There are several routes that I take when riding my bicycle for exercise and exploration near our home. I ride on back roads a lot to avoid dangerous traffic. Some arterial roads in our area have 12-foot lanes with no shoulders and speed limits up to 50 mph. That’s no place to be riding a bike, so I take back roads with slower speed limits to get to roads that have bicycle lanes. The other day, while riding on one of the lightly traveled back roads, I passed three construction zones with flaggers managing one-way traffic. At one flagger, I had to wait about 5 minutes while equipment was moved. I was the only vehicle waiting in my direction, and a car was waiting in the other direction when the lane reopened. There isn’t much traffic on the road. The project causing the traffic disruptions is burying fiber-optic cable to bring Internet service to homes along the road. Currently, folks living in those houses connect to the Internet via cell phone hotspots or Starlink satellite.

The road I was riding my bike on leads to high-end, expensive homes. Million-dollar homes line the route. They have great views of Boundary Bay, the San Juan Islands, and White Rock, BC. Some have access to the sea. I suspect that nearly every property on that road will soon be connected to the fiber-optic cable. According to an article in a local online news source, about 11% of our county's residents do not yet have access to fixed broadband. Less than half of the residents in San Juan County, which consists of Islands, have such access.

Our country has been working hard to provide high-speed internet access to every home. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program is investing over $42 billion in broadband expansion. I don’t know how much, but a small portion of that money helped pay for the half-dozen matched mini-excavators and the fleet of company pickup trucks that lined the road where I was riding my bike.

The nation-wide broadband access program is in what some have dubbed the “last mile” phase. The more rural and remote a home is, the more difficult it is to get it connected to fixed broadband. The terrain of our county presents an additional challenge. Some islands are not served by ferries, and there are also homes on rugged, forested mountain slopes. It would be impossible for private companies to make a profit from providing broadband to some of the more isolated locations. Public utilities and co-ops apply for a combination of state and federal funding to support projects to expand access. However, with the federal government shut down, it is unclear when, if ever, funds will be available to complete access to all locations.

Meanwhile, there is no slowdown in construction to get cable connections to the million-dollar waterfront properties. And, a short bike ride away, our neighborhood is served by two independent broadband providers. We had our choice when we moved into our home. When poor customer service became a problem with the first company we chose, switching to the other company didn’t even involve trenching to our house. Both companies already had a fiber-optic cable run to our home.

While waiting for the construction crews alongside the road and riding my bike around the area, I began to wonder how long this particular technology would remain relevant. After the massive effort to connect all the homes, will fiber-optic connections become obsolete? There is so much obsolescence in contemporary technology that it is a legitimate question. It wasn’t that long ago that connecting homes to telephone landlines by copper wires was a priority, and a massive investment in that infrastructure resulted in phone lines being strung to very remote locations. Our house is connected to a landline, but we haven’t used it. Our cell phones are the way we access telephone service. We don’t have any hard-wired phones left.

Although we use our broadband access every day, I also have a cell phone hotspot that gives me connectivity when I am away from home. My daily journal entries have often been uploaded from campgrounds when we are away from home. The files I am uploading are relatively small, however. My cellphone hotspot can’t handle larger files such as videos. Those who travel in rural, isolated areas and need high-volume broadband often use Starlink satellite service. I think satellite broadband might be a more practical way to connect for some island and mountain homes in our area. Beyond that, however, I wonder whether wireless technologies will continue to expand to the point that the fiber-optic cables for which our nation is investing billions of dollars will fall into disuse in a short time.

My bicycle might last longer than the expensive cables they are burying in the ground. And the bike I ride most of the time is equipped with a battery-powered electric boost system and boasts a digital display. The basic technology is hundreds of years old, but this particular bike will not last as long as my other bicycle, which is a simple mechanical device without a motor.

My thoughts as I ride my bike won’t affect the installation of fiber-optic cable. There is a good chance that I will not be around to witness whatever technology replaces the connections now being put in place. An old guy on a bicycle might be a temporary inconvenience for a flagger whose job is mostly directing cars. Still, I might be providing a bit of entertainment to break up an otherwise tedious job. And I don’t operate in the area of billions of dollars. Others are making the decisions about where that money is getting invested.

I hope that the construction will not disrupt many trees. The trees have been around much longer than we people and our technologies. They have witnessed many changes. And whatever else happens, future generations of living creatures on this planet will depend on trees for oxygen and shade.