So she decided to pay for broadband to service her residence.
But it wasn't so simple. The infrastructure wasn't there. And it would cost $10,000 plus a couple hundred dollars a month for the service. Stuck, she turned to an option that many in the small town have leaned on since the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work and learning an essential part of everyday society: the local public library.
"Rensselaerville is not far from Albany," Hardwick said. "When you drive through the town, it looks and feels remote, but it's actually not that remote. It's not like a three-hour drive up into the middle of the Adirondacks. So, I really didn't think Internet was going to be an issue when I was deciding to move here."
Yet the town has run into multiple problems with accessing broadband, including affording the service once it's available.
The hilltown's rural, rugged terrain makes installation expensive. The lack of population density also makes that more challenging for providers to get any return on their investment. And for years faulty federal maps have indicated the town had access to Internet — but that was due to a Census glitch that checked off that box even if just one residence has the Internet service that in this community has become as ubiquitous as electricity and telephone access.
Some of the town's struggles can be traced not only through the Coronavirus pandemic but to more than 230 years ago, when Stephen van Rensselaer III enticed settlers to come to the rural region with the promise of "free" land as long it was maintained, farmed and the taxes paid. But the hilltown with roughly 1,800 residents remains sparsely populated and has struggled to build out its modern-day infrastructure, including high-speed Internet service, without government subsidies.
Nearly half of the residences in Rensselaerville remain unable to access broadband Internet — leaving the 61-square-mile community less connected than most towns in the Adirondacks. Meanwhile, essentially every residence in the city of Albany has the ability to subscribe to broadband Internet.
New state data shows 2.5 percent of New York households lack the ability to hook up to the Internet, a finding that offers the most granular look at online access to date and helps to fill gaps left by the U.S. Census data. The data point only accounts for addresses that do not have the infrastructure to access broadband, which excludes people who have the ability to access Internet but cannot afford it.
More than 132,000 households lack the ability to access broadband in New York. The town of Red House in Cattaraugus County is completely unserved. Twenty-nine towns, six school districts and four of the 10 tribal territories in the state have less than half of their residences with access to broadband, according to state data analyzed by the Times Union.
State and federal officials hope the answer to Internet access for the forgotten or isolated parts of New York will come from the Biden administration's $65 billion broadband initiative and Gov. Kathy Hochul's $1 billion "ConnectALL" initiative.
Yet, despite the new state data and billions of promised federal funds, the path to broadband connectivity for the final 2.5 percent of New York remains unclear, according to many close to the issue.
Internet providers warn that government broadband grants may not be able to cover the costs of building the services in locations where there may be fewer than five homes per square mile. They also are tracking state legislation, which is currently the subject of litigation, that could require the providers to offer their services at very low prices without an offsetting government subsidy.
But many communities continue waiting for broadband providers to decide whether they want to serve their areas.
"We don't have a magic wand to wave," said Hans Soderquist, a Rensselaerville resident who chairs the town's broadband committee. "It's just a much bigger challenge, primarily economically, in an area like this."
A WISH UPON ELON MUSK'S 'STARLINK'
For years, if any residence within a Census block had Internet, the federal government considered the entire block as having Internet. It's left towns like Rensselaerville, with a few residences along its Main Street having Internet access, ineligible for federal assistance to complete the expensive work in the rugged landscape.
The math for fiber optic broadband providers didn't add up for the low-density, hilly terrain without grant money.
So, Soderquist and the broadband committee turned their attention to the sky.
Starlink, an offshoot of Elon Musk's Space X, promises high-speed Internet access through its satellites. The primary requirement is a clear view of the Northern sky, installation of the satellite dish for the home, and for the service to be made available in the area. Services were quoted at around $600 for the equipment and $100 per month for access.
"It's unfortunate but many of us believed that there was a shortcut to availability to broadband," Soderquist said.
The small town was promised that the region would be available to join the Space X service by April 2021.
"We bought into that promise," Soderquist said. "Unfortunately, our faith in that derailed us from making some of the other efforts."
Starlink ran into further issues, too. This summer, the Federal Communications Commission rejected its bid for massive federal subsidies to provide rural Internet service.
"We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement in August. "We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements."
Since then, the focus in Rensselaerville has shifted back to more traditional measures to provide high-speed Internet using fiber cables offering broadband. That path has presented its own set of challenges.
The issue is two-fold, said Jim Becker, president and CEO of MIDTEL, the Middleburgh-based telecommunications provider.
First: Can government grants cover the costs of construction in places with fewer than five homes per mile? Second: Will a $15 price cap on broadband service for low-income people — part of the state's 2021 Affordable Broadband Act — be upheld in the courts? Some providers, like MIDTEL, worry the price cap would make it impossible to recoup the cost of installation and operation.
"Broadband is so important. It's like electric now," Becker said. "Maybe the big guys can handle $15, but we can't. It makes a tough situation a little tougher."
Becker said a tax credit to cover the difference, like the one the state plans to offer farms to meet new overtime rules for farm laborers, would "certainly make it more doable."
The $15 rate has been halted by a federal court for now, after telecommunications companies challenged the measure. It has been put on hold by a court-ordered preliminary injunction. The case is being handled by the office of state Attorney General Letitia James.
MIDTEL recently began asking municipalities for letters of support for grant applications and the Rensselaerville Town Board is expected to be asked for support as well.
'NEAR-UTILITY'
Using government subsidies to service the last areas lacking broadband has long seemed the best option to some state officials.
"Rural areas generally lack that density, which is why the government needs to step in and help providers get service to New Yorkers who need and deserve it," Jeffrey Nordhaus, who previously led broadband efforts for Empire State Development, said in 2019.
His comments came during a six-hour public hearing lawmakers held three years ago as they tried to understand the remaining issues stifling Internet access.
New York had been working toward achieving universal broadband service since at least 2008 with a program that distributed $160 million across 263 state grants, using money from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Then in 2015, the state launched a $500 million initiative to offer some Internet service in additional rural areas.
Now, the Biden administration's infrastructure program, which includes a broadband initiative sponsored by U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D- Amsterdam, is offering at least $45 billion toward rural broadband access.
"Rural areas without broadband infrastructure — and households and businesses that cannot afford broadband — simply cannot thrive in the modern economy," according to New York's Public Service Commission 2022 broadband report, which was authored by Chairman Rory M. Christian.
Some Democratic lawmakers believe it's time to make broadband fall under the PSC's oversight, a step toward making it a public utility.
The goal is to provide "unambiguous authority and a clear mandate to establish and enforce appropriate oversight and regulation," according to the bill memo from legislation proposed by state Sen. Sean M. Ryan, D- Buffalo, and Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, D- Queens.
"We need to make reliable, high-speed broadband service a public utility, and this is something that we will be pushing for in the 2023 legislative session," state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, D- Saugerties, said in a statement. She also pointed to the state's Division of Broadband Access, which is still being launched, as a method to connect the final regions that lack Internet service.
At the federal level, Democratic lawmakers are eager to call it an essential service but less willing to say that it should be regulated as a public utility, which would guarantee everyone has a right to affordable high-speed Internet.
In an interview, Tonko called Internet service a "modern-day utility," but said he first wants to "gather the statistics" on the early results of the infrastructure broadband funding before committing to the need for it to be regulated as a utility.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D- Schuylerville, said it should be treated by the state as a "near-utility" that could be funded by the government and run by the private sector.
"We have great private providers, so this might be a better place for a public-private partnership," Gillibrand said.
Assemblyman Chris Tague, R- Schoharie, sees the situation a bit differently. While he considers broadband to be a "necessity," especially from a public safety lens, he said that the goal should be to reduce red tape that is slowing down the process for private providers.
Navigating the state and federal funding for broadband is challenging, he added, especially for volunteers or part-time officials in small, rural towns — since so much information is found on the Internet.
"It's just very confusing and it hasn't become a top priority," said Tague, a former town supervisor. "We need to do a better job as legislators. ... We need to figure it out. We need to make it better."
The Hochul administration is bullish its endeavors will be able to resolve any issues in connecting the remaining communities that lack service.
"We expect private Internet service providers to be active partners in the efforts to close the remaining gaps and increase affordability and equity statewide," Josh Breitbart, director of New York's ConnectALL office, said in a statement, "but we are also ready to work with local governments, electric utilities and others to get the job done."
'LEFT BEHIND'
Rensselaerville's town library, a 200-plus-year-old building downtown, acts as an oasis in the town's Internet desert.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, families would drive up to the town's main drag and park on the street in front of Rensselaerville's library to access the Wi-Fi.
"We are informational providers and in this day and age, it is the Internet that is the source of the information," library Director Heidi Carle said. "People who do not have access to the Internet are left behind."
The building is a mecca for information. A sign outside informs passersby that the library was established in 1798 with 186 subscribers and 200 books. The exterior sports a fresh coat of paint, American flags wave in the wind and flowers thrive on the colonial porch. Meanwhile, the building across the street, with peeled paint, a slumped foundation and a cracked roof.
For Hardwick, when she moved to town, she turned to anybody she could think to ask about how to get good Internet outside of the services at the library.
"I exhausted all options," she said. "It's a powerless situation unless you're able to pay to have it fixed."
The power struggle over the ability to live on the land has a long history.
The town of Rensselaerville was founded in 1790, five years after Rensselaer III began offering homesteads "free" for seven years to those who would settle on the land, clear it, build a home and live there. His family had owned the land since 1630 but had yet to convince people to move there until the proposition, which was crafted with Alexander Hamilton.
So some people moved to the land that had no infrastructure and locked themselves into leases that scholars have since equated to a feudal system.
When Rensselaer III died and Rensselaer IV took over, he sought to collect outstanding debts that the elder had not collected. The arrangement led to an uprising from the farmers that would become known as the Anti- Rent War. Multiple people died, including a local undersheriff.
The farmers formed a political party, the Anti-Rent Party, and helped to elect the future governor, John Young, on a promise to help them with their outstanding rent and let them stay on the land they were promised.
Those who have remained in Rensselaerville and those who have come here since then are left with the fallout of the initial promises of remote land that was low cost, but lacked infrastructure.
For many, that frustration remains for the community that's just 29 miles southwest of the state's capital city where all residents have for decades had access to what Rensselaerville residents don't: reliable Internet.
©2022 the Times Union, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
