say internet connectivity could be the difference between rural businesses that thrive and those that don’t.

‘Can’t even go to work’

Letters, phone calls and in-person visits to businesses are being replaced by emails, digital meetings and online transactions. As of 2023, about 28% of interactions between customers and businesses that once took place in-person now take place online, up from 9% in 2002. That data was compiled by IBISWorld, a firm that researches business practices.

The prevalence of the internet in business is reflected in other research, too. Seventy-one percent of businesses now have a website, a statistic that increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, Forbes Advisor reported.

Still, some remote areas of the Lone Star State have yet to be connected to broadband internet. Around 7 million Texans lack access to broadband, which is high-speed internet, according to the Texas Broadband Development Office.

In the rural, sparsely populated area near Dixie in Smith County, retired fire chief Terry Rozell is the operations chief for Emergency Solutions, which provides online training, billing and fire reporting services for fire departments across the nation.

Rozell meets with fire department leaders during video conferences — when his internet works, that is. He connects his computer to his cell phone’s hotspot, but that signal often fails or is too weak, he said.

“Sometimes, I can’t even go to work because I don’t have enough bandwidth,” Rozell said.

High-speed internet access is available near his home, but despite his requests, the company that installed that service hasn’t connected him. Rozell lives across the street from a housing addition that has internet service through Optimum, an internet and phone service provider previously known as SuddenLink.

The service was installed about a year-and-a-half ago, but the company didn’t ask Rozell or his neighbor if they wanted it, he said. He’s asked the company several times to install service at his house.

“I cannot get internet connected up because they didn’t put the cable on my side of the road,” he said. “I talked with Optimum four or five times, and they finally told me that it is not available in my area, even though it’s available 1,000 feet from my house.”

The Ganns at East Texas Advanced Communications Services used satellite internet for a while, but the trees around their rural property interfered with the signal. They needed the consistency of a wired internet connection at their property, which has a Tyler address.

After trying a few other internet options, they contacted AT&T to see if the company would install a fiber-optic line to their office, which the company did.

The service has been reliable and allows the business to do what it needs to online, such as receiving work orders from customers, Randy Gann said.

But it hasn’t been cheap. The Ganns have a two-year contract with AT&T for $543 per month, which includes the cost of service and their share of the fiber-optic installation.

“We didn’t have another choice,” Cindy Gann said. “Your websites, your emails — you just couldn’t work without it.”

Down to the wire

Broadband internet is less accessible — and more expensive — in rural areas for a few reasons.

Local officials are working primarily to expand broadband by building fiber-optic internet networks. Those networks provide greater reliability and higher speeds than other forms of internet, said Josh Seidemann, vice president of policy and industry innovation for the Rural Broadband Association.

However, the cost of labor and materials to build fiber-optic networks is costly, and internet service providers aren’t likely to have a quick return on their investment.

Smaller communities generally have fewer potential internet customers, yet extensive amounts of fiber-optic infrastructure may be needed to reach their homes, said Tom Simone, vice president of broadband services for Austin-based GrantWorks. The company teams with businesses and organizations to secure grant funding for projects such as internet network expansion.

The same amount of infrastructure used to reach a few rural customers could yield more customers — and more revenue — in a densely populated area. A lack of competition in rural areas also means internet providers can set their own rates, Simone added.

“The bottom line is that, in any market-based business … it’s, ‘What can I get away with pricing-wise?’ ” Simone said.

Those factors contribute to the so-called “digital divide,” the difference between areas that have high-speed internet and those that don’t.

“It’s one thing to build a network,” Simone said. “It’s a completely different thing to provide products people can actually afford.”

The federal government provides low-income households with financial assistance for internet service through the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program. No financial aid, however, is available to help small businesses with their internet costs.

‘Have to have’

For businesses across the nation, an internet presence can be the difference between gaining and losing a customer.

More than half of all product marketing takes place online, according to the New York-based Winterberry Group.

And about 76% of consumers look at a business’ website before going to its physical location, according to 2021 research from Visual Objects, which connects companies to marketing and design firms.

Bringing broadband to rural East Texas does more than let business owners send emails. For some, the internet cable that runs to their property is the lifeline for their livelihoods.

Upshur County business owner and Marine veteran Jerry Thomas thought about opening his own gun shop for years. When he was laid off three years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic, the time was right.

Thomas lives in a rural area south of Gilmer. Customers have to make a point to find and visit the shop, so Thomas said he needed to get the word out.

He already had internet service from Etex, a Gilmer-based internet and phone service provider. After building a website, Texas T’s Firearms was born.

The shop offers pistols, rifles, shotguns and ammunition. Customers can visit its website to view photos of the inventory, find Thomas’ contact information and follow his blog.

Thomas’ wife runs her own online business from their home: Sherry T’s Texas Tee’s, which offers custom T-shirt design and printing. She advertises her products in a Facebook group.

Without an internet connection, neither of their businesses would exist, Jerry Thomas said.

“I would just be a guy sitting out in the country with a bunch of guns in his house,” he said. “I’m not a brick-and-mortar store out in the middle of town. … Internet is definitely what we need and have to have.”

Just off Texas 300 southeast of Gilmer, Rowdy Creek Ranch offers guests a place to host a private party, taste wine, hear live music and spend time outdoors.

Customers can make a reservation to spend the weekend in a cottage or camp in style in a vintage travel trailer. It’s called “glamping,” short for glamorous camping.

All of the ranch’s transactions take place online, said Jacque Weems, the chief financial officer. The company paid to have a fiber-optic internet line installed to reach the property.

“We all work off of laptops, so all of our laptops connect to the internet, and we function all of our accounting systems online — the whole nine yards,” Weems said. “Working without internet is not an option for us.”

Economic booms

The future for rural areas without internet access could be bleak, said Simone of GrantWorks. If an area lacks the internet connectivity businesses and employees need for work and life, they won’t stay there.

“Communities are going to just dry up,” he said. “It’s possible that, eventually, you lose young people to suburban life, midsize and large cities.”

Communities that do invest in broadband, however, could grow.

The East Texas Council of Governments is planning for broadband expansion in the region. The organization will work with internet service providers and county governments to secure funding for those projects, which will connect businesses and residences to a regional fiber-optic network.

The council hopes to take advantage of the billions in state and federal dollars Texas could receive for broadband expansion. The state has been allotted roughly $3.3 billion in federal funding, and voters will decide in November whether to spend another $1.5 billion in state funds for that work.

Businesses will benefit from broadband expansion in several ways, said Chuck Vanderbilt, the council’s community and economic development manager.

“It increases their capability to serve,” Vanderbilt said. “It also provides better quality of life for the overall workforce and helps them attract those employees. … In addition to retaining the business, it can help them expand and grow their business, which obviously has a positive economic impact in their local communities.”

Decades ago, an internet connection wasn’t an essential part of a small business. Today, it’s about as important as electricity, Simone said.

“Internet connectivity is not a utility today,” he said. “However, it’s as close to a utility as it could possibly be.”

Rural business owners such as the Ganns say they understand the necessity of the internet. They also say they hope it’ll one day be more affordable. Whether that happens or not, they’ll have to stay hooked up.

Cindy Gann finds ways to laugh about the situation. Sitting in her office on a recent Monday, she quipped: “We can go to the moon but can’t get internet.”