'Out in the dark': Coronavirus highlights internet access inequality in Tennessee

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the minimum speeds of broadband.

During an unprecedented time when people are urged to work from home, receive health care online and stay indoors as much as possible, having a reliable internet connection may be more important than ever.

Yet hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans are living unconnected during the coronavirus pandemic that has turned the world upside down.

For many, their inability to access broadband internet — even though they can afford it — has been a problem for years, affecting how they get their news, how they work and how they spend their free time. But the digital divide has come into sharper focus in recent weeks as schools have shut down, businesses have closed and the American way of life has largely shifted online.

"Once this pandemic is kind of over, and we've moved on, I think we still need to remember that there's at least 10% of Tennesseans who don't have access to the broadband they need," said Crystal Ivey, broadband director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

"When issues like this come up, they're really left behind."

'Out in the sticks'

The sun bore down as Chad Chambers stepped out onto his front porch in rural New Market. He had changed into his mowing clothes after days of gloomy weather. In the driveway, one of his twin sons — both firefighters for the city of Knoxville, some 25 miles west — loaded a Weed Eater into the back of a pickup truck.

Chambers has been working seven days a week as a manager at Iconex, a label-making company in nearby Jefferson City that has stayed open during the coronavirus outbreak. He likes his job and being around his co-workers, but in recent days he's watched his workplace empty out as more and more people have started to work from home. He tried to do the same but quickly discovered his internet can't handle it.

So he keeps showing up for work, potentially increasing his risk of catching the respiratory illness known as COVID-19.

"It's a ghost town in there," Chambers said. "They keep saying, 'You still here?' Yep. I am the lone ranger."

Chambers is no stranger to bad internet. He's lived for 28 years on Nances Ferry Road, a bucolic country lane dotted with houses, herds of cattle and rolling green hills. The road, like a sizable chunk of Jefferson County, has been left untouched by the large internet service providers that deliver broadband to much of the country.

Broadband is defined by the U.S. government as internet fast enough to hit the benchmark of 25 megabits per second download and 3 megabits per second upload. Giant companies such as AT&T and Charter provide broadband to millions via copper cables; now fiber-optic cables bring the fastest, most reliable service on the market.

Chambers is one of nearly 600,000 Tennesseans who live in internet deserts with access to neither, according to the most recently available data from the Federal Communications Commission. Broadband Now, a site that collects data from internet service providers so potential customers can compare their options, if they have any, puts that figure even higher — at more than 1.1 million people, or 17.6% of the population.

People in areas with no wired broadband providers must turn to other options that can work but come with drawbacks. Satellite internet, for example, is available everywhere but is slower, more expensive and spotty in bad weather. Digital subscriber line service uses existing telephone lines but performs worse the farther away a home is from a provider's office, while fixed wireless internet requires a clear line of sight between a receiver on a house and an access tower.

Chambers' family pays for unlimited data and connects to the internet via a Wi-Fi hotspot that relies on the not-so-great cell signal at their house. Their connection can't support the videoconferencing required by remote work, and Chambers said his sons struggled while taking online fire science classes at Walters State Community College.

"I figured I'd live out in the sticks and suffer for a little bit," Chambers joked. "I like my view."

'They can't log on'

Brad Cunningham lives across the street with his two teenage sons and a daughter. They face the same problem.

For Cunningham, the lack of access to reliable internet makes home-schooling his younger son and his daughter more difficult. His older son is a junior at Jefferson County High School, which shut down after Gov. Bill Lee recommended all schools close amid the pandemic. Now the 17-year-old can't use online resources provided by the school to study from home, his father said.

"They give them all these computers, and they tell them to log on and do this and do that," Cunningham said. "Well, they can't log on or nothing, and they can't go to the library because the library's closed. I guess you could go to McDonald's or something like that, but what kid's going to do that?"

Cunningham added that his family is relegated to watching Netflix on their phones.

"You're just kind of out in the dark here," he said.

Jefferson County Schools officials have said students are encouraged but not required to use the online resources provided during the closure. Director Shane Johnston told Knox News the district is working to give students written course-specific packets.

“Rural districts face a lack of availability to internet and that creates challenges, but I’m very proud of our teachers that are reaching to parents through classrooms apps, phone calls, and emails to assist our students and parents," Johnston wrote in a statement.

"COVID-19 has created challenges to a student’s education, and we will work hard to provide for our students during this time."

'Lost in a coma'

Cunningham, Chambers and about 4,600 others in the New Market area are slated to have access to top-of-the-line fiber internet service by the end of the year.

That's thanks to Tennessee's Broadband Accessibility Grant Program, an initiative launched in 2017 to funnel tens of millions of dollars to communities across the state that don't have high-speed internet.

Legislation passed that year cut down regulations and allowed nonprofit electric cooperatives to sell broadband internet. Appalachian Electric Cooperative, which serves Jefferson County as well as parts of Hamblen, Grainger, Sevier and Hawkins counties, then partnered with the company Trilight to provide fiber internet to customers. Trilight hooked up its first customer in November and had about 300 as of last week.

The partners won a $1.7 million grant, one of 22 issued through the state program last year, to bring high-speed internet to unserved parts of Jefferson County. While it's generally not profitable for a provider to build infrastructure in rural communities just to nab a few new customers, cash from the state alleviates that concern. In all, more than 20,000 Tennesseans are scheduled to receive broadband access through the program by the end of the year.

"These people are going from early '90s, mid-'90s-style dial-up internet, and overnight they're getting a gigabit," said Eric Ogle, general manager of Trilight. "It's like somebody being lost in a coma for 20 years, and they're waking up and boom, there are the fastest internet speeds they've ever heard of."

Trilight isn't operating only off grant money, Ogle said, and crews have been hooking up customers in Jefferson City who already had access to broadband. The company will start working next month in the area of Nances Ferry Road, he added.

For families living there amid the pandemic, the new service can't come fast enough.

'Trees in the way'

Although poor, rural communities disproportionately lack access to broadband, some neighborhoods in more affluent areas fall in dead zones, too.

Laura Legner and her husband, Dr. Victor Legner, can't get broadband at their home near Still House Hollow Road, about 10 miles west of downtown Franklin in Middle Tennessee. The couple didn't research their options before they moved into their house in 2016 because they assumed access to high-speed internet was a given.

"I even was willing to pay $500 a month for a dedicated internet line, and AT&T got ready to do it and they were like, 'Oh no, we can't do it because it would cost $200,000 to run the fiber up there,' " Laura Legner said, adding she once had her neighbors sign a petition in a failed bid to persuade a service provider to bring broadband to the area.

"And then we tried to get fixed wireless internet," she said. "I had two different technicians come out and try to install it, and they said, 'It won't work. There are trees in the way.' "

The couple ultimately resorted to using digital subscriber line service, which is not good enough for Victor Legner. He works as the director of outpatient primary care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and his job during the pandemic is to organize telemedicine so patients don't have to risk being exposed by coming in for treatment.

But the family lacks the bandwidth to support videoconferencing, prompting him to go into work from time to time while others work from home.

"He's going into work, potentially exposing himself unnecessarily to a deadly virus because we don't have decent internet," Laura Legner wrote in a text to Knox News. "Hopefully someone will reach out with an internet solution for us!"

Email Travis Dorman at travis.dorman@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @travdorman. If you enjoy Travis' coverage, support strong local journalism by subscribing for full access to all our content on every platform.