Spring Regional Follow-Up: Help Your Communities Map and Get Better Broadband!

At last month’s WLIA Spring Regional Meeting, the Broadband panel shared a pair of tools that county and local GIS offices can use to help their communities get better connected to the internet. Here’s what you can do to help your community take steps to get better Broadband access now.

1.  Help your community take the Wisconsin Internet Self-Report (WISER): Encourage your county and municipalities to post a link to have folks complete this Broadband survey and speed test. They can repeat WISER whenever they have a significant change in their internet subscription or service quality.

A telephone call-in line should be available for those without internet service this summer. If you want to be further involved in gathering and reviewing data from WISER, contact PSCBroadbandData@wisconsin.gov.  

2.  Encourage engagement with GEO software and planning tools: The GEO speed test allows folks to quickly run a speed test (with no Broadband survey). Encourage your county and municipalities to collect GEO speed tests and make a link available for public speed testing.

If you are interested in getting involved with local planning, contact a Broadband stakeholder in your area. If you don’t know any, contact info@grownorth.org for potential connections. You can also work toward access to the GEO Broadband planning tools by reaching out to info@grownorth.org.

Broadband deployment is a great opportunity to use your skillset to help your community! Broadband is also a great opportunity to highlight the importance of geospatial data to your decision makers. For additional Broadband questions, feel free to email colter.sikora@wisconsin.gov.