Otsego County will receive federal funding to continue building access to reliable, high-speed internet, addressing current gaps in service connection.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday, April 27 that her ConnectALL initiative — which aims to build digital connectivity throughout the state — has started to implement a $542 million effort to bring affordable, trustworthy, high-speed internet service to 58,617 homes and businesses in mainly rural districts across New York, as part of the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program.
The county’s high speed internet initiative, the Broadband Technical Assistance Project, reviewed its findings at its final broadband review session Tuesday, April 28 at Milford Central School. Broadband also is referred to as a high speed internet service.
Greg Guice, chief policy offer with Vernonburg Group — a consulting group that specializes in helping people and communities gain internet access — said after the meeting Tuesday the BEAD funding is federal money overseen by the state. Otsego County will receive $53.5 million working with service providers Community Broadband Networks, IBT Group and SpaceX using technologies including fiber, fixed wireless and satellite.
Nicholus Steward, senior project manager at Vernonburg Group, said it spent the past 12 months on the technical assistance project, which kicked off in spring 2025.
“We’ve spent time interviewing some residents of your county and doing some in-person visits with folks as well,” Steward said. “It’s been a very productive and informative time for us.”
The Mohawk Valley Economic Development District received grant funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and contracted with Vernonburg Group to organize the initiative. Steward said the 12-month project focused on technical assistance, meaningful planning, research surveys and community engagement without physically building anything.
“The distinction matters because on federal broadband, a lot of the initial mapping data can be inaccurate, so we wanted to drill down into your community and really find out where some of the gaps were,” Steward said.
Guice said the next step would be the “deployment of networks into the community” using some of the newly announced funding.
Steward added that he knew if the project only focused on putting out online surveys for data collection, it would be missing input from people living in the exact gaps the initiative sought to identify. There have been public forums to gain information and interviews with several internet service providers in the region.
Results of survey
Steward said Otsego County saw 424 voluntary survey responses throughout more than nine months, using Microsoft Forms instrument and physical survey distribution in the local libraries. He said this means more than 400 households provided input, adding that the goal was to “lower the barrier of communication” for individuals so technology was not a limiting factor in gathering information.
Most residents are connected, but not many are actually satisfied with the service they are receiving.
“Not only having access to internet but that internet being affordable and reliable matters,” Steward said.
He said 32% of survey respondents reported that their internet works well and meets all of their needs, and 56% of respondents said they have internet at home but it does not meet their needs. This could be because it is too expensive, too slow, unreliable or only works in some rooms in the house. Steward said 11% of respondents reported having no internet access at all.
Out of the 48 households that said they had no internet access, the largest reason reported was that there was no service where they lived, followed by cost barriers.
Among residents ages 25 to 44, 17% did not have internet access at home, with 13% of individuals ages 45 to 64 and 7% of individuals ages 65 or older reporting the same. Steward said the data did not reflect the standard belief that older individuals tend to be less connected from the internet.
BEAD funding will close a lot of these internet access gaps in the county, Steward said, but there will still be more than 200 households remaining unconnected at the end of the process.
Aidan Woishnis, the mayor of the village of Gilbertsville, said Tuesday after the meeting the village is working with the county go through the ConnectALL program. He said rather than running the fiber lines along telephone poles, which would require a lease agreement through NYSEG, the village would be using a company called Aqualinq, which can run the fiber through the water line and pipes to get to the houses.
“Ideally, our system will allow us to actually make it cheaper for the residents as well,” Woishnis said.